Exterior cleaning in Sixpenny Handley
Roofs, render, gutters, drives and yards cleaned properly, at the pressure the surface can actually take.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Almost everything that wants cleaning in Sixpenny Handley is something growing rather than dirt, and growth comes off with a treatment and a little time rather than with force. On flint, banded brick and old lime mortar a pressure lance takes the joint out along with the moss, which turns a wash into repointing nobody asked for.
Three calls come out of this village more than any others. A roof slope has gone dark green and the moss is now sitting proud of the tiles. The gutters have stopped taking water after a gale or a harvest, and there is a stain running down the wall under the joint. Or a path, a yard or a set of steps has turned slippery enough that somebody has nearly gone over on it.
We work through a property surface by surface rather than pricing a house as one lump. What is growing, what it is growing on, which elevation it is on, and whether what is underneath is sound enough to be cleaned at all. Some of it is a straightforward wash. Some of it wants treating and then leaving alone for a few weeks while it dies back. The free site visit and the free written itemised quote both come with the method set against each line, so you can see what you are actually buying.
The work
Cleaning a house with open fields on three sides
Roofs, up where there is no shelter. Clay plain tile and natural slate on the older cottages, concrete interlocking tile on the post-war houses and the bungalows, and profiled sheet on stables, barns and the larger garages. There is very little shelter up here, so a roof takes whatever the fields and the shelter belts send at it. Moss packs into the channel of the tile and into the lap where one course sits over the next, which pushes water sideways instead of down. It is a dry scrape and a brush first, then a soft wash at low pressure through a wide nozzle with a biocide behind it. Slate never sees a lance: the force gets under the lap and worries at nail heads and at the mortar bedding under the ridge.
Flint with brick bands and brick quoins is the older walling around here, and what holds it together is a soft lime mortar that was never meant to meet a lance. Newer walls are painted masonry, pebbledash and modern render, and we test the paint before anything else, because masonry paint that has gone chalky comes off in sheets under pressure and hands you a redecoration. Sound render and brickwork get a soft wash and a rinse in clean water.
Gutters here fill with a good deal more than roof moss. Hedge cuttings, chaff off the fields at harvest and leaf litter from the belts of trees all end up in them, so every outlet and downpipe is run through with water to prove it takes it and the valley is done at the same visit. The yards and drives carry chalk mud for half the year: block paving comes up with a rotary cleaner and is then re-sanded, and the path on the north side of the house is a safety job rather than a cosmetic one.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One team, one person to ring, and an itemised quote: the method for each surface, protection, access, and where the water and residue go, each on its own line. Washing a surface is maintenance and there is nothing to apply for. The village sits inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape and there are seven listed entries in and around it, the parish church among them, and that matters for what you do after a clean rather than for the clean itself. Painting a wall that was never painted, or rendering over brick and flint, is a change of appearance, and the Planning Portal sets out where that needs consent. Dorset Council is the authority here and holds the records on listed building consent.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
Area does not decide the price, because the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. Up here the set up does: a bungalow on the village street is reach pole work off the ground, a farmhouse with a long flint boundary wall is a day of walling before anyone looks at a roof, and a barn conversion behind a yard means every hose run comes off the van and through a gate. work at height rules decide when a tower is involved. Ask any quote whether treatment is included or only a rinse, and whether a second visit is part of it.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form and give us the date. Sixpenny Handley is a fair drive from us, so we try to put the villages up on the Chase into the same week, and the earlier you ring the easier that is to arrange. If a sale or an inspection is fixed, we will say whether that can be done properly. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, by arrangement.
Worth knowing
Where the water and the residue end up
There is no surface water sewer worth the name in a village like this. What comes off your roof and off your walls goes into a gully, a soakaway, a ditch or straight into the ground, and on chalk it does not hang about on the way down. That is why we ask where your drains actually run before anything is mixed rather than afterwards. A biocide is only doing its job while it is on your wall.
Ours go on at the strength on the label, planting underneath is sheeted and watered down first so nothing is taken up through the leaves, and every gully and drain in the fall of the work is covered before we start. That is ordinary practice for anyone using these products, and the government's pollution prevention guidance is the plain English version of why it matters.
It changes one practical thing for you. Sheer volume of water is not the answer out here. A roof or a wall blasted with hundreds of litres puts every one of them somewhere, usually into a border, a soakaway or a yard drain that was sized for rain and nothing else. Treating a surface and letting it die back uses a fraction of that and does a better job on lichen and black spot, neither of which comes off under pressure anyway.
If you are on a septic tank, a private drainage field, or there is a pond or a stock trough downhill of the house, say so on the first visit. It decides where we work from and which way the run off is steered, and it is a great deal easier to plan around than to put right after the event.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Sixpenny Handley, Woodcutts and Pentridge on SP5, out through Cranborne, Tollard Royal and Ashmore, and Dorset Council is the planning authority for this address. 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
Sixpenny Handley questions we get asked
Are we restricted because we sit in Cranborne Chase?
The landscape designation puts scrutiny on anything visible across the wider downs, but that is about what a building looks like afterwards, not about washing it. A clean returns flint, brick or tile to its own colour, which is the opposite of a visual change. Coating a roof or painting cleaned stone is where Dorset Council would take an interest. There is no conservation area covering Sixpenny Handley itself, so a wash needs nothing.
Our walls are flint with soft mortar. What method do you use?
Low pressure and a biocide, applied and then left alone. Flint itself is hard, but the lime mortar holding it is not, and a lance will cut the joints out and drop flints within a season. We wet the wall, put the treatment on, and let the growth die and weather away over the following weeks instead of blasting it off in an afternoon. Where joints are already open we say so and price the repointing separately.
Is the treated run off a problem on chalk downland?
It is, because the ground around Sixpenny Handley drains freely and anything tipped on it is gone into the water table rather than sitting where you can deal with it. We keep treated run off away from soakaways, bare soil and any well head, take it to a foul gully where the property has one, and contain and remove it where it does not. Dorset Council are the authority out here.
You are based near Bournemouth. Do you actually come out here?
Yes, regularly. Sixpenny Handley is a little over seventeen miles from the yard, so we group it with other work up on the Chase rather than making a single trip, which means we may offer you a date instead of turning up the next morning. Thomas Hannen still drives out to look at the job and price it before anything is booked, and that visit is free whether the work goes ahead or not.
What tells me the render needs cleaning rather than repairing?
Press it with your thumb. Growth that is only on the surface leaves the render hard underneath and comes away with a treatment. If the face is soft, hollow sounding, or shedding grit into your hand, that is a failed render and washing will pull more off it. The same test works at the base of a wall, where rain splashing back off the path does most of the damage. We put which one it is in writing.
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Tell us the address and which elevation has gone green. We come out, look at it and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.