Render Cleaning Burnley

Burnley sits in a bowl and collects the weather

With the Pennines on three sides, Burnley catches around 1,100mm of rain a year and holds damp air far longer than somewhere more open. Rendered elevations facing north and east get very little winter sun.

Render is porous by design, so it absorbs and holds that moisture. Algae does the rest. Four or five years from new is typical before a north elevation starts showing colour, and it accelerates from there once the surface is colonised.

The green is a living organism sitting in the surface of the render, not surface dirt, and that distinction decides how it has to be treated.

What is on the walls around Burnley

The newer estates out towards Rosehill, Whittlefield and the developments off the M65 are mostly modern thin-coat silicone render. Very good material, very thin coat, colour through the body rather than painted on.

Older housing through Burnley Wood, Rosegrove and Padiham has a lot of painted sand-cement render and a great deal of pebbledash. Pebbledash is the awkward one: every crevice between the stones holds growth, and it is the surface most often wrecked by somebody attacking it with a lance.

Rendered extensions on original stone terraces are very common here too, and stone and render want different treatment on the same wall.

Soft washing: what it is and why it lasts

Soft washing means the chemistry does the work instead of the pressure. The elevation is wetted, a biocide solution goes on, it is given time to dwell and penetrate, then it is rinsed off at low pressure.

Because the biocide kills the growth at root level and keeps working in the surface for months afterwards, the wall stays clean far longer than one that has been blasted. Blasting removes what you can see and leaves everything you cannot, which is why it regrows within a year or two.

Expect visible improvement on the day and continued improvement for weeks after.

The damage a pressure washer does, in order of expense

Cheapest first: lance striping on monocouche, which is cosmetic but permanent and obvious in low sun.

Next: stones blown off pebbledash, leaving bald grey patches that can only really be fixed by re-rendering the panel.

Worst: the thin coat blown off a silicone render system. The colour runs through the coat, so there is no patch repair. That elevation gets re-rendered, and the bill runs to thousands. We see it every year and it is always somebody who was cheaper.

Padiham, Briercliffe and the exposed edges

Properties on the higher ground, out at Briercliffe, Harle Syke, Worsthorne and the Padiham side, take more driven rain and more spores off the open ground around them.

Those elevations typically want doing every three years rather than four or five, and they tend to show growth first on the windward side rather than simply the north side, which is the opposite of what people expect.

What we check before we clean anything

Cracks, hollow or blown sections, failed sealant around window and door reveals, and the condition of the bellcast bead at the bottom of the render. All of those are routes for water to get behind the render.

Cleaning a wall with water already tracking behind it does not help and can make internal damp worse, so if we find it we will say so and suggest you get it sorted first.

We also check whether what you are looking at is actually gutter overflow staining rather than growth, because that is a different job. See gutter cleaning in Burnley.

Cost, frequency and doing it alongside the roof

Render area, storeys, severity of growth and access set the price. Most Burnley semis and terraces are reachable from the ground with poles, so scaffold is rarely part of it.

Three to five years between cleans for most properties, shorter if you are exposed or north-facing. Fixed price in writing before we start.

If the roof is due at the same time it is cheaper done in one visit, because most of the cost of coming out is the setting up.