Exterior cleaning in Sandford
Roof cleaning, render soft washing, gutters and outlets cleared and drives brought back across Sandford, Holton Heath and the BH20 lanes.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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A Sandford roof wants a dry scrape and a soft wash treatment, not a jet wash, because water forced under a lap ends up on the felt instead of in the gutter. The tile is nearly always concrete interlocking, with the moss sitting in the laps.
Houses in Sandford show trouble on the roof, on the render and on the drive. A roof has gone green across a whole slope and the gutters below it are full of what has come off. Render or pebbledash has darkened on the shaded side of the house while the sunny side still looks new. Or the drive and the path have turned slippery and stay that way from autumn to spring.
We come out and survey it surface by surface, because a rendered wall, a tiled roof and a block paved drive want three different methods and two of them want very little pressure. You are told what will come up, what needs treating and then leaving alone 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 needs cleaning on Sandford houses
Roofs from the sixties and seventies. Three homes in five here went up between the war and the early eighties and the peak of that was around 1970, so the roof over most of Sandford is concrete interlocking tile of much the same age.
Tile that old has gone porous, and porous tile holds moss the way a pad holds water. We scrape the growth off dry, soft wash the tile at low pressure and treat it with a biocide so the spores left in the surface do not bring the regrowth back within the year. Nothing is jetted up under the lap. The ridge and the verge get a look while we are up there, because a rocking ridge tile is a repair to do before a clean, not after it.
Half the houses share a roof slope. Semis and terraces make up close to half of Sandford, so your slope carries on over somebody else's ceiling. Cleaning your half and leaving theirs green is a short lived result, because it reseeds straight back across the line. It is worth asking next door before we come: two halves done in one visit needs one set up instead of two, and that shows in the price.
Rendered panels between brickwork are common on this stock, and pebbledash on the older part of it. Both are soft washed with a weak solution and rinsed at low pressure. Neither takes a lance: pebbledash loses its stones, painted masonry loses its coating, and a wall stripped like that then takes up water for good. Where a wall greens back within a year the cause is usually water rather than dirt, and we would rather find that on the visit than after you have paid for a clean.
Gutters and valleys under these trees are a gutter clearing job, best booked alongside the roof. On the drives it is concrete, slab and block paving, and block paving is re-sanded after washing since the wash lifts the jointing sand out with the weed and the algae. Sealing only works on paving that is dry.
Planting is soaked and sheeted first, drains and gullies near the work are covered, and everything we spray is a biocide approved for the job and used to its label, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires.
How it runs
Cleaning the roof, walls and drive, surface by surface
Thomas looks at each surface you want cleaned and what is growing on it. In Sandford that is usually moss on concrete roof tiles from the sixties and seventies, green algae on render and north-facing brick, and black staining on block paving. He prices it himself, one surface at a time, saying how each will be cleaned, which biocide, what gets covered, how he reaches it, and how the dirty water is handled. Washing and treatment are on it.
Roof tiles are cleaned by hand scraping and a soft wash with a biocide. A pressure washer strips the surface off concrete tiles. Render gets a low pressure soft wash. Block paving can take more pressure, then is re-sanded. Plants, windows and cars are covered, drains are protected, and moss and debris leave with us, not in your bin. The gutters are cleared after a roof clean, because that is where the moss ends up. Cracked tiles or blown render spotted while cleaning are pictured and priced, not quietly fixed.
No conservation area covers Sandford and only four entries are listed, so a wash needs nothing from Dorset Council. Consent only comes in if you then paint, coat or seal a surface that has never been treated that way. On a listed building, sort out listed building consent first. The products we use sit under the biocides regime the HSE administers.
Cost
What decides how long a clean takes
Exterior cleaning is not priced by the square metre. What is growing and how long it has been there decide the time.
Access. Where a drive runs alongside the house, setting up is quick. A conservatory along the whole back of a bungalow means working carefully around glass, and a mid terrace with the hose run through the hallway takes longer again. Work at height rules decide what can be done from a pole and what needs a tower.
How much growth. A light film of algae comes off in one visit. Years of moss on a roof needs scraping, a biocide treatment and time for it to work, sometimes with a second visit.
The surface. Concrete tiles, render, brick and block paving each take a different method and pressure. Render and older brick need a soft wash. Paving needs re-sanding afterwards.
