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. The aspect here is north west, and a slope that gets no direct sun 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 people ring about, 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. In the terraces the gutter runs the length of the row and the downpipes are shared, so a blockage at one outlet floods somebody else's wall, while out on the estates it is a long low run over a garage or a conservatory. Either way clearing is by hand and by vacuum, each downpipe is flushed, and valley gutters are checked because they silt up quietly and overflow inward.

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.

No rate per square metre, because the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. Access decides most of it: a town terrace where every hose and machine goes down a shared passage or through the house, a seventies semi with a drive you can park the van on, and a bungalow whose eaves you can reach off a pole are three different days. Poles do a lot, some of it wants a tower, and work at height rules decide which. Ask each quote what method goes on each surface, whether a second visit is included, and where the run off ends up.

We cover Wareham and the BH20 villages, out to Sandford, Stoborough, Ridge and Holton Heath, and Dorset Council is the planning and building control 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.