Exterior cleaning in Winfrith Newburgh
Roofs, render, walls, gutters, paths and drives in Winfrith Newburgh and DT2. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Exterior cleaning in Winfrith Newburgh covers old buildings and post-war ones. Half of what needs cleaning is old, soft and bedded in lime, and the other half is post-war and hard. The two want opposite treatment, a soft wash on one and more pressure on the other, and a machine pointed at the wrong one does damage that costs far more than the clean. So we survey the property surface by surface, write the method next to each one, and tell you which parts we would leave alone.
Several things usually need attention in Winfrith Newburgh. A north facing roof slope has gone dark and the moss off it is now filling the gutter. A patio or a yard is green and slippery from October to April. The render on a gable has gone black and mottled and the paint is lifting with it.
A gutter runs over at the same corner every time it rains and the wall underneath is marked. Or a house is going on the market, coming back from a let, or being handed over, and everything wants to look cared for by a date.
What happens next is the same whichever it is. We come out for nothing, work out what each surface actually is rather than what it looks like from the road, and put that in writing. Some of it comes off dry. Some wants a treatment and a few weeks. Some should be left to a thatcher or a mason, and we would rather say so at the visit than make a mess of your house.
The work
Flint, thatch and concrete tile in one street
Flint and brick in lime mortar. The old fabric along the street is flint with brickwork bands between the courses, some of it rendered, pebbledashed or limewashed, and all of it bedded in lime.
Lime is meant to be the soft part: it takes the weathering instead of the flint and lets a solid wall dry out through the joint. Put a lance on it and it finds the joint before it finds the dirt, cuts it back further than you can see from the ground, and pushes water into a wall with no cavity to drain it. These get brushed off dry, then a biocide through a soft wash nozzle at low pressure, then time. Green film is algae and lifts in days; black crusting is lichen and carries on fading for weeks.
Thatch, and what sits next to it. There is thatch in Winfrith Newburgh and it grows moss like every other roof. We do not clean it and nor should anybody else: washing a coat drives water into it instead of off it, disturbs the netting and the fixings, and starts it rotting from the inside. What we will do is clean the tiled roof next to it, sheeting the coat and the ridge first.
Away from the old street the coverings are concrete interlocking tile, with clay plain tile and slate on the older roofs. Moss packs the lap where one course sits over the next, and once a lap is packed water tracks sideways under the tile instead of running to the gutter, so we work top down from the ridge, take most of it away dry, and only then soft wash and treat. Slate takes no jet wash at all. Heath and pine on the edge of the parish put needles in the gutters as well as roof moss, so add a Winfrith Newburgh gutter clear to the visit. Block paving is cleaned with a rotary head and re-sanded, while old brick and stone laid on sand or lime take low pressure and a treatment. Drains and gullies are covered before anything is mixed, and products approved for the surface go on at the strength on the label, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires. The Win runs through the village and the low ground sits in flood zones 2 and 3, so run off is steered onto ground that will take it, never into a road gully, which is what pollution prevention guidance is about.
How it runs
Gentle cleaning for old stone, brick and render
Thomas comes out and looks at each surface, brick, flint, stone, render, roof and paving, and picks the method for each. His quote shows the method, the access, what gets covered and where the run off goes. The clean then follows that quote.
Lime bedded walls and soft stone take low pressure and a biocide wash, never a jet washer, which strips the face and the joints. Painted render gets a soft wash. Paving and modern tile can take more. Plants, windows and vents are covered, and the run off is kept out of ditches and the river. Where the clean shows open joints or blown render, you get photos and a separate price, and nothing is repaired unless you ask.
Cleaning is maintenance and needs no permission. The repair it uncovers may. The parish has a good many listed buildings, the church of St Christopher among them, so raking out a joint or taking off blown render on one needs listed building consent first. The village is covered by the Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area. We plan jobs at this end of our area together and tell you which week we will be over.
Cost
What sets the price of an exterior clean
A clean is not costed per square metre. The same area can take minutes or hours. Access. A single storey cottage on the street is hand work from the ground. A two storey house needs reach poles and sometimes a tower. A farm range behind a yard means a long hose run. The work at height rules decide when a tower replaces a pole.
The surface. Lime bedded fabric takes no pressure at all and is cleaned slowly by hand. Concrete paving can take a rotary cleaner.
What is growing. Algae on a north wall comes off with one biocide wash. Thick moss and lichen take longer and may need a second visit once the treatment has worked.
Water supply and run off. Where there is no outside tap, water is brought. Run off carrying chemicals must not reach a ditch or the River Win, which the pollution prevention guidance covers.
