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.
Water forced under a lap ends up on the felt instead of in the gutter, which is why a Sandford roof wants a dry scrape and a treatment rather than a jet wash. The tile is nearly always concrete interlocking, with the moss sitting in the laps.
Three jobs make up most of what we do here. 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 we get called to 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 rather than 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, downpipes and outlets are cleared by vacuum or by hand, outlets rodded and joints checked, and the valley between two roof planes is done first because that is what puts water inside the building. You get a photograph into the gutter before and after. 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
From your call to a written price
One team from the first visit to the last, and Thomas Hannen writes the price himself, itemised by surface: method, protection, access, and where the water and residue go on separate lines. There are only four listed entries in the area and no conservation area over Sandford, so nothing about a wash here needs an application to Dorset Council. Where consent does come into it is afterwards, if you decide to paint, coat or seal a surface that has never been treated that way before. On the rare listed building nearby, listed building consent is the thing to sort before the work rather than after it.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
There is no rate per square metre, because what is growing on it decides the time, not the area. Access comes first: a semi with a shared slope and a drive down one side, a bungalow with a conservatory across the whole back, and a terrace where every hose comes through the house are three different days. work at height rules decide what can be done off a pole and what needs a tower. Then the state of it, since a light film comes off the same morning and years of growth wants a treatment and a second visit.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. None of this is emergency work but most of it has a date behind it. If a letting inspection or a sale is driving yours, say so on the phone: the gutters and the front elevation can usually be brought forward even when the roof treatment needs longer to work. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, by arrangement.
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. Needles are the problem rather than leaf. Leaf rots down and washes through an outlet eventually.
Needles do not: they mat together into a felt that sits in the bottom of the gutter and over the outlet, and they hold water against everything they touch. A house with conifers over it can fill a gutter in a single autumn, 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. Gutters come before the roof clean, not after, because scraping a slope sends everything that was on it straight into the gutter and out through the downpipe. If we are doing both, the gutters are cleared, the roof is done, and the gutters are checked again before we leave.
If your budget only stretches to one job this year and there are trees over the house, do the rainwater goods. A green roof is a cosmetic problem for a long time. A gutter that has stopped taking water puts it down the render, into the fascia and eventually into the wall, and that is the bill worth avoiding.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
Sandford, Holton Heath, Organford, Wareham, Ridge and the BH20 villages north of the harbour, worked from our base 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
Sandford questions we get asked
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 we often clean three or four in a row.
Is the ground here too wet for a drive wash?
The ground at Sandford holds water rather than 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 rather than washing 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.
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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.