Home Exterior Cleaning in Chichester & West Sussex

What a whole-house exterior clean covers

Most people do not ring us about “exterior cleaning”. They ring because the north side of the house has gone green, the gutters are sprouting, and the driveway has turned the colour of the pavement. A home exterior clean is simply all of that dealt with as one job, in a sensible order, by one team — instead of five separate call-outs spread over a summer.

On a typical house here that means the roof cleared of moss, algae and lichen and treated with a licensed biocide to slow the regrowth; the render, brick or cladding soft washed back to its proper colour; the gutters, soffits and fascias emptied, flushed and wiped down; the driveway, patio and paths pressure washed; the uPVC frames and conservatory brought back to white; and the glass finished with pure water so it dries without a spot on it. If you have solar panels, they go on the list too — a filmed-over panel quietly costs you output all year.

You do not have to take the lot. Plenty of customers start with the two or three things that are actually bothering them, and we will tell you straight which of the rest can wait a year. We would rather quote you honestly and see you again than sell you a package you did not need.

The right method for every surface

The single most important thing about cleaning the outside of a house is knowing when not to use pressure. A jet wash is a blunt instrument: point it at render and it takes the face off, point it at brickwork and it blows out the mortar, point it up under roof tiles and it drives water where water should never go. A fair share of the remedial work we are called to around Chichester was done by somebody with a pressure washer and entirely good intentions.

So we match the method to the material. Soft washing — a low-pressure application that does the work chemically rather than by force — is what render, brick, stonework and cladding get, followed by a licensed biocide that disinfects the surface and slows regrowth. Roofs get the same treatment plus careful moss clearance, never a lance. Chemical-free steam handles the jobs where we would rather not put anything on the surface at all. Controlled pressure washing is reserved for the hard surfaces that genuinely take it — block paving, concrete, slabs, decking and paths. And listed or historic stonework gets DOFF, the superheated low-pressure system we are approved for, which cleans without eating the stone.

It is the same logic on glass: window cleaning for homes in Chichester is done with pure-water reach and wash rather than a bucket and a ladder, because purified water dries with nothing left in it to mark the pane, and a carbon-fibre pole gets to a second-floor window without anything leaning on your gutters.

Why coastal homes here need it more often

Houses on this stretch of coast get a harder time than the national average, and it is worth knowing why before you decide how often to bother. The air is salt-laden, the winters are damp, and we get very little hard frost — which, from an algae's point of view, is close to perfect. North and east elevations green up first because they dry slowest. Salt film greys glass and render within weeks of a clean at West Wittering, East Wittering, Bracklesham and Selsey. Overhanging trees inland make their own contribution in leaf-fall season, and a blocked gutter in November is how damp gets into a wall.

In practice most coastal houses here suit a whole-house clean every 12 to 18 months, with the glass on a shorter round in between. Further inland around Chichester city, Birdham and Itchenor you can usually stretch to a couple of years. That is a guide, not a sales schedule — when we come and look at your house we will tell you where it actually sits, and if the answer is “leave it another year” we will say so.

The reason to stay ahead of it is not just how it looks. Moss and algae hold moisture against the roof, the render and the mortar, and moisture is what shortens the life of all three. Cleaning is comfortably the cheaper end of that problem. Algae on a path or a north-facing patio is also a genuine slip hazard, and it is usually the householder who finds that out the hard way.

One quote for the whole outside

Bundling is not a marketing device here, it is just how the cost works. Most of the price of a small exterior job is getting the van, the water, the reach equipment and the team to your address in the first place. Doing the gutters while we are already up at the roofline, or the patio while the pressure washer is out and running, costs a great deal less than booking each of those as its own visit with its own set-up.

Our published guide prices start from £75 for gutters, soffits and fascias, from £150 for driveways, patios, decking and render, and from £400 for roof cleaning and moss removal. Those are starting points to give you a sense of scale, not a quote, and a whole-house price is not simply those figures added up. Every job is quoted free after we have actually seen it, the price we give you is the price you pay, and there are no hidden charges on the invoice. Send a couple of photos and your postcode and you will usually have a sensible number back the same day.

Fully insured, IPAF certified, licensed biocides

Working on the outside of a house means working at height on somebody's home, and the paperwork behind that matters. We carry £5m public liability insurance through Howden, on every job. We are IPAF 3a/3b certified for powered access, so where a roof or a tall render elevation genuinely needs a MEWP rather than a pole, we can put one in safely and legally rather than improvising. Our biocide treatments are applied under a licence through PureSeal Services, and we are DOFF approved for heritage stonework. The team is DBS-checked and turns up branded, in a branded van — which should not be remarkable, but people tell us it is.

Billy has been doing this since 2009, it is still owner-led, and the reviews are on our reviews page and on Google for anyone who wants to read them before letting us near the house.

Areas we cover

We clean homes right across Chichester and the harbour villages: Chichester (PO18, PO19), West Wittering, East Wittering, Bracklesham, Birdham, Itchenor and Selsey (PO20), out to Bognor Regis (PO21, PO22) and Emsworth (PO10) on the Hampshire border, with regular work over into Havant, Hayling Island and Portsmouth. If you are just outside that, ask anyway — see every area we cover.

Looking after a business rather than a home? The commercial side of the same work — shopfronts, offices, holiday lets, schools, car parks and industrial façades — lives on our commercial exterior cleaning page.

Get a free quote

Tell us what is bothering you about the outside of your house and we will tell you what it needs, what it does not, and what it will cost. Send a couple of photos and your postcode for a free, no-obligation quote, or give Billy a call on 07944 249601 and talk it through. Domestic work across Chichester, the Witterings, Selsey and the harbour villages — fully insured, honestly quoted, and tidied up after.