Exterior cleaning in West Lulworth
Green roofs, salt-hazed walls, blocked gutters and slippery stone paving, cleaned the way stone will stand. Free site visit, free itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Exterior cleaning in West Lulworth is mostly stone, and stone is the reason the honest answer here is chemistry, not pressure. A soft wash and a biocide take the green off limestone, slate and lime mortar without moving the surface. A lance takes the face off the stone along with the lichen, and there is no putting that back.
West Lulworth houses need a clean on the roof, the walls or the paving. A cottage roof gone dark and furred over on the shaded pitch. A front wall or a rendered elevation that looks grey and tired at the start of a season. And paving or steps that have turned green and genuinely slippery, which this close to the coast happens faster than people expect.
We survey every surface before pricing any of it, because the same building here often carries three different materials that each want a different method. Stone, lime pointing, slate and painted render get the gentle end of the range. Concrete flags, tarmac and block paving will take a machine. You get one itemised written price with a line for each surface, so you can take the roof now and leave the paving until spring if that suits you better.
The work
Cleaning within sight of the sea
Slate, stone slate and thatch each need a different approach. The older cottages carry natural slate and stone slate, the later houses clay or concrete tile. On slate the moss sits in the laps and works its way under; on stone slate it lifts the peg and the whole slab moves, so the bulk comes off dry with a scrape from the gutter line up rather than with water.
The slope is then soft washed at low pressure and left with a biocide on it to kill the spores in the laps. Ridge mortar on the old roofs in West Lulworth is lime and already tired, which is why nobody should point a jet wash at one. There is thatch in the village and it is not a cleaning job: moss on a thatch is a sign about the coat and the ridge, and that is a thatcher's work, not ours. What we can do is the wall underneath it.
Salt, and what it does here. At about 700 metres from the coast the walls never get long enough between showers to dry, so growth comes back faster and the biocide matters more than the wash. Limestone rubble, lime pointing and limewashed or painted render make up most of what you see from the lane, and all of it is soft: force strips paint in bands and washes mortar out of an open joint. Low pressure nozzle, a treatment allowed to dwell, then a rinse. Salt works on metal fixings from the edges inwards too, so while we are at the gutter we will tell you if a bracket has gone rather than leave you to find out in a gale.
The gutters in West Lulworth collect more grit and washed down moss than leaf, and clearing them is a separate job worth doing before a wall is washed. Stone flags get modest pressure and more chemistry, because black spot lichen bonds into the stone and pressure enough to shift it takes the surface with it. Block paving is re-sanded with kiln dried sand after washing or the blocks start to rock. Planting is soaked and sheeted, every gully covered, and the discharge point agreed first. Products go on at the rate on the label and only where approved for that surface, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires, and pollution prevention guidance is why nothing here goes near a stream or the beach.
How it runs
Cleaning roofs and walls near the sea
Thomas comes out, looks at what is growing on the roof, walls and paths, and works out the price in person. The quote itemises the method for each surface, access, protection of plants and windows, and where the run off goes.
Salt air, damp and shade mean moss, lichen and green algae build up quickly here. Soft stone and old render can be damaged by high pressure, so on those we use a gentle wash and a biocide, applied within the biocides regime the HSE administers. Roofs are cleared by hand and with poles, and the gutters are cleared after. The lanes are narrow and parking is scarce in summer, so at a holiday let we plan the work around the changeover. Plants and paths are protected, the run off is controlled, and the debris leaves with us. If we find a slipped slate or cracked render, we photograph it and price it separately, and you decide.
Washing is maintenance. Painting stone that has never been painted, or rendering over it, is a change. On a listed building abrasive cleaning can need listed building consent because it takes a layer off the stone. The village is in the West Lulworth Conservation Area, so before quoting we check with Dorset Council.
Cost
Moss, soft stone and access: a clean's cost
What needs cleaning. A roof covered in moss, a stone wall with lichen and a path with green algae each need a different method and a different amount of time.
The surface. Soft stone, old render and natural slate need a gentle wash with biocide. Concrete and modern block paving can take more pressure. Using the wrong method can scar a surface, and that costs more to put right than the clean ever would.
Access. A cottage on a lane with nowhere to put a van, a holiday let where the whole clean has to fit between one set of guests and the next, and a house up the hill with its own drive each come with their own access question. Poles reach a lot, some of it needs a tower, and the work at height rules decide which.
Follow-up. Biocide keeps working for weeks after it goes on, and some jobs need a second visit to clear what has died back. We tell you at the start whether yours will.
