Exterior cleaning in Redlynch
Roof cleaning, render and masonry soft washing, gutters cleared and paving brought back across Redlynch, Woodfalls and Morgan's Vale.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
A lance takes the face off soft brick along with the moss, and a good part of Redlynch is soft brick with lime mortar joints. So the answer on most houses is less pressure, not more. What lasts is a low pressure wash and a treatment, not a jet wash.
Three things bring people out to us from Redlynch, Woodfalls and Morgan's Vale. A north facing roof slope has gone green and drops moss into the gutter every time it rains. An old brick or painted render wall has turned black and streaked and nobody wants to put a pressure washer near it. Or the drive and the front path are slippery from the first autumn gale through to spring.
We come out and survey it surface by surface, because old brickwork, a concrete tile roof and a block paved drive want three different methods and two of them want almost no force at all. You are told what will come up, what needs treating and then leaving to work, and what we would not touch. The site visit is free and the written price puts each surface on its own line.
The work
What actually needs cleaning on a Redlynch house
Old brick, lime joints and colourwashed render. Something over a quarter of the housing here predates the First World War, and the cottages along the older lanes are soft brick with lime mortar, painted render and the occasional later pebbledash. None of that belongs anywhere near a jet wash. It is soft washed with a weak solution, given time to work, then rinsed at low pressure. Where the joints have already opened we tell you to get the mortar sorted before the wall is cleaned, because an open joint on a solid wall takes water inside whether it arrives off a hose or off the weather. On the postwar and seventies houses the covering is concrete interlocking tile gone porous enough to hold moss like a sponge: scraped off dry, soft washed at low pressure, then treated so the spores left in the surface do not bring the regrowth back within a season. Nothing is forced up under the lap, and the ridge and verge get looked at while we are there.
Gutters, paving and what goes in the water. Close to a third of the homes here are bungalows, which means plenty of roof and rainwater goods at hardly any height, most of it reachable from the ground on a pole. On this side of the Forest the oak and beech leaf fall is heavy and it all ends up in the same place. Clearing is by vacuum or by hand, outlets are rodded and the valleys are done first, because a blocked valley puts water inside the building rather than down the wall. Block paving is re-sanded after washing, though black spot lichen wants treating and time instead. Planting is soaked and sheeted and the drains near the work are covered. Everything we spray is approved for the job and used to its label, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires, and we work to pollution prevention guidance on where the residue goes.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One team from first visit to last, one person to ring, and no sub-contracting. The quote is itemised: method for each surface, protection, access and where the water and residue go. If something turns up that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price first. No conservation area covers Redlynch, and the dozen listed entries in the parish are scattered along the lanes rather than lined up on one street. Washing a building is maintenance and needs no application. The line moves if you go on to paint, coat or seal a surface that has never been treated that way. Wiltshire Council is the authority, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where maintaining a wall ends.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre: the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. A cottage tight to the lane with no side access, a seventies detached with a drive down one flank and a long bungalow with a conservatory across the back are three different jobs before a hose is unrolled. The work at height rules decide which. The surface sets the method, and getting it wrong takes the finish off with the dirt. Comparing quotes, ask what method each surface gets, whether a treatment is included or just a rinse, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form, and say what the date is for. If a photographer is coming, the drive and the front elevation are what ends up in the pictures and can be turned round quickly, while a biocide wants weeks of weather behind it. Redlynch is a twenty mile run, so we will be straight with you about the date. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
The oldest quarter of the village decides the method
Redlynch is not one kind of house, and the older end of it is the part that sets the rules. Roughly a quarter of the homes here were built before 1919, and a good many of those are soft handmade brick bedded in lime mortar, with render or limewash over the top of some of them. You can usually tell which you have with a fingernail and a car key. Lime is soft, sandy and buff coloured, it sits back slightly from the brick face and it crumbles if you scratch it.
Modern cement is grey, hard and often stands proud of the brick. If yours is lime, the wall was built to let water out through the joints, and anything that drives water in or takes the fired skin off the brick face does lasting damage. That is why nobody should be putting a turbo nozzle on it, and why we test a patch on a hidden elevation before we commit to a method.
The practical upshot for you is an order of work. If the pointing has gone, get the mortar done first and the clean second, otherwise you pay to wash a wall that is about to be raked out and made a mess of. If a wall keeps greening back within a year, the cause is nearly always water rather than dirt: a gutter running over, a downpipe discharging into thin air, or ground and planting sitting up against the brickwork.
We would rather point that out on the free visit and quote you the gutter than sell you the same wall wash every spring. Ask anyone else quoting you what pressure they intend to use on old brick, and whether they will strip the paint or the face off with it.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
Redlynch, Woodfalls, Morgan's Vale, Lover, Downton and the SP5 villages along the western edge of the Forest, worked from our base down near Bournemouth. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Redlynch questions we get asked
Over a quarter of Redlynch is pre 1900. What changes?
Pressure comes off the list. 27.7% of the housing here predates 1919 and 24.4% predates 1900, which brings solid walls with no cavity, lime pointing, and brick whose fired face is only a couple of millimetres thick. Take that face off with a lance and the wall starts absorbing water instead of shedding it. Those walls are done by hand at low pressure with a biocide that works over the weeks after.
The north side of the roof is thick with moss. Why?
Aspect and wet ground together. The local slopes at Redlynch run north north east, so that pitch gets no direct sun for most of the year, and the ground beneath is naturally wet so the air around the building stays humid. Moss wants precisely that. The sunny pitch can be well behind the shaded one on the same roof, and we quote them separately instead of treating the whole covering by default.
Do Wiltshire Council need to know before you start?
For a clean, no. There is no conservation area at Redlynch and cleaning a building counts as upkeep rather than development, so nothing is applied for. Twelve entries in the parish are listed, and if the house is one of those then anything that changes the surface, a coating or a paint, does need Wiltshire Council's consent. Washing it back to the material already there does not.
Can you clear the gutters without doing the rest?
That is a job on its own and we do it. With woodland on the doorstep out here the gutters and valleys silt up with leaf litter faster than anything else on the building fails, and a blocked valley puts water through a ceiling long before a dirty roof does. It is vacuumed out from ground level, the outlets are checked, and the debris is bagged rather than dropped down the wall.
The houses here sit in big plots. Does that help?
It helps a lot. Detached houses are 42.0% of Redlynch and bungalows another 30.3%, so there is usually room to stand a tower on your own ground and get at every elevation without asking a neighbour. What a large plot brings with it is planting hard up against the walls, so the first thing done on site is covering the beds and moving whatever can be moved.
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Find out what will come up, and what will not
A free site visit in Redlynch, then a written itemised price with every surface on its own line. Tell us if there is a date to work to.