Exterior cleaning in Stourpaine
Roofs, walls, gutters and paving cleaned at a pressure that soft old fabric can actually survive.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In a village built out of soft materials, the right pressure is nearly always less than people expect. Cob, lime render, limewash, flint and old brick all give way before the dirt does, so the work in Stourpaine is a treatment and a low pressure wash rather than a lance. Cleaning itself needs no permission, conservation area or not.
The calls come in for much the same reasons every year. A roof slope under the hill has gone dark with moss and it is now filling the gutter. A rendered or limewashed wall on the shaded side has greened over and looks neglected when it is not. A path, a yard or a set of steps has turned slippery. Or the gutters have stopped taking water and there is a stain on the wall below.
We go through a property surface by surface before pricing anything, because in this village two walls on the same house are often two different materials wanting two different methods. Some of it washes off in an hour. Some of it wants a biocide and then several weeks of being left alone. The site visit and the written itemised quote are free, and the method goes on the quote against each line so you can see exactly what you are buying.
The work
Working on soft old fabric under the hill
WORK Cob, lime render and limewash. There is a good deal of soft walling in this village, and it is the fabric that gets ruined most often by a well meant clean. Cob wants to stay dry and lime render wants to breathe, so soaking either of them is doing damage you will not see for a year. It is a light treatment, a soft wash through a wide nozzle at the gentlest setting that will shift it, and a test panel somewhere out of the way first. Limewash comes off under almost any pressure, so if the wall is limewashed we will tell you honestly that the answer is a fresh coat rather than a clean. Thatch we do not touch. Nothing gets washed, sprayed or treated on a thatched roof, and where a neighbour has thatch we keep the work downwind of it and do not spray at all on a breezy day. On tile and slate we stay off the lance entirely, because the force gets under the lap, worries at nail heads and washes out the mortar bedding under the ridge. Moss comes off dry, scraped and brushed down the slope, and an approved biocide follows, with the lichen on the ridge tiles left to die back rather than picked at. Flint with brick banding, brick garden and boundary walls with copings, and old lime joints all behave the same way: pressure finds the joint and empties it without anybody noticing at the time. The trees along the valley bottom and up the lanes drop a heavy leaf fall, so gutters, outlets and the valley between two pitches are cleared and flushed at the same visit, the planting sheeted and the gully drain covered first, which matters more here because an overflow lands on a soft wall underneath. Paths, yards and drives carry chalk mud through the wet months with black spot under it, block paving is re-sanded once it has dried, and the steps on the shaded side are the safety job we would put before the roof.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
RUNS One team, one person to ring, and a written quote itemised by surface, with protection, access and run off on their own lines, since where the run off ends up on chalk is a pollution question. Washing a surface is maintenance and there is nothing to apply for anywhere in the village. What is controlled here is appearance: the older part of Stourpaine is a conservation area and there are twenty-six listed entries in and around the parish, the church of St Nicholas among them. Painting a wall that was never painted, rendering over brick, or changing a covering is a change of appearance rather than maintenance, and the Planning Portal sets out where that needs consent. Dorset Council is the authority and holds the records on listed building consent.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
Nothing here is priced by area, because the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. Getting to it is the variable: a cottage on the village street with nowhere to park means the van sits where it can and the hose runs a long way, a house up the lane on the side of the hill is nearly all reach pole work off firm ground, and a farm building with a yard on two sides is half a day in setting up. work at height rules decide when a tower is involved. Soft old fabric adds time, because the method is slow by choice.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. Stourpaine is the far end of our patch, so we group the villages this side of Blandford into the same week, and a couple of weeks of notice makes a firm date much easier to hold. Tell us what the date is for and we will say honestly whether it can be done properly by then. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, by arrangement.
Worth knowing
What a conservation area does and does not stop
The old part of the village is a conservation area, which is worth understanding properly because most people either worry about it too much or not at all. It does not stop you cleaning anything. Washing moss off a roof, clearing a gutter or taking the green off a path is maintenance and needs no consent whatsoever. What a conservation area controls is how the place looks, so it bites on the decision people usually make after a clean rather than on the clean itself.
Painting a wall that has never been painted, rendering over brick or flint, swapping a covering for something that reads differently from the street, or laying a shiny new surface across a frontage are all changes of appearance, and those are the ones to check with the council before you commit rather than after somebody has been paid.
There is a practical consequence that catches people out. A clean is the most honest survey your house will ever get. Washing a wall down shows you the cracked render, the joint that has gone, the coping that has slipped and the flashing that has lifted, all of which were hidden under the green. On an ordinary house you get those fixed the following week.
Here, a like for like repair can mean lime mortar matched to what is already there, or a tile sourced to match, and that takes time to organise and wants decent weather to carry out. So book the clean early in the season rather than late. Finding the problem in April leaves you the whole summer to put it right. Finding it in October means it sits open all winter on a wall that does not enjoy being wet.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Stourpaine, Durweston and Shillingstone on DT11, down into Blandford and out through Iwerne Minster and the Tarrants, 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
Stourpaine questions we get asked
Does the Stourpaine Conservation Area cover washing the walls?
No, cleaning is maintenance and needs no consent for it. The conservation area controls how a building looks, so it catches a change of covering, a new render finish, or a coating laid over cleaned stone, and none of that is what a wash does. The village also holds 26 listed entries, the Church of St Nicholas and Durweston Bridge among them, and on those Dorset Council want the method known before water touches the fabric.
Is it worth cleaning the roof or just the gutters?
Nine times out of ten, the gutters. Stourpaine has woodland and open ground round it, so the run fills with leaf litter and that is what actually does damage, backing water up behind the fascia and rotting the timber out. Moss on a tile is mostly cosmetic until it is thick enough to dam the courses. We will say on the visit if the roof does not need doing this year, and price the gutter run alone.
Will the Dorset landscape designation stop us coating the roof?
It makes it a poor idea rather than an offence in itself. Anything visible in this landscape gets design scrutiny, and a sealed roof reads as a flat plastic colour from the valley in a way that cleaned clay or slate never does. Inside the Stourpaine Conservation Area it would also count as a change of appearance rather than upkeep. We clean roofs and we do not coat them, so it is not something we would price.
Who comes out to price it, and is the visit free?
Thomas Hannen owns the firm and does the pricing himself, so the man who looks at your house is the one answerable for the job. He walks the outside, gets a ladder on the gutter line, and writes an itemised quote broken down by elevation and by surface, so you can take out the drive or the outbuilding if you want to. The visit and the written quote are free. VAT is charged on the work.
The verge and the ridge look mossy from the road. What now?
That is worth checking before anything gets wet. A ridge sitting proud of its bedding, or a gable verge with the mortar gone from it, will let water inside the moment a wash pushes it that way. We get a ladder on it and look at the mortar work first. Where it holds, the roof is treated and left to weather clean over the following weeks. Where it does not, that repair goes on ahead of any cleaning.
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Tell us the address and what has gone green, and say if there is thatch on or near the building. We come out, look at it and put an itemised price in writing, both free.