Exterior cleaning in Post Green
Roof, render, gutter, drive and patio cleaning around Post Green, Lytchett Minster and Upton. Contained, treated properly, and priced surface by surface.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Exterior cleaning around Post Green starts above the wall. A soft wash on render or brick lasts far longer once the gutters above it are clear of pine needles and heath litter, because a lot of green staining is a wall soaked all winter by a gutter running over the top of it.
Look at a Post Green house due a clean and you tend to see this. A roof that has gone green on the shaded pitch and is starting to show from the road. A wall streaked black under a gutter, usually with a downpipe that has stopped taking anything. Or a drive and a patio that have got slippery enough to be a nuisance in the dark.
It is all maintenance, so there is no rush and there is time to do it properly. We come out and look at everything, including the shed and the garage roofs that nobody thinks to mention, and give you a written price per surface so you can take the lot or take the gutters and think about the rest.
The work
Estate roofs, park homes and rendered walls
Gutters. Pine needles mat into a felt that water will not carry away, and with heath litter and moss off the roof an outlet can block in one autumn, so book gutter clearing before any wall is washed.
Much of the housing around Post Green is post-war, so the covering is usually concrete interlocking tile with a mortar bedded or dry fixed ridge. Concrete holds damp in its face, so algae takes hold early and moss follows into the laps. We scrape the laps and the ridge clear by hand, pull the growth out of the valley, then treat the slope so the spores die back and do not regrow next spring. No pressure washing of roofs: the force takes the sand and cement face off an interlocking tile and washes the mortar out from under a bedded ridge. Rendered and pebbledashed elevations are common on the estate housing and both want a genuine soft wash, low pressure through a wide nozzle with a treatment left to work. Pressure strips paint off masonry and knocks the stones out of pebbledash, and neither goes back. Lichen on a north wall is the slowest of the lot to shift.
Park homes, drives and conservatories. There are a good number of park homes and static caravans around Post Green, and they are the one thing on this page where a jet wash will do damage every single time. Coated steel and vinyl cladding, plastic trims and sealed joints will not take pressure or a strong chemical, so they are washed by hand and by soft brush on a pole with the treatment matched to the coating. If a firm quotes you to pressure wash a park home, get somebody else. Block paving comes up under controlled pressure and then wants a re-sand, and on tarmac we use far less force than people expect. Felt garage roofs, timber sheds and conservatory glass all get cleaned the gentle way, and we clear the box gutter between a conservatory and the house while we are there, because that is the detail that quietly does the damage when it silts up.
How it runs
Cleaning a Post Green roof, wall or drive
Thomas looks at each surface with you and prices the lot himself, on one visit. Each line of the written quote is separate: the method for each surface, protection, access, any biocide treatment, and where the water and residue go.
The surfaces that need it in Post Green are moss on concrete tiled bungalow roofs, green algae on render or paving on the shaded side, and block paving on wide drives. A bungalow roof can often be done from a tower or a reach pole, without anyone walking on the tiles. We soft wash render and roofs with a biocide and never blast them, and we protect plants and windows. Broken tiles or hollow render noticed during the clean are photographed and priced, and left alone unless you agree.
Cleaning is maintenance and needs no consent. What needs a check is anything that changes how the building looks afterwards, such as painting a wall that has never been painted. Dorset Council is the authority. A slice of the older village is in the Lytchett Minster conservation area, and at the listed entries nearby, Post Green House among them, listed building consent comes before any change of appearance.
Cost
Surfaces, height and growth: what a clean costs
What it is made of. Concrete tile, render, block paving and painted masonry each want a different method, and the wrong one takes the surface off along with the growth.
Reach. Single storey homes can often be done from the ground with a pole, which is quick. A two storey house, a conservatory roof in the way, or a long gutter run above a lean-to needs a tower, and the work at height rules decide which.
How established it is. A thin green film comes off with one treatment. Deep moss on a north facing slope, or lichen rooted into the tile, is scraped first and treated again later.
Roof moss. On concrete tiles it comes off by hand from a roof ladder, never with a pressure washer, which erodes the tile and pushes water under the laps.
Biocide. A treatment that stops growth coming back costs more than a rinse and lasts much longer.
Where the water goes. Surface water drains here run towards Poole Harbour, so residue is contained and collected.
