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.
Last updated
Exterior cleaning in Sixpenny Handley is mostly dealing with something growing, not dirt, and growth comes off with a soft wash treatment and a little time, not 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.
Around Sixpenny Handley the roof, the gutters and the paths and yards tend to suffer first. 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 Sixpenny Handley, 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 hedge cuttings, harvest chaff and leaf as well as roof moss, so the Handley gutters want emptying before any wall below them is washed. 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, not a cosmetic one.
How it runs
Washing roofs, walls and paving: how a clean runs
Before any water goes on, Thomas Hannen travels up from Boscombe and prices the clean himself. He checks each surface, whether it is clay tile, flint, brick, render or paving, and picks the method that will lift the dirt without damaging it. Soft old brick and lime pointing need a gentle wash and a biocide, not a high-pressure jet.
The quote is written and itemised by surface: the method, protection for plants and windows, access, and where the water and residue go. Work follows the quote from start to finish. Drains and borders are protected, and debris is swept up and taken away. If the clean shows up something that could not be seen before, like cracked tiles or loose pointing, you get a photo and a price before we do anything about it.
Washing a surface is maintenance and there is nothing to apply for. Sixpenny Handley lies inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape and has a handful of listed buildings, the church among them, which matters for what you do after a clean, not the clean itself. Painting a wall that has never been painted, or rendering over brick and flint, alters the look of the house, and the Planning Portal sets out when that needs consent. Dorset Council holds the records on listed building consent.
Cost
Surface, method and set-up: pricing a clean up here
Area does not set the price of a clean. The same square metre can take minutes or an hour, depending on what is on it and what it is made of.
Setting up. A bungalow on the village street can be washed with a reach pole from the ground. A long flint boundary wall is a day's work before a roof is touched. A barn conversion behind a yard means hoses run from the van through a gate. The work at height rules decide when a tower is needed.
The surface. Hard paving can take more pressure. Old clay tiles, flint and soft brick need a low-pressure wash and a biocide, which takes longer to work.
What is on it. Light green algae washes off. Thick moss on a north-facing roof or wall has to be scraped by hand first, and lichen needs a treatment left to work over weeks.
Aftercare. Some jobs need a second visit to rinse off dead growth or reapply a treatment.
Ask any other quote whether a biocide treatment is included or only a rinse, what pressure they use on old surfaces, and whether a follow-up visit is part of the price.
If there is a date
A sale, a viewing or a date you must hit
Exterior cleaning is rarely an emergency, but a house sale, a viewing, a lettings check or a family event gives you a date. Ring and tell us the day. Sixpenny Handley is a fair drive from Boscombe, so we group work on the Chase together, and the earlier you call the easier that is.
We will tell you honestly whether it can be done properly by your date, because a rushed clean on old flint or tile can do damage. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If nobody answers when you ring, we call you back.
Worth knowing
Where the water and the residue end up
Sixpenny Handley has no surface water sewer worth the name. 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. 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 in Sixpenny Handley. 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
Exterior cleaning for Handley and Woodcutts
We cover roofs, walls and paving in Sixpenny Handley, Woodcutts and Pentridge, and out through Cranborne and Ashmore, from our base in Boscombe 17.1 miles away. Dorset Council is the planning authority.
Thomas Hannen comes out to see the job and set the price himself; the business is his, trading as Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. One verified customer rated the work 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written itemised quote are both free. Before you book a visit in Sixpenny Handley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Sixpenny Handley?
Most repairs in Sixpenny Handley 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 Sixpenny Handley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Sixpenny Handley. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Sixpenny Handley, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Sixpenny Handley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Sixpenny Handley
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. Sixpenny Handley is a little over seventeen miles from our base in Boscombe, so we group it with other work up on the Chase and agree a date with you. 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.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near Sixpenny Handley
Nearby places we also cover for exterior cleaning, with straight-line distances from Sixpenny Handley, and the other trades we offer in Sixpenny Handley itself.
Exterior cleaning nearby
Our other trades in Sixpenny Handley
Exterior cleaning guides
Soft washing vs pressure washing: safe for a roof? How to clean a patio without damaging it Moss on a roof: does it need removing?Everything we do in Verwood Exterior cleaning, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a price for cleaning in Sixpenny Handley
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.