Exterior cleaning in Tolpuddle
Roof moss, green render, blocked cast iron gutters and slippery paths cleaned along the village street, at a pressure old walls can take.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Nearly everything along the street in Tolpuddle is old: lime render over cob or rubble, brick and flint, clay tile, thatch, and mortar that was mixed to be softer than what it holds together. Cleaning it is a treatment and a soft wash, done in stages. There is very little here we would put a pressure washer anywhere near.
Splashback and roof moss are typical on buildings like these in Tolpuddle. The first is green low down on a wall, in a band from the ground up to about waist height, which is rain hitting the path or the road and coming straight back at the wall. The second is a roof that has gone dark on the shaded side and is dropping moss into a gutter that is already full. After those comes the path or the yard that is slippery enough to be a worry for anyone unsteady.
The right order is almost always rainwater first, wall second, and the ground last. Clearing an outlet costs little and stops the thing that is making the wall wet. The site visit is free and the written quote prices each elevation and each surface separately, so you can do the roof this year and the walls next if that suits you better, and we would rather tell you that than take the lot in one go.
The work
What a street of old buildings actually needs doing
Sacrificial coats: lime render, limewash and cob. These are meant to weather and be renewed, and they are only held on with what the wall could take. A lance goes straight through them and there is no putting that back cheaply.
So it is a treatment, low pressure through a wide nozzle, and a rinse. If the render is already blown or hollow behind, the honest advice is to get it repaired before anything is washed, because a clean will find every loose edge.
Thatch and old tile. Thatch is a thatcher's job. Where a roof is thatched we do not touch it and no treatment of ours goes near it. We sheet it if there is any chance of overspray and deal with the tiled ranges and the rainwater goods around it. On the clay plain tile and slate along the street, much of it old enough that a proportion will be cracked before we start and lichen has crusted into the surface, moss comes off dry, scraped out of the lap and off the ridge, and an approved biocide follows to kill the spore and slow the regrowth. We never jet wash old clay, because the fired face is the waterproof part of the tile and a lance takes it off.
Rainwater and paths. Cast iron half round sits low and reachable on plenty of the older buildings, and clearing it is a separate, cheap and useful job on a building like this. Where a range has no gutter at all, and some do not, rain lands on the path and comes back up the wall, and no amount of cleaning fixes that. Sorting the ground or adding a rainwater goods run is the real answer, and we will say so. On the brick paths and stone flags, where black spot and algae make the surface slick underfoot, we start at the doorway, because that is where somebody slips, and any brick paving jointed in sand is re-sanded once it has dried.
How it runs
Cleaning old brick, stone and render without damage
Thomas comes out to look at each surface before pricing, because old brick, stone, flint and lime render need a gentler method than modern walls. The written quote is itemised by surface: the method, protection, access, and where the water and residue go. One quote covers the whole job.
Run off into a stream or ditch in the valley is a pollution question, so we contain the water and follow pollution prevention guidance. Any biocide used is one the HSE allows under the biocides regime. Plants and windows are covered, and the site is left clean, with the path and drive rinsed down before we pack up.
We check the address with Dorset Council before quoting, because the parish carries many listed entries, Martyrs' Cottage and the former Methodist chapel near it among them, and the village lies in the Tolpuddle Conservation Area. A gentle wash needs no consent, though abrasive cleaning of a listed building can. It can change what we would recommend doing next, such as repointing or limewashing, and it is better to know that before you have a price.
Cost
What decides the cost of an exterior clean
The same area can take twenty minutes or two hours, depending on what is on it and what it is made of.
The surface. Soft old brick and lime render cannot take a high pressure washer, which would blast the face off. A low pressure wash and a biocide take longer but leave the wall intact.
What is growing. Light green algae washes off. Thick moss, lichen and black staining need treatment, time to work, and a second visit.
Getting to it. A cottage wall straight onto the pavement, a rendered house behind a garden wall and a farm building at the edge of Tolpuddle are three different setups. Poles reach most walls, some need a tower, and the work at height rules decide which.
The water. Containing run off near a stream takes more work than letting it drain to a gully.
Older fabric. Flint, soft brick and limewashed walls need the gentlest method that works, and that is slower than the quickest one that would do damage.
When you compare quotes, ask what method goes on each surface, whether a biocide treatment is included, and where the run off will end up.
