Exterior cleaning in Tarrant Monkton
Roof moss, green render, blocked gutters and slippery paths cleaned in the Tarrant valley, at the pressure the building can take.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Almost everything we clean in Tarrant Monkton is old fabric, so the honest answer here is less pressure rather than more. Flint set in lime mortar, render over cob and old clay tile all come up well with a soft wash and a biocide left to do the slow work. The lance that cleans a modern drive would take the face off any of them.
Three things bring people in the village to the phone. A roof slope that has gone dark green and is shedding moss into the gutter below it, usually the slope that never gets the sun. A wall that has greened from the ground upwards rather than from the top down, which is what happens where the ground stays wet and the rain comes back off it. And a path or a threshold that has turned slippery over the winter and is now the thing somebody is going to fall on.
You rarely need all three doing at once, and we would rather say which one is costing you something and which one can wait. Gutters usually come first, because a blocked outlet is what puts the water on the wall in the first place. The site visit is free, the written quote is itemised so each surface is priced on its own, and if the answer is that the paving will keep for another two winters, that is what you will be told.
The work
Flint, clay tile and the bottom two feet of the wall
Flint and brick, and soft lime mortar. Banded flint and brick is the wall you meet all through the chalk villages, and the mortar holding the flints is soft by design. It is soft wash work: a treatment, low pressure through a wide nozzle, then a rinse. Force does not clean that kind of masonry, it empties the joints, and re-pointing a flint elevation costs many times what the clean did. If the joints are already open we say so and stop, because washing an open wall pushes water inside it.
Thatch, and what we will not do to it. Where a roof is thatched, and some in this valley are, we do not clean it. Moss on a thatch and a green ridge are a thatcher's job, not ours, and no treatment of ours goes anywhere near it. What we do around a thatched range is clear the rainwater goods on the tiled parts, sheet the thatch where there is any risk of overspray, and keep water off the wall below. On clay plain tile and the later concrete interlocking, moss comes off dry, brushed down the slope so nothing is driven up under the laps, and a biocide follows.
Green low down on a wall rather than up at the eaves is the tell that the wall is taking water from the ground or from splashback off the path. Cleaning it makes it look right for a season. Clearing the gutter above it and getting the ground to drain away from the foot of the wall is what keeps it right, and we will say which of the two you actually need. The blockage is nearly always at the outlet where the downpipe starts, and on a low cottage much of that is reachable on a pole. Paths and thresholds come first, because that is where somebody slips.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
One team, one person to ring, and the price written down and itemised: method by surface, protection, access, and where the water and residue go. Washing a building needs nobody's permission. What you do to it afterwards can. Tarrant Monkton sits in the Tarrant Valley conservation area and there are twenty seven listed entries in and around the village, the church of All Saints among them, so painting, coating or re-rendering is a change of appearance rather than maintenance. The council's page on listed building consent sets out where that line falls, Dorset Council is the authority, and we check the address before quoting rather than after.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre, because the growth and not the area decides the hours. Here it is what stands between the van and the wall: a thatched cottage on the lane, a flint and brick house set back behind a garden wall, and a newer house up the hill with room to park are three different jobs before the kit comes off it. work at height rules decide when a tower is needed. Ask any quote what method each surface gets, since old flint and a modern render should not be getting the same one.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. We are fourteen miles up the valley, so a Tarrant Monkton job is planned as one visit to look and one to do it, and the more notice you give us the better that plan is. If the date is a sale or a survey, say so and we will tell you whether it holds. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, by arrangement.
Worth knowing
The Tarrant runs past the gardens, and that sets the method
The village sits on the floor of its own valley with the stream a few yards from the back of some of the gardens, on a wet loam over chalk where the water table is never far down. That changes one thing more than anything else about a clean here: where the water and the residue are allowed to go when we have finished. Nothing may reach the stream or a field ditch that feeds it.
So planting against the wall is wetted and sheeted before we start, every drain and gully the run off could reach is covered and checked, products are used at the rate on the label under the biocides regime the HSE administers, and what we cannot let soak away goes with us. That is what pollution prevention guidance asks for and it is not optional.
It also decides how much water we use in the first place, which is the part most people never think to ask about. On a house standing on ground this wet, the low water methods are the right ones anyway. The roof is scraped dry and treated rather than washed. Walls get a soft wash and a rinse instead of an hour of pressure.
Paving is done panel by panel with the water controlled rather than chased down the garden. Ground that is already damp at the foot of a wall does not need another few hundred litres adding to it, and a wall that has just been soaked will green again faster than one that was treated and left. If the job can wait for a drier spell, we will suggest that too.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Tarrant Monkton and the DT11 villages along the Tarrant, across to Blandford Forum, Bryanston, Stourpaine and Spetisbury. 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
Tarrant Monkton questions we get asked
What does the Tarrant Valley Conservation Area actually control?
Appearance, not upkeep. Washing the walls, the roof or the yard changes nothing about how the building looks, so it needs no consent inside the Tarrant Valley Conservation Area. Replacing a covering with a different material, or putting a coating over something that was bare, is a change and does need permission from Dorset Council. There are 27 listed entries in and around Tarrant Monkton, the Church of All Saints included, and those need the method agreed.
The yard stays wet all winter. Can it still be cleaned?
It can, but the timing decides whether it holds. The ground at Tarrant Monkton is naturally wet, so a yard or a path here does not dry between showers the way it would on the chalk above, and jointing sand laid into a damp gap will never set. We wash in a dry spell and come back to sand it, or we lift the growth, treat it and leave the joints alone. Promising it stays clean over a wet winter would not be honest.
Our valley gutter blocks every year. Is that the trees?
Almost certainly. There is heavy tree cover through the Tarrant valley, and a valley gutter is the one place on a roof where everything collects and nothing washes through. Once it silts up, water backs sideways under the tiles and shows as a damp patch on a bedroom ceiling well before anything shows outside. We clear it by hand, flush it, and look at the lining underneath while the debris is off it.
Should we paint the cleaned walls to keep them clean?
We would talk you out of it. A painted or sealed face on an old wall traps moisture that used to evaporate out through it, and across the Cranborne Chase landscape a change of finish gets looked at anyway, because everything here is visible from the ridge. A wall goes green because it stays damp, and paint does not cure damp. Clean it, keep the gutters clear so it is not being fed water, and leave it breathing.
The lane is single track. Can you get set up outside?
Yes, with a bit of planning. We work off the van, so what we need is somewhere to stand it that will not block the lane for a tractor or the post, plus a level standing for the pole. On the tighter properties in Tarrant Monkton we come in early and are off the road by mid morning. Thomas Hannen looks at the access on the pricing visit, so none of it is a surprise on the day.
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Get a written price for your Tarrant Monkton clean
Send the postcode and say what is bothering you. We come out, look at the roof, the walls, the gutters and the paths, and put the price in writing.