Exterior cleaning in Southbourne

Render and pebbledash get the same gentle method. A lot of Southbourne's inter-war houses and bungalows carry pebbledash or a painted render. Both are soft washed: a biocide goes on at low pressure, is given time to kill the algae and lichen down to the spores, and is then rinsed off.

Pressure on pebbledash takes the loose stones with the growth, and on painted render it takes the paint. We walk the wall with you first and mark any hollow or bald patches, because a clean shows up what was hiding under the green. An ordinary house is usually a day.

Edwardian brick. The older houses nearer the Grove have red brick fronts, soft brick in lime mortar. They take a gentle wash, not a lance held close. We test a patch out of sight and keep back, so the face of the brick and the mortar stay where they are.

Drives and patios. Southbourne has a lot of detached houses and bungalows with their own drive, so block paving sits alongside render as a main surface here. It is cleaned under controlled pressure with a rotary surface cleaner so the water does not blast the joints out, treated for black spot and weed, then re-sanded, because the wash takes the jointing sand out. Slabs and porcelain are similar. We will give you a straight answer about a sealer: on block paving it can help, on an old slab patio it can lock damp in. Where the paving itself has sunk, that is a job for driveways in Southbourne, not a clean.

Cliff-top flats. A lot of the homes in Southbourne are flats, and many of the blocks sit along or near the Overcliff. The job there is the walls, the balconies, the glass balustrades, the communal paths and the car park, priced elevation by elevation for the agent. Salt leaves a film on glass that will not wipe off, so glass gets purified water instead of a mains rinse.

Roofs and gutters. Moss on a roof is scraped out of the laps and off the ridge by hand and the slope treated, never pressure washed, as set out on the roof cleaning page. Gutters, outlets and downpipes are cleared as gutter cleaning in Southbourne, and if they are running over we clear them first, or the render below is stained again by the next storm.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: the method for each surface, protection, access, and where the water and residue go on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Cleaning needs no permission. Part of Southbourne Grove is a conservation area, and painting or coating a front there after it is cleaned is a different question from washing it; the council keeps the list. Biocides are used to the label under the HSE biocide rules.

Ring rather than use the form. This is not emergency work, but it is often work with a date on it: a property going on the market, a letting inspection, a visit, or scaffolding coming down.

Tell us the date when you ring and we will tell you honestly whether it can be done properly by then, rather than book it and rush it. If a path or the steps to your door have gone green and slippery, scrub or grit them for now and we will treat them properly when we come. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Southbourne's houses run right up to the cliff top, and the elevation that faces the water takes salt and wind-driven rain off the bay every winter. Salt holds a trace of moisture on the face of render between showers, so that wall stays damp when the others have dried, and algae only needs a damp surface.

That is why a seaward wall can turn green inside a couple of years while the back of the same house stays clean. Pressure washing it harder does not help. The biocide is what matters there, given long enough to work, and on that side we leave it longer and check it again rather than reach for more pressure.

The other thing the cliff top changes is where the water goes. Run-off carrying cleaning product must not go into a surface water drain, and near the Overcliff those drains run towards the sea, which is why the pollution prevention guidance matters more here than inland. On a drive or a block car park the gullies are covered, the wash water is collected where it has to be, and the moss and silt are bagged and taken away. It adds a little time, and it is on the quote as a line of its own.

Nearby places we also cover for exterior cleaning, with straight-line distances from Southbourne, and the other trades we offer in Southbourne itself.

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