Exterior cleaning in Spetisbury
Roofs, render, gutters, walls and paving cleaned at the pressure each surface can actually take, front and back priced separately.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Spetisbury throws up two different cleaning problems and they need two different answers. Green on the roof, the paving and the shaded walls is living growth and wants a biocide and time. The grey film on the road frontage is traffic dirt, and that wants a detergent and a proper rinse. Treating one as though it were the other is why people end up disappointed.
Most calls here start with something people have watched get slowly worse. The roof has gone dark on the side away from the sun. The gutter on the road side is running over and streaking the wall under it. The white paintwork and the render facing the road have gone a flat grey that will not wash off with a hose. Or the path down the garden has turned genuinely slippery through winter.
We look at each surface on its own before quoting anything. What is on it, what it is made of, which way it faces, and whether the paint, the render or the mortar underneath will stand being cleaned at all. Some of it comes off in an hour. Some of it wants treating and then leaving to die back. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free, and the method goes on the quote next to each line so you can compare it with anyone else's properly.
The work
The surfaces we get called to along the village
WORK The road frontage collects something different. The village strings along the main road, and everything facing it collects what the traffic leaves: film, brake and tyre dust and winter grit spray, which put a grey cast on render, on painted masonry and on white fascia and downpipes that no amount of biocide will shift, because none of it is alive. That is a detergent, a soft wash and a clean water rinse. It also means the front of a house and the back of the same house are two separate lines on the quote, and often two different intervals. A fifth of the housing predates the First World War and half of it went up between the war and the early eighties, so along the street it is clay plain tile and slate over lime pointed brick and flint, and behind it concrete interlocking tile over modern render. Old walls are pointed softer than the material they hold together, so pressure finds the joint first and quietly strips it. Roofs are a dry scrape and a brush with the moss lifted out of the lap and off the ridge, then a low pressure soft wash through a wide nozzle with an approved biocide behind it to kill the spore and slow the regrowth, and slate and old plain tile never see a lance. There are mature trees along the river and all down the old railway line behind the village, so gutters here fill with leaf litter as well as roof moss. Clearing is by hand or by vacuum, every outlet and downpipe is flushed through to prove it takes it, with the planting below sheeted and the gully covered first, and the valley between two pitches is done at the same visit because a blocked valley does far more damage than a blocked gutter. Block paved drives are the one surface where a pressure wash earns its keep and they are re-sanded afterwards, and the path on the shaded side is the one we would do before the roof.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
RUNS One team from first visit to last and an itemised quote: the method for each surface, protection, access and where the water goes, on separate lines, since run off from a frontage this close to the river is a pollution question. Cleaning is maintenance and there is nothing to apply for. There are eighteen listed entries in and around the parish, so it is worth knowing whether yours is one of them before anybody starts changing how the building looks. Painting a wall that was never painted, or rendering over brick and flint, is a change of appearance rather than maintenance, and the Planning Portal sets out when that needs consent. Dorset Council is the authority for this address and holds the records on listed building consent.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
Two quotes for the same job are usually two different jobs, which is why ours is itemised rather than a single figure. Position along the street changes it most: a cottage hard on the main road means working off the frontage with the hose crossing a pavement, a house set well back is easier but a long way from the nearest tap, and a bungalow with a conservatory gets the glass, the gutters and the roof off one set up. work at height rules decide where a tower comes into it, and how long the growth has been left decides whether one visit will do.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. Spetisbury is a straight run up the road for us, so a firm date is usually easy to hold. If the house is going on the market, the roadside elevation is the one worth booking early, since that is the one in the photographs and the one carrying the traffic film. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, by arrangement.
Worth knowing
A valley floor keeps everything wet for longer
The village sits on the floor of the river valley with the ground rising away on both sides, and that does two things to the outside of your house. It holds damp air in overnight, so surfaces here are still wet in the morning long after a house on higher ground has dried out. And it takes the low winter sun off the shaded elevations altogether for weeks at a time, which is exactly when a wall most needs a few hours of drying.
Algae, moss and lichen do not need feeding. They need a surface that stays damp, and the valley provides one for most of the winter. Nothing has failed and nothing is wrong with your render. The conditions here are simply better for the thing you are trying to get rid of than they are half a mile up the hill.
Two things follow that are worth acting on. First, get the timing right rather than the frequency. Gutters here want doing after the leaf fall has finished rather than in September, because the trees along the river and the old railway drop over several weeks and a clear in the middle of that is a clear you pay for twice. Second, do not judge a treatment by how the shaded side looks.
A biocide on a north facing wall in this village is doing well to hold as long as the same product on the sunny front, and anyone quoting you the same interval for both has not looked at the house. We will tell you which elevation is the short one, and price the two separately so you can do the difficult side more often and leave the rest alone.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Spetisbury and Charlton Marshall on DT11, up through Blandford and Bryanston and down the valley towards Wimborne, 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
Spetisbury questions we get asked
Flats are rare here. Does that speed anything up?
It does. Flats are 1.6% of Spetisbury, so almost everybody who calls owns the whole building and can instruct the work without asking a freeholder or waiting on a managing agent. That means we can price it and book it in one go. It also means the entire outside is yours to think about at once, so it is usually worth pricing the roof, the gutters and the drive together rather than coming back three separate times.
Our roof is under trees. How often will it need doing?
More often than an open one, and the gutters more often than the roof. Woodland close to Spetisbury drops leaf and twig litter into the valleys and the gutter run every autumn, and that mulch is what feeds moss on the tile edge. Clearing the gutters yearly usually keeps the roof itself on a much longer cycle. We would rather sell you an annual gutter clear than a roof wash you did not need.
Can the barn and the outbuildings be done at the same time?
Yes, and they are usually in worse order than the house. Spetisbury has 18 listed entries and several are barns and outbuilding ranges, so if yours is one of them the method has to be agreed with Dorset Council before anything touches it. On an unlisted barn we still keep pressure off old roofing sheets and rotten bargeboards, and price the roof, the walls and the yard as separate lines you can drop.
The pointing looks soft on the older half of the house. What then?
Then that half does not get washed at pressure. 20.1% of Spetisbury predates 1919, so plenty of buildings here have older brick with lime joints on one part and harder later work on another, and the two need different handling on the same elevation. We test a small area low down where it will not show. Where a joint is already open, the wall wants repointing before it wants cleaning, and we put that in writing.
What time of year suits a drive and patio clean best?
Late spring through to early autumn, because the surface has to dry before joints are re-sanded and the freely draining ground at Spetisbury does the rest in a dry week. We keep off frost, which lifts wet jointing sand back out of the gaps, and we avoid the fortnight when the trees are actually dropping, because you will be sweeping it again by morning. Walls can be treated in almost any month that is not freezing.
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Tell us the address and which side of the house is the problem. We come out, look at it and put an itemised price in writing. Neither the visit nor the quote costs anything.