Roofs. Moss on a roof is brushed off by hand and treated, never pressure washed, because that lifts tiles and forces water under them.
Travel. The distance is on the quote, and grouping jobs in Winfrith Newburgh keeps it down.
Ask any other quote which method goes on which surface, whether a second visit is included, and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A clean needed by a set date
Exterior cleaning is rarely an emergency, but it usually has a date: a sale, a wedding, a path that has turned slippery. Tell us the date when you ring, and if someone has already slipped, say so, because that part is treated first.
On the first visit we look at each surface and plan the rest. Winfrith Newburgh is towards the far end of our area, so we group jobs here and tell you the week. Planned work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For a tight date, call, and if nobody answers we ring back later.
Worth knowing
What the conservation area actually controls
The village has its own conservation area, and there are fifty-eight listed entries in and around Winfrith Newburgh, the parish church among them. None of that stops you cleaning your house. Washing a wall is maintenance and needs no consent from anybody. What it does mean is that the finish on the outside of a building here is controlled, and a clean is one of the few bits of ordinary maintenance that can change a finish without anyone meaning to.
Take a lance to a limewashed wall and the limewash comes off with the algae. Scrub a soft old brick hard enough and the fired face goes with the dirt, leaving a paler, thirstier brick that looks wrong for years and weathers faster from then on. Strip paint off a render that was painted for a reason and you have altered the appearance of a building in a conservation area, which is a planning matter rather than a decorating one.
So the useful thing here is to settle what the finish is before anything gets switched on. If a wall is limewashed or lime rendered, it gets a soft brush and a biocide and nothing more, and it will look better in a month, not that afternoon. If paint is already flaking, cleaning is the wrong job: you want it taken back and redone properly, not half removed by a pressure washer and left patchy.
And if the wash opens up joints or shows blown render on a listed building, that is where we stop and tell you, because the repair wants listed building consent and a lime mortar matched to what is already in the wall not a bag of cement and a quick patch. All of that is said at the site visit and written on the quote, before you have paid anyone a penny.
Who you are dealing with
The firm cleaning your house
We work from Wolverton Road in Boscombe, 19.8 miles from Winfrith Newburgh. We clean homes in the village and along the lower Frome on DT2, out to Wool, West Lulworth, Owermoigne and Wareham, with Dorset Council as the local planning authority.
The business is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen's, and he looks at every surface himself before pricing. A verified customer left us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The site visit and the written quote, with each item listed, are both free. Before you book a visit in Winfrith Newburgh, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Winfrith Newburgh?
Most repairs in Winfrith Newburgh 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 Winfrith Newburgh |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Winfrith Newburgh. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Winfrith Newburgh. 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 Winfrith Newburgh
The stream runs right past the wall. Does that limit washing?
The stream sets how the wash water is caught. The River Win runs within a metre or so of some property in Winfrith Newburgh, and biocide or moss slurry reaching a watercourse is a serious matter, so anything near the bank is sheeted, bunded and drained to a collection point away from the water. What comes off is bagged and carried out. Where we cannot be certain of catching it all we hand wash that section instead of spraying.
Do you come out this far for a single house?
Yes, though it makes more sense to come once and do the lot. Winfrith Newburgh is a fair run from base, so we plan a full day here, which usually means roof, walls and drive together, not one item on its own. Thomas Hannen prices the work himself when he comes out to look. If a neighbour wants theirs done on the same trip, the day works better for everybody involved.
The conservation area covers the village. What can we not do?
You can wash anything. The Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area is about appearance, so like for like cleaning is maintenance, while re-covering a roof in a different material, coating a wall or painting over stone is not, and those want a Dorset Council conversation first. With 58 listed entries in the parish a lot of the village is old fabric anyway, which is reason enough to keep pressure off the walls whatever the planning position.
Will you jet the flint and brick wall at the front?
That one gets brushed, not jetted. Flint sits in lime mortar and a lance pulls the mortar out from between the stones faster than it takes the moss off them, and once a flint is loose it comes out for good. We brush, wash at low pressure and treat, then say which joints have already gone. Repointing a Winfrith Newburgh boundary wall in lime is a separate job, and washing it first is how you find out whether it needs one.
Which side of the house gets the worst of it?
The south west face: that is the exposed elevation across Winfrith Newburgh, and driven rain works at the openings and the edges rather than the middle of a surface, so marking begins under the sills, at the corners and along the verge. The sheltered side greens instead, because it never dries out. Those are different problems needing different treatments, and the quote says which elevation gets which, instead of pricing the house as one surface.
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