Professional Roof Cleaning in Burnley

Pennine weather and north-facing pitches

Burnley sits in a bowl with the Pennines on three sides, and it collects weather. Around 1,100mm of rain a year, long damp spells, and a lot of cloud that keeps the sun off the north pitches for most of the winter.

A north-facing roof in Burnley can stay wet more or less continuously from October to March. Nothing dries. That is why moss establishes here in five or six years on a roof that would take three times as long further south.

Out towards Worsthorne, Cliviger and Briercliffe, where you are closer to open moor and higher up, it is faster again. More wind, more spores, more driven rain into the laps.

The tile mix you get around Burnley

The Victorian terraces through the town centre, Burnley Wood and Daneshouse are mostly natural slate. Slate itself is durable but it is nailed, and on a roof that has carried a heavy moss load for decades the nails and battens are often the real story.

The post-war and 1960s to 1980s estates, places like Rosegrove, Pike Hill and Stoneyholme, are overwhelmingly concrete interlocking tile. Concrete is the one that suffers most from bad cleaning, because it has a granular surface layer and once that is gone the tile is porous.

Padiham has a bit of everything. We survey before quoting so the method matches the roof rather than the other way round.

Moss is not just something that looks untidy

A moss-covered roof holds water instead of shedding it. Through a Burnley winter that water freezes in the pores of the tile and expands, and every freeze-thaw cycle lifts a bit more of the surface away. Do that for fifteen winters and a thirty year tile is finished at twenty.

Moss in the laps lifts tiles fractionally and lets wind-driven rain track sideways underneath. That is the source of a lot of unexplained loft damp.

And it all ends up in your gutters. Blocked outlet, overflow down the wall, damp patch on the inside. It starts on the roof.

How we clean: steam, scrape and biocide

The growth comes off by hand and with steam, worked from a roof ladder with the operative harnessed. The roof is then treated across its whole surface with a DDAC biocide, including the parts that already look clean, because that is where the next growth starts.

The biocide carries on working for months after we leave. The roof improves visibly on the day and keeps improving through the following weeks as the dead growth weathers off.

Two year no-moss guarantee on every roof clean. If it comes back inside two years we come back and re-treat it.

Why high pressure ruins a roof

We never put a pressure washer on a roof and we would advise you not to let anyone else either. On concrete tile it strips the surface coating and leaves the tile more absorbent than before, so the moss comes back faster and the tile degrades quicker. On slate it cracks and dislodges.

It also drives water up under the laps at a pressure the roof was never designed to resist, which puts it straight into the loft.

The work looks impressive on the day. The bill arrives five years later as a re-roof.

Padiham, Briercliffe and the exposed edges

Properties on the higher ground and the western edge towards Padiham, or up at Briercliffe and Harle Syke, take more weather than the town centre. Expect to want the roof looked at every three to four years rather than five, and the gutters doing annually rather than when you remember.

Anything with mature trees overhead is the same story for a different reason. Leaf fall, more shade, more retained damp.

Gutters, drives and leaving the place tidy

Every roof clean includes clearing the gutters of what has come down, and running the downpipes through to check they are clear at the bottom. Gutter cleaning in Burnley is part of the job, not an extra line on the invoice.

Paths, drives and windows are washed off before we leave. If the drive wants proper attention see driveway cleaning in Burnley, and for render on the same property render cleaning in Burnley.

Price, timing and the guarantee

What moves the price is roof area, pitch, tile type, how heavy the growth is and how we get access. A terrace with straightforward ladder access is a very different number to a detached with three pitches and a conservatory underneath.

The price is fixed and written down before anyone starts. Send the address and a couple of photos from the ground and you will usually have it the same day. Most Burnley roofs want doing every four years or so once they have been treated.