Exterior cleaning in Wareham

The old streets, and the estates. Inside the walls the roofs run in continuous terraced slopes, plain clay tile and pantile mostly, with Purbeck stone slate on the oldest of them, and one slope often covers three or four houses, which is why a terrace can look half cleaned from the pavement.

Moss beds into the laps, holds water and lifts the tail of the tile, and on stone slate it gets under the peg and does real damage. That work is scraped by hand off ladders and towers from the front and the back yard. Nobody should be putting a lance on stone slate. Just over half the town was built between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and those roofs are concrete interlocking tile: porous, so it holds moss better than anything else here, but tough enough for a straightforward scrape, wash and treatment.

The slope that never dries. Whichever slope faces roughly north gets little direct sun and stays damp most of the year, so moss and algae establish far faster than on the open side of the same roof. That is usually the elevation that looks worst, and the one to treat rather than scrub, because growth is back within a season if the spores are only rinsed off.

Painted brick and render fronts sit straight on the pavement here, so half of that job is protecting people and parked cars while it is done. Low pressure nozzle, the treatment left to dwell, then a soft rinse. Force would strip paint off a rendered front in visible bands and pull the mortar out of a soft old brick joint, and on a house joined to two others the damage would be somebody else's as well as yours. Much of the town centre lies in the Wareham Conservation Area, so a wash is fine, but a new paint colour or a coating on those fronts is a question for Dorset Council first. In the terraces the gutter runs the length of the row and the downpipes are shared, so clearing it is worth sorting with the neighbours before the fronts are washed.

Block paving on the estate drives, brick paviours and old flags in the town, and slabbed back yards behind the terraces. Block paving is washed with a rotary head at a controlled setting and re-sanded with kiln dried sand, which is not optional: joints left empty let the blocks rock. Old flags and stone get less pressure, and black spot lichen on them will not shift in a single visit. Beds are sheeted, every gully covered, and the discharge point agreed first. Products go on at the rate printed on the label and only on surfaces they are approved for, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires, and pollution prevention guidance is why nothing runs to a ditch or a watercourse. Wareham sits between two rivers, in flood zones 2 and 3 with the Piddle a little over 150 metres away, and that matters more here than in most places we work.

Exterior cleaning in Wareham has no rate per square metre, because the same area can take twenty minutes or most of a morning.

Getting to it. A town terrace where every hose goes through a shared passage or the house, a semi with a drive for the van, and a bungalow whose eaves you can reach off a pole each come with their own access question. Poles do a lot, some of it needs a tower, and the work at height rules decide which.

The surface. Old soft brick in the historic centre cannot take a pressure washer, so it gets a gentle wash or a poultice, which is slower. Render on the estate houses usually wants a soft wash with a biocide that is left to work. Concrete roof tiles covered in moss are scraped and treated, not blasted, or the surface wears off.

What is on it. Green algae on a north face shifts easily. Black lichen and years of moss need a biocide and time, sometimes a second visit.

The water. Collecting or diverting run off away from drains near the river takes extra set up.

Ask each quote what method goes on each surface, whether a second treatment is included, and where the run off ends up.

We clean houses in Wareham and the BH20 villages, out to Sandford, Stoborough, Ridge and Holton Heath, 12.5 miles from our base in Boscombe. Dorset Council is the planning and building control authority for this address.

The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. It is owned by Thomas Hannen, who looks at each surface himself and sets the price. A verified Checkatrade customer rated us 10 out of 10. You are not charged for the visit, and the itemised quote comes in writing at no cost. Before you book a visit in Wareham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wareham 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.