Exterior cleaning in Wimborne Minster

Roofs in the old town, roofs on the estates. Nearly a fifth of Wimborne predates 1919 and the largest single band is pre-1900, so the centre is plain clay tile and natural slate, steep, often running the length of several properties and reached from a rear yard rather than the street. Moss beds into the laps, holds water against the tile and lifts the tail, and on slate it gets under and starts moving nails. The growth comes off dry, scraped from the gutter line upwards so the laps clear rather than pack, then soft washed at low pressure and treated so the spores die back over the following weeks. A jet wash on a roof like this drives water under the lap, strips the fired face off the tile and washes the mortar from under the ridge, and the damage shows up as a leak months later. The post-war housing towards the edges of the town is concrete interlocking tile, tougher, and quicker per slope because access is off your own drive.

Who can actually instruct the work. A third of the dwellings here are flats or maisonettes. The outside of a flat, roof and walls alike, belongs to the freeholder and is managed out of the service charge, so the person ringing often cannot authorise the job. It is worth settling who can before anybody quotes, because a communal parapet gutter done properly once is a shorter conversation than four leaseholders arguing about a damp patch.

The older streets are handmade brick with lime pointing, stucco and painted render repainted many times over, and it is all soft. Real force on a painted front strips the top coats away in bands, and force on brickwork of that age opens the joints and puts water inside the wall. So it is a low pressure nozzle, a treatment left to dwell and a gentle rinse. On the newer houses there is pebbledash and modern masonry that will take rather more, and we say which is which at the site visit.

Town centre buildings hide their rainwater goods: a parapet gutter behind a front wall, a valley over a shared passage, a hopper head and a cast downpipe down the back. They silt up quietly and the first sign is a damp patch inside, not water over the front. Clearing is by hand and by vacuum, every outlet proved to run, and debris bagged and taken away. Brick paviours and old flags in the town, slabbed rear courtyards behind the shops, block paving and tarmac on the estates: block paving is re-sanded with kiln dried sand after washing, and old brick and stone gets far less pressure and more chemistry. Half the buildings in the centre stand straight on the footway, so the job includes managing people walking past and keeping the hose off the pavement edge. Products go on at the rate on the label and only where they are approved for the surface, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires, and pollution prevention guidance is why none of it goes into a highway drain.

No rate per square metre, because the same square metre can be twenty minutes or two. Access decides most of it: a Georgian front standing straight on the footway with people walking past it, a flat above a shop where the only route to the roof is a shared rear yard, and a post-war semi with its own drive are three different jobs. Poles do a lot, some of it wants a tower, and work at height rules decide which. Old painted render wants the lowest pressure that will work. Ask each quote which method goes on each surface and where the run off is going.

We cover Wimborne Minster and the BH21 villages, out to Colehill, Furzehill, Merley and Corfe Mullen, 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.