Ask other quotes: what method goes on each surface? Is a second visit included? Where does the run off go, and does it reach the drains or the garden?
If there is a date
A clean before guests, a sale or a survey
Ring us, and a missed call is returned once we are free. Cleaning is rarely an emergency, but it usually has a date: a changeover at a holiday let, a sale, a survey. Tell us the date when you ring, because this is the far end of our patch and we plan a run down here.
Where moss is blocking gutters or making a path slippery, that goes first, and the first visit clears the danger and looks at the rest. Moss lifting slates on a roof is worth dealing with before winter. Cleaning is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Salt is why the green comes back faster here
West Lulworth sits under a kilometre from open water, and salt changes the maintenance interval on every outside surface you own. Salt draws moisture out of the air and holds onto it, so a wall carrying a salt film stays damp between showers even on a bright day, and damp is the only thing moss, algae and lichen are really asking for.
That is why a rendered elevation here goes green noticeably sooner than the same elevation ten miles inland, and why the seaward side of your house is always further gone than the side facing the village. It also puts a haze on paintwork and glass that plain water will not shift, because it is not dirt sitting on top, it is salt bound into the surface.
The advice that follows saves real money. First, rinse the salt off before any treatment goes on: we wash a seaward elevation down with clean water first, because a biocide applied over a salt film does not get to the surface properly and you have paid for half a job. Second, treat the exposed elevation on a shorter cycle than the rest of the house rather than doing all four every time, since the sheltered walls will often go twice as long.
Third, be careful about sealing anything coastal. A sealer over a surface that still holds salt traps it underneath, and it comes back out through the finish as a white bloom that looks worse than the green did. If a drive or a patio here is going to be sealed, it wants a proper wash, a full dry spell and a still day, which around Lulworth Cove is a summer job or nothing.
Who you are dealing with
A named owner for roof and wall cleaning here
The drive from Boscombe, where we are based, is 19.4 miles. Our cleaning covers the village, Lulworth Cove and the BH20 villages along this coast, out to Winfrith Newburgh, Wool and East Lulworth, all within Dorset Council's area.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and Thomas Hannen, who owns it, prices your clean himself after looking at each surface. A verified customer on Checkatrade gave us 10 out of 10. The site visit is free, and the written quote with each item listed is free too. Before you book a visit in West Lulworth, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in West Lulworth?
Most repairs in West Lulworth 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 West Lulworth |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for West Lulworth. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: West Lulworth Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around West Lulworth. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Dorset National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in West Lulworth
Being this close to the sea, does render green up faster?
Yes, render this close to the sea greens up faster. At 0.7km from the coast the salt in the air holds moisture on a wall face between showers, so render in West Lulworth never dries out fully and growth re-establishes sooner than it would inland. That makes the biocide the important half of the job and the wash the lesser half.
On the seaward elevation we put more treatment on and expect it to need doing again sooner than on the sheltered side.
Can a stone cottage front be cleaned without opening the face?
Not with a jet lance: stone opens up if you drive water into it and then holds dirt worse than it did before. We work at low pressure with a soft brush and a biocide left to do the job, which looks like nothing is happening for the first fortnight. Most of the older fronts in West Lulworth carry lime pointing that a lance strips straight out, so the pointing gets checked before any water goes near it.
Should the seaward windows and metalwork be done at the same time?
It is worth doing together. Salt corrodes metal from the edges inwards, so on the seaward side of a West Lulworth cottage the window ironwork, the gutter brackets and the fixings in any lead give up before the covering does. Rust staining running down a wall from a bracket is the giveaway. We rinse the salt off those while the sheeting is already down, and say which brackets are past cleaning and want replacing.
Can you work between holiday let changeovers down here?
Usually, if we know the dates early enough. A lot of property in West Lulworth is let by the week, and a wash wants a dry surface and a few hours with nobody walking through it, so we use the changeover morning where we can. The treatment carries on working after we leave and stops nobody using the house. Give us the handover time at the visit and the sequence is planned around it.
The garden falls away towards the sea. Is that a problem?
It changes where we stand and where the water is caught. On a falling plot in West Lulworth everything washed off heads downhill in one direction, so the collection point goes at the bottom corner and the sheeting is laid to run into it rather than across the slope. What we lift is bagged and carried out. Nothing is allowed to run on into the coastal ground, and any gully running that way is capped for the day.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near West Lulworth
Nearby places we also cover for exterior cleaning, with straight-line distances from West Lulworth, and the other trades we offer in West Lulworth itself.
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Tell us the address and which surfaces have gone green. We come out, look at all of them and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.