When comparing, ask what each surface gets, whether a biocide is included, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A sale, a viewing or a deadline coming up
If there is a date to hit, ring us. This is rarely an emergency, but it often has one: a sale, a letting inspection, or a scaffold coming down after other work. A phone call lets us look at the diary with you.
A green, slippery path or step is a safety issue and goes to the front. Cleaning is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If the date is close, call us, and if you cannot get through we will call back as soon as we can.
The one local thing
Heath, pines and a catchment that ends in Poole Harbour
Post Green sits between woodland and open heath, on sand, with the Sherford River a short walk away and Poole Harbour beyond it. That brings debris and a drainage problem together. The first is debris. Pine and birch shed all year, not in one tidy fortnight, heath litter blows a long way in an easterly, and both end up in your gutters, your valleys and on any flat roof you own.
A property here wants its rainwater goods cleared twice a year, not once, and the honest version of that advice is that the second visit is cheaper than the fascia and the render you will otherwise be paying to put right.
The second is where the water goes when we have finished. Drainage here is slightly impeded, so what runs off a roof or a drive lies on the surface before it finds its way to the Sherford River and the harbour, which is a protected site. Biocide that reaches a watercourse is a genuine problem, not a technicality, so on every job here we block off the downpipes, cover the gully and any drain, keep the planting closest to the wall sheeted, and contain and collect rather than letting it run to the nearest ditch.
Debris is bagged and leaves with us. Pollution prevention rules set out what is allowed into a surface water drain, and the HSE publishes which products are approved for this work and what the label lets you do with them. It is worth asking whoever you use how they intend to handle this, because the cheapest quote on a heath edge property is usually cheap because nobody is containing anything.
Who you are dealing with
Who cleans your roof and paving
Post Green is a short run of about nine and a half miles from our Boscombe base. We cover roofs, walls and paving in Lytchett Minster, Post Green, Upton, Lytchett Matravers and Holton Heath, all in Dorset Council's area.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The business is Thomas Hannen's, and he looks at each surface and prices the clean himself. On Checkatrade a verified customer rated us 10 out of 10. The visit and the written quote, itemised, are both free. Before you book a visit in Post Green, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Post Green?
Most repairs in Post Green need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Post Green |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Post Green. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Lytchett Minster Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Post Green. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Post Green. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Post Green
Are we inside the Lytchett Minster conservation area here?
Yes, Post Green is inside the conservation area. The Lytchett Minster Conservation Area controls appearance, so like for like upkeep is fine and changing a material or a colour is not. A wash and a biocide alter nothing about how the building looks, they take it back to how it looked. Where it would matter is a roof coating, and we would not put one on inside the area without Dorset Council confirming it.
There are plenty of bungalows here. Anything specific?
The long, low roofs, mostly. A bungalow puts a lot of concrete tile and a long run of render within reach of a pole, so a soft wash and a moss treatment can be done from the ground with nobody on the tiles. The plastic gutters on these houses have had many winters and often sag between brackets. Clearing them is a separate job, and a sagging run needs refixing, not just emptying.
Post Green House is listed. Does that affect the houses around it?
Not on its own. There are eighteen listed entries around here, Post Green House among them, and a listing applies to the building and its curtilage rather than to the neighbours. The conservation area is the designation that reaches wider. On a listed building we drop the pressure right down, work by hand over lime mortar and soft brick, and leave anything that changes the finish until the council has looked.
The ground here holds water. Does that change how you work?
It changes where the wash water ends up. Drainage at Post Green is slightly impeded, so what comes off a roof lies on the surface and finds the lowest point instead of soaking in. On a job with heavy moss that means a mat and a bag rather than letting it run into the lawn. It also means no treatment is worked down a wall onto saturated ground beside a bed.
Will you need to come into the garden at the back?
Yes, and the gate wants to be wide and clear of bins and pots. On the plots here the rear elevation faces south south east and the boundary is usually close boarded fence with a narrow side path, so that gets looked at on the first visit. Where nothing will go through, the back is worked off poles from ground level, which is slower, and we say so before you agree anything.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Post Green
Nearby places we also cover for exterior cleaning, with straight-line distances from Post Green, and the other trades we offer in Post Green itself.
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Post Green
Exterior cleaning guides
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Start with the gutters, price the rest
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