How much should I pay for roof cleaning?

Roof cleaning prices swing wildly, and the cheapest number on the doormat is usually the one that costs the most later.

Family-run, working across Surrey and the Wey Valley, with Scott answering the phone himself after more than 36 years on Surrey roofs and a 25-year written workmanship guarantee on every job. Whether you need roof cleaning or roof cleaning services Godalming, we cover the whole area.

Call 07428 300474 any time and a real person will pick up.

How much should I pay for roof cleaning?

You should pay for the roof area, the access needed, how thick the growth is and what happens to the tiles afterwards, quoted as one fixed written figure before anyone climbs a ladder. A price given over the phone without a proper look at the roof is a guess, and guesses get revised halfway through the job.

What actually drives the figure on the quote

Four things move a roof cleaning price more than anything else. The first is the measured area of the covering, not the footprint of the house, because a steep roof holds a good deal more tile than a shallow one over the same rooms. The second is access. A roof you can reach off a scaffold tower at the back of a level garden is a different job to a roof over a conservatory, a narrow side passage or a boundary you cannot stand a tower on. The third is what is growing up there. A light film of algae is a wash. Twenty years of thick moss packed into the tile laps is a hand scraping job first, then a wash, then clearing every gutter and downpipe of what came off. The fourth is the tiles themselves. Old handmade clay, delaminating concrete or slate with tired nails all need slower, gentler handling, and slower means longer on site.

Whether you need roof cleaning or roof cleaning in Guildford, we cover the whole area, and the survey is the same either way: get up there, look properly, use a drone view where the pitch or the layout makes it sensible, then put a number in writing. Whether you need roof cleaning or roof cleaning in Guildford, the price should be arrived at the same way.

What should not drive the figure is urgency talk. Moss on a roof is not an emergency. It is a maintenance job you can book at a sensible time of year, and anyone treating it as a crisis is selling something.

Method changes the price and it changes the roof

There are two ways to get growth off a roof, and only one of them belongs on a tiled or slated covering. We soft wash at low pressure and we scrape moss off by hand. We do not pressure wash roofs, and that is not a preference, it is because a lance at working pressure drives water up under the laps, strips the surface off concrete tiles, moves slates on their nails and forces grit into gutters and valleys. The roof looks clean for a season and then ages five years in one.

That method is slower, so a hand and soft wash quote is not the cheapest number you will be shown. It is the number that leaves the covering in the condition it was in before the moss arrived. Fixings and wind uplift are covered by BS 5534, and anything that loosens tiles or lifts slates is working against it, so a cleaning method that disturbs the fixings is a repair bill dressed up as a saving.

Whether you need roof cleaning or roof cleaning services Woking, we cover the whole area, and the same low-pressure approach is used throughout. Looking for roof cleaning near you and not sure whether the roof even needs it? Somebody local can come and look and tell you straight.

The extras that should already be inside a fixed price

A great deal of the difference between two quotes is not the wash, it is what is left out of the cheaper one. Ask what the figure includes and expect these to be in it rather than added on the day.

• Sheeting or protecting the ground, planting, paths and any glazing below the working area.
• Clearing all gutters, hoppers and downpipe outlets of the moss and grit that comes off the roof, because a clean roof and a blocked gutter is a worse position than you started in.
• Removing the debris from site rather than bagging it up and leaving it by the bins.
• Access equipment, towers or scaffold where the pitch or the layout calls for it.
• A written report on anything spotted while up there: a slipped tile, a cracked mortar bed, tired flashing, a dry chimney flaunching.

That last one matters more than people expect. The only time anyone gets a proper look at a roof is when they are on it, and cleaning puts us on it. If a small repair will sort the problem, we will say so rather than talking up a reroof. Our roof cleaning services are quoted as one fixed price in writing, free of charge and with no obligation, so what you agree is what you pay.

Where the money is wasted and where it is well spent

Money is wasted paying twice. Once for a cheap high-pressure blast, then again for the slipped tiles, the soaked loft insulation or the choked valley it caused. It is wasted on a coating sold on the back of a clean, applied over a covering that never needed sealing and which then hides the very faults you would otherwise see. We do not hard sell roof coatings and never have.

Money is well spent on the roof being cleaned by hand and low pressure, the gutters emptied properly, the debris taken away and an honest account of the condition of the covering afterwards. Scott has been on Surrey roofs for over 36 years and answers the phone himself, and every job we do, cleaning included, carries a 25-year written workmanship guarantee handed over before the team leaves. That is the difference between a price and a cost. A price is what you hand over this week. A cost is what the roof asks of you over the next twenty years, and a careful clean lowers it while a careless one puts it up.