If there is a date
A clean before a viewing or a visit
Cleaning is seldom an emergency, but it often has a deadline: photographs for a sale, a letting inspection, or a scaffold about to come down. Tolpuddle is about twenty miles out, so we plan one visit to look and one to do the work, and a couple of weeks' notice before a sale or survey makes that easy.
Lichen on old stone may need a treatment left to work for a while, so earlier helps. Give us the date when you call. Cleaning is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If nobody answers, a call back follows as soon as we can manage.
Worth knowing
Cleaning is maintenance. Changing how it looks is not.
Tolpuddle has a conservation area over the village and more than two dozen listed entries in and around it, which is a great deal for a place this size. None of that stops you having a wall washed, a roof cleared of moss or a gutter emptied.
A gentle wash is maintenance, but abrasive or aggressive cleaning of a listed building can need listed building consent, so check with Dorset Council first. The other place it bites is the step after the clean, and that is where people get caught out.
Painting a wall that has never been painted, spraying a coating onto an old tiled roof, replacing a lime render with a cement one, or sealing an old stone path all change the appearance of the building, and on a listed building or inside a conservation area that can need listed building consent even when the work itself looks small.
So there is one thing worth doing before you accept any quote in this village: have the clean and anything that follows it priced as separate lines, so you can say yes to one and think about the other. A firm that will only give you a single figure for cleaning and coating is asking you to commit to the part that needs checking in order to get the part that does not.
The other reason to keep them apart is that on old fabric the reversible choice is nearly always the better one anyway. A wall that has been washed and treated can be washed and treated again in five years. A wall that has been sealed, painted or rendered in cement has been changed, usually in a way that traps damp in a building designed to let it out, and getting back from there is a far bigger job than the one you started with.
Who you are dealing with
Who cleans your walls and paths
We cover Tolpuddle, Affpuddle and the DT2 villages along the Piddle, across to Puddletown, Milborne St Andrew, Bere Regis and Dorchester. Tolpuddle itself is about twenty miles from where we are based in Boscombe, under Dorset Council.
Registered in England and Wales, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd has the company number 15471719. The business is owned by Thomas Hannen, who looks at your walls and prices the clean himself. You can see a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. It costs nothing to have him look, and the written quote, itemised, is free. Before you book a visit in Tolpuddle, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Tolpuddle?
Most repairs in Tolpuddle 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 Tolpuddle |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Tolpuddle. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Tolpuddle Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Tolpuddle. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Tolpuddle. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in Tolpuddle
Which parts of the village need consent before cleaning?
None of it for a straight wash. The Tolpuddle Conservation Area controls appearance, and cleaning does not change appearance, it uncovers it. The listed entries here, more than two dozen of them, are a different matter, and they take in the Martyrs' Cottages and the former Methodist chapel to the east of them, where the fabric is old enough that the method needs agreeing with Dorset Council beforehand. We check an address against the list at quoting stage, not afterwards.
What causes the dark band along the base of the wall?
Rain hitting the path and bouncing back up. The bottom course gets wetted twice, once falling and once splashing, and on the older buildings in Tolpuddle that band is also where lime render runs thinnest and softest. Washing it hard takes the render away with the growth. We treat it, drop the pressure to almost nothing, and where the render has already blown we say so and leave it, because a wash would finish it off.
Does anything limit which treatment you can use here?
The drainage does. Tolpuddle sits in the Poole Harbour catchment and the ground here sheds water quickly, so nothing treated goes towards a ditch, a field drain or an open watercourse. We bund and collect, use a foul gully where the property has one, and carry the rest away. The nutrient rules people mention only bite on schemes adding overnight accommodation, so they have no bearing on a house being cleaned.
What would you not clean on a building of this age?
Exposed timber, lime render that has already blown, and anything with an open joint water can get behind. On the older buildings through Tolpuddle those three come up constantly, and a contractor who cleans them regardless leaves you with a repair instead of a clean wall. We list what is being treated and what is being left, with the reason, on the written quote, so nobody finds out afterwards.
The back wall is green but not the front. Why?
Usually because the back is where the trees are. In Tolpuddle the rear elevations tend to look onto gardens and a tree line, so they sit in shade and stay damp while the front dries in the sun. A soft wash and a biocide left to work clears the green without harming lime render. If the gutter on that side is overflowing too, get it cleared first or the wall greens again down the same line.
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Exterior cleaning near Tolpuddle
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Get a written price for your Tolpuddle clean
Send the postcode and tell us what needs doing. We come out, look at the roof, the walls, the rainwater goods and the paths, and put the price in writing.