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.
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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.
In West Moors it is usually the roof, the gutters or the drive that goes wrong first. 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 instead of packing, 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 West Moors, needles knit into a mat in the gutters that water runs straight over, and at ladder height gutter clearing is a quick job worth doing yearly. 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
Cleaning roofs, render and paths in West Moors
Thomas comes out, looks at each surface, decides the method and prices it himself. The quote shows the method for each surface, protection, access, and where the run off goes. One company remains responsible from that visit to the finish.
Under the pines, moss grows thick on bungalow roofs and paths go green. A bungalow roof is mostly reached from the ground with long poles, with a tower where needed. Moss on concrete tiles is scraped off by hand and treated with a biocide registered under the regime the HSE runs. Blasting wears the tile surface away. Windows, plants and cars are covered first, and the moss is bagged and taken away. If we find a cracked tile or blown render, you get a photo and the repair is priced separately.
Permission is the shortest part of the conversation in West Moors. Cleaning is maintenance, there is nothing to apply for, and with no conservation area and a single listed entry, consent is very unlikely to come into it. What is not a clean is a change of appearance: painting render or brickwork that has never been painted, or rendering over brick, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls is where to start. Dorset Council is the authority.
Cost
Moss, reach and method: what a clean costs
A West Moors clean has no rate per square metre. The same area can take twenty minutes or a morning. Reach. A bungalow roof you can reach from the ground with a pole is quick to get at. A chalet bungalow with dormers and a shallow pitch above them needs more care, and a detached house standing behind a mature pine may need a tower. The work at height rules decide which, and access is priced.
What is growing. Light green algae on a render wall comes off with a soft wash. Thick moss on a north slope under trees needs scraping, bagging and a biocide left to work, and sometimes a second treatment. Black lichen on a path is slower again.
The surface. Concrete roof tiles from the sixties and seventies are softer than they look, so they get a gentle clean. Render takes a soft wash. Block paving can take pressure, then needs re-sanding in the joints.
The run off. Moss, residue and biocide water have to go somewhere sensible, not straight into a surface drain.
Ask each quote what method goes on each surface, whether a second treatment is included, whether block paving is re-sanded, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A viewing, an inspection or a date to hit
Exterior cleaning is rarely an emergency, but it often has a date: a house going on the market, a letting inspection, or scaffolding coming down that you want to make use of first. Ring as soon as you have the date.
We will tell you what can be done in the time, and be honest if a biocide on the roof will not have finished working by then. Scheduled work is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If you ring and get no answer, we come back to you as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
On a bungalow, a clean costs less than you think
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, not 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.
So the sensible pattern here is the opposite of what most people do. Keep the gutters clear, because a gutter running over is what puts the green stripe down your render. Have the roof itself done rarely, when the moss is genuinely holding water and not when it first looks dark, because regrowth on a properly treated roof comes back slowly and in patches.
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
Exterior cleaning in and around West Moors
We clean houses right across BH22: West Moors, Ferndown, Three Legged Cross, St Leonards and Verwood. We come up from our base in Boscombe, 7.1 miles away. Dorset Council is the council for planning and building control.
Exterior cleaning is done by Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and its owner Thomas Hannen looks at each surface and sets the price himself. There is a verified 10 out of 10 for us on Checkatrade. The visit is free of charge, and the written quote breaks down every item at no cost. Before you book a visit in West Moors, 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 Moors?
Most repairs in West Moors 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 Moors |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for West Moors. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers West Moors, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, West Moors has listed buildings. If yours is one, or stands in the grounds of one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers West Moors. |
Questions
Questions about exterior cleaning in West Moors
Can the drive be done on its own without the roof?
Yes, though if the roof is due soon it is worth waiting, because everything that comes off a bungalow roof lands on the frontage.
On its own, a West Moors block paved drive gets the weed out, the black spot and algae off with a rotary head, then kiln dried sand brushed back into the joints. Pine needles and heath litter settle in the joints here, so a treatment after the wash slows the green down. The gutters can be booked on their own as well.
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.
Nearby, and next door
Exterior cleaning near West Moors
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Free quote
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.