Water and runoff. Where the dirty water goes matters, with Poole Harbour downstream. We keep it out of surface water drains, and on some sites it has to be collected, which the pollution prevention guidance covers.
Put these to another cleaner: will they pressure wash or soft wash, which biocide are they using, will they empty the gutters after the roof, will the paving get fresh sand, and where does the runoff go?
If there is a date
A sale, a viewing or an inspection coming up
Exterior cleaning is never an emergency, but it often has a date behind it. If a sale, a viewing or a letting inspection is driving it, tell us the date when you ring, not after the quote.
The front elevation, the drive and the gutters can often be done first, while a roof treatment is given longer to work. Paths or steps slippery with algae are the one thing worth treating first. Booked work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything with a deadline, a call beats the form, and if we miss it we reply by phone as soon as we can.
The one local thing
What is overhead sets your interval, not the calendar
Sandford sits on the heath, with conifer and pine on three sides of it and mature trees through the older gardens. That decides how often this work needs doing far more than the age of the house does. Shade and needles keep a roof slope damp long after rain, and a damp slope is where moss roots.
A house with conifers over it can green over again in a couple of seasons, while an open plot two streets away goes for years. Two identical houses in Sandford can genuinely need a different interval, and anybody selling you an annual contract without looking at what is above the roof is guessing.
The order of work follows from that. Scraping a slope sends everything on it into the gutter, so if the gutters are being cleared too, they are checked again once the roof is done.
If your budget only stretches to one job this year, treat the roof and let the biocide work, and leave the render until the gutters above it are sound. A wall washed under an overflowing gutter goes green again down the same stripe, and water down the render and into the fascia is the bill worth avoiding.
Who you are dealing with
Whose firm cleans your house, and how to check
Sandford is 11.7 miles from our base in Boscombe, near Bournemouth. We clean across the village, Holton Heath, Organford, Wareham, Ridge and the BH20 villages north of the harbour, all under Dorset Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the company, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Sandford, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
The man who comes to look at each surface and price it is the owner, Thomas Hannen. We hold a verified 10 out of 10 from a customer on Checkatrade. You pay nothing for the visit or the written quote, which lists each surface separately.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Sandford?
Most repairs in Sandford 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 Sandford |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Sandford. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Sandford, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, Sandford has listed buildings. If yours is one, or stands in the grounds of one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Sandford. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Sandford
Why does every bungalow on our road look the same age?
Because they are. 60.7% of Sandford went up between 1945 and 1982, the biggest single block landing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and bungalows account for 22.7% of what is here. Concrete interlocking tiles from that period have a soft surface that holds moss once the factory finish has weathered off them. A whole street tends to green over across the same couple of winters, which is why neighbours often book together.
Is the ground here too wet for a drive wash?
The ground at Sandford holds water instead of shedding it, so a washed drive stays damp for days and the joints silt up again quickly. We lift the growth first, work in the direction of the fall, then re-sand the joints once the surface has dried enough to accept it. If it has rained hard the week before, we would sooner move the date than bed jointing sand into a wet gap.
Does the Poole Harbour catchment restrict what you can use?
Not the wash itself: the nutrient rules bite on new overnight accommodation, so they reach a loft conversion and never touch a house clean. What does matter is that everything here drains towards Poole Harbour, so we keep treatment out of the surface water gullies, cover the pond and the vegetable beds, and let it fall on the wall rather than the border. Dorset Council are the authority if anything larger is proposed.
What do you check before cleaning tiles of that vintage?
We put a ladder on the roof line and look at the verge mortar, the ridge bedding and the bottom course. Roofs laid across Sandford within the same few seasons tend to carry the same fault, which is a dry verge or a loose ridge rather than a failed tile. Washing a slope with lifted ridge tiles just drives water inside the building, so where we find that we price the bedding first and the wash after.
Our flat roof extension collects debris. Can that be cleaned too?
It usually needs it more than the main roof does. Sandford has woodland and heath close in, so a low flat roof behind the house becomes a leaf trap and the outlet blocks long before anyone notices. We brush it off by hand and do not wash it, because a lance will lift a felt lap or drive grit under the flashing. The gutter and the outlet get cleared and flushed while we are up there.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Sandford
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Free quote
Find out what will come up, and what will not
A free site visit in Sandford, then a written itemised price with every surface on its own line. Tell us if there is a date to work to.