Exterior cleaning in West Moors
Roof moss, needle-packed gutters, green render and slippery block paving, cleaned surface by surface. Free site visit, free itemised written quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Nearly every roof in West Moors is concrete tile, and concrete grows moss better than anything else on the street. The fix is to scrape the bulk off dry, soft wash the slope at low pressure and leave a biocide on it. The good news is that on a bungalow the whole roof is one storey up, so it is one of the cheapest roofs in Dorset to keep clean.
Most people ring here for one of three reasons. The roof has gone dark green and lumps of moss are ending up on the drive. The gutters have stopped running and there is a stripe down the render where one has been going over all winter. Or the drive and the path have turned slippery, which on a bungalow matters more because it is usually the only way in.
We survey the whole outside before pricing any of it. Concrete tile, pebbledash, painted render, UPVC fascia and a block paved drive all want different handling, and on most West Moors houses you have all five within thirty feet of each other. You get one itemised written price with a separate line for the roof, the gutters, the walls and the hard surfaces, so you can do it in the order that suits your money rather than ours.
The work
Twice the roof, and nearly all of it reachable
Half the village is single storey. 50.9% of the dwellings here are bungalows, and nearly two thirds of the village went up between 1945 and 1982 with the peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so the roofs are concrete interlocking tile of much the same age all the way along, and a bungalow puts the biggest surface on the property within reach of a pole. Concrete is porous, and once moss has beaded into the laps it holds water against the tile and works under the tail. It comes off dry first, scraped from the gutter line upwards so the laps clear rather than pack, then soft washed at low pressure and treated. Concrete takes more than clay or slate would, but not a jet wash: the mortar bedding under the ridge and along the verge is the weak point and force washes it straight out.
Pine needles, not leaves. With the heath and the pines on the edge of the village, needles are the standing problem rather than leaves, and they knit into a mat that water runs straight over. On a single storey house the gutter is at ladder height, so clearing is quick, which is why we would rather see you do this yearly and the roof rarely. Each downpipe is flushed to prove it runs and the debris is bagged rather than hosed into a gully. Chalet bungalows are the awkward part: the pitch above a dormer is often shallow, so water sits on it and moss does better, and each dormer brings a small valley that collects everything the main roof sheds.
The elevations are mostly pebbledash and painted render over blockwork, with brickwork on the newer houses. Low pressure nozzle, treatment left to dwell, then a soft rinse: force strips paint from render in bands you can see from the pavement and knocks pebbles out of a dashed wall. Bungalow plots here have wide frontages, so there is more hard surface per house than almost anywhere we work. Block paving is washed with a rotary head and re-sanded with kiln dried sand, and felt garage roofs are hand work, because a lance damages a felt lap and the leak turns up three months later. Planting is sheeted, every gully covered, and products used at the rate on the label only where approved for the surface, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers expects, with pollution prevention guidance the reason none of it reaches a ditch or the heath.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team throughout, one person to ring, and an itemised quote with method, access, protection and the run off on separate lines. Permission is the shortest part of the conversation in West Moors. Cleaning is maintenance, so there is nothing to apply for, and with no conservation area over the village and a single listed entry in the parish, consent is very unlikely to come into it. The one thing that is not a clean is a change of appearance: painting render or brickwork that has never been painted, or rendering over a brick elevation, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls is where to start. Dorset Council is the authority, and it is a five minute phone call.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre, because the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. Access decides most of it: a bungalow whose whole roof you can reach off a pole, a chalet bungalow with dormers and a shallow pitch above them, and a detached house standing behind a mature pine are three different jobs. Poles do a lot of it here, 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 goes.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. Not emergency work, but usually work with a date on it: a sale, a letting inspection, or scaffolding coming down. West Moors is about fifteen minutes up the road, so a date is usually easy to hit as long as you ring when you get it. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
On a bungalow, spend the money on the gutters
Half the homes in West Moors are single storey, and that changes the arithmetic of keeping the outside of one clean. A bungalow has roughly twice the roof of a two storey house with the same floor area, so there is more of it to do.
But every square metre of it is one storey up, which means reach poles and a tower rather than a scaffold, no working over a first floor window, and a day where a taller house would take two. Per square metre of tile, a bungalow roof is the cheapest roof we clean. The gutters are the same story: at ladder height they are a short visit rather than an access job.
So the sensible pattern here is the opposite of what most people do. Clear the gutters every year, because it costs little on a single storey house and a gutter running over is what puts the green stripe down your render and the damp patch on the inside wall. Have the roof itself done rarely, when the moss is genuinely holding water rather than when it first looks dark, because regrowth on a properly treated roof comes back slowly and in patches rather than all at once.
And when you do the roof, book the drive for the same visit and in that order, because everything that comes off a bungalow roof lands on your own frontage rather than on a first floor extension, and paying to clean the paving before the roof means paying for it twice. One more thing worth knowing: with more ridge, hip and verge per household than any other house type, a bungalow has a great deal of mortar up there in the firing line. That is the real argument for keeping pressure off a roof here, and it is the reason we would talk you out of a cheap wash from someone with a lance and a ladder.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover West Moors and the BH22 villages, out to Ferndown, Three Legged Cross, St Leonards and Verwood, 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.
Questions
West Moors questions we get asked
Can the gutters be done on their own without the roof?
Yes. It is the most common single job we do in West Moors, because a bungalow at eaves height is quick to clear and the gutters here load up with pine needles and heath litter faster than anything else on the house. We clear by vacuum from the ground, flush the run through and check the outlets. If the fall is wrong or a bracket has dropped we photograph it rather than tipping the debris out and saying nothing.
Half the road has the same roof. Do they fail together?
They tend to. 64.6% of West Moors housing went up between 1945 and 1982, with the peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s at 29.0%, so whole roads were covered within a few seasons of each other and reach the same state at once. What goes first is the edges, the verge mortar and the ridge, not the tile field. That is why a clean here so often turns into small edge work rather than a re-cover.
Does washing a concrete tile shorten what is left of it?
Not if the pressure is kept off. What wears a concrete tile is the surface coat, and a lance strips that away and leaves an open face which greens up quicker than before. With 50.9% of West Moors being bungalows the pitches are shallow and easy to over-wash from ground level, so we soft wash and let the biocide clear the rest over the weeks after. A tile already flaking is a repair, not a cleaning job.
What about the flat garage roof and the conservatory?
They often need it more than the house does. A flat roof holds whatever comes off the trees, and in West Moors that is needle litter, which mats down and traps water at the outlet. Conservatory glass takes the drip line off the main roof and stains along it. Both go on the itemised quote as their own line, so you can see what each one involves and drop it if you would rather not bother.
Is winter a bad time to have it done here?
It is a fine time for the roof and a poor time for the drive. Biocide wants a few frost free days to work and will sit and do nothing at two degrees. The upside is that growth on a shaded West Moors bungalow pitch is at its worst and easiest to see in February. So we book the roof for a settled spell and leave block paving until the ground has dried out in spring.
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Get a price for exterior cleaning in West Moors
Tell us the address and what has gone green. We come out, look at the roof, the gutters and the paving, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.