Professional Render Cleaning in Bury

The Irwell valley keeps walls wet

Bury sits in the Irwell valley and takes around a metre of rain a year, with the Pennines rising behind it. Damp air sits in the valley, and elevations that face north or east get very little drying sun through the winter.

Render holds moisture in its surface by design, which is what makes it breathable and also what makes it a good home for algae. Once colonised, the growth holds more water against the wall, which makes conditions better for more growth.

That is why it seems to go from slightly tinged to properly green quite suddenly, usually around year five or six.

What is actually on the walls around Bury

A lot of modern thin-coat silicone render on the newer developments around Bury, Radcliffe and Whitefield. Excellent material, very thin, through-coloured, and easily ruined by the wrong equipment.

Plenty of pebbledash across the interwar and post-war semis in Tottington, Elton and Brandlesholme, which holds growth in every crevice and needs dwell time rather than force.

And a lot of rendered extensions and rendered gables added to older brick and stone properties, where two materials meet on one elevation and need handling differently.

Soft washing, and what you should expect to see

The elevation is wetted, biocide is applied and left to work into the surface, then rinsed off at low pressure. No high pressure at any stage.

On the day you will see a substantial improvement. Over the following four to eight weeks it will keep improving as the dead growth weathers off with the rain. That is normal and it is the biocide continuing to work.

Very heavily colonised north elevations occasionally want a second treatment. If we think yours is one of them we will say so at quote stage, not after taking your money.

The expensive mistake

Thin-coat render systems like K-Rend are about six millimetres thick with the colour running through the whole coat. A pressure washer removes that coat in seconds and there is no patch repair, because any filler you put in will not match.

We get called out every year to elevations that somebody has blasted, and the honest answer is almost always that it needs re-rendering. That is thousands of pounds to save a couple of hundred on the clean.

If anyone turns up at a rendered house with a turbo nozzle, stop them.

Ramsbottom, Holcombe and the higher ground

Up towards Ramsbottom, Holcombe and Walmersley you are higher and more exposed, with more wind coming off open ground. Those elevations take driven rain from the west and show growth on the windward side as much as the north side.

Shorter cycle up there, around three years. Down in the more sheltered and wooded parts of Whitefield and Prestwich the driver is shade and leaf litter instead, which works out at a similar interval for a different reason.

Things we check before quoting

Cracks and hollow sections, sealant around windows and doors, the bead at the base of the render, and whether there is a gutter or downpipe running onto the wall.

If water is getting behind the render, cleaning the face of it will not fix anything and may make internal damp worse. We would rather flag it. See gutter cleaning in Bury if the guttering is the real culprit.

Cost and frequency

Set by render area, storeys, how bad the growth is and access. Most properties in Bury are reachable from the ground with poles.

Three to five years between cleans, at the shorter end if you are exposed, north-facing or under trees. Fixed price in writing before we start, and cheaper if the roof is done in the same visit.