Ask three companies to clean the render on the same house and you can get three very different figures, which understandably makes people suspicious of all of them. The truth is duller than it looks: render cleaning is priced on time and risk, and both of those change enormously from one property to the next. A single-storey rear elevation you can walk along with a lance is a different job from a three-storey gable over a sloping garden. Rather than quote a number on a web page that will be wrong for your house, this guide sets out exactly what a surveyor is adding up when they look at your walls, so you can read a quote properly and compare like with like.
Get this priced for your property
Name, phone and email is all we need to come back to you with a figure in writing.
Surface area is the smallest part of the sum
Most people assume price tracks square metres, and it does, but weakly. Washing a wall is quick once you are stood in front of it with everything set up. What consumes the day is getting to it: unloading, moving the vehicle, running hose and power, protecting planting, repositioning, packing down. A 40 square metre gable that needs the kit moved three times can easily take longer than 100 square metres of open frontage. When comparing quotes, ask what the working method is rather than assuming the cheaper one has measured your house smaller.
This guide sits under our Wall Cleaning & Softwash work, covering 20-mile radius of Plymouth.
Height and how you reach it
Ground-floor render is straightforward. First floor is usually reachable with a telescopic lance from the ground, which keeps the job efficient and safe. Above that, or where a lance angle is impossible because of a conservatory, a lean-to or a steep bank, you are into towers, ladders or elevated access, and the cost of that equipment and the extra setup time goes into the price. This is the single biggest reason two houses with identical footprints get very different quotes, and it is worth flagging awkward corners when you enquire.
The render type changes the method
Modern silicone and acrylic thin-coat systems, K Rend among them, are cleaned with low pressure and a treatment rather than force, because their surface finish is thin and easily marked. Traditional sand and cement render is tougher but often older, crazed and patched. Pebbledash and Tyrolean finishes trap growth in their texture and need more dwell time and more rinsing to get a clean result. Painted render adds another question: how sound is the paint, and will cleaning show up the fact that it was last done in patches?
How far the growth has been allowed to get
A wall treated every few years is a light job. A wall that has been green for a decade holds a thick biological film with root structures into the surface, and lichen on top of it. That needs a stronger treatment, longer dwell, and in some cases a second visit to finish the die-back properly. Nobody enjoys hearing that leaving it costs more, but it genuinely does, and it is why the cheapest year to clean a wall is always the first year you noticed it.
Access, parking and water
Rural properties inside our radius sometimes have long drives, no nearby tap, or a track that a van cannot get down. Terraced streets can mean carrying kit from a parking space two streets away. City-centre frontages may need an early start before the pavement gets busy. None of these are dramatic, but each adds time, and an honest quote reflects them rather than discovering them on the morning and asking for more.
What is included and what is extra
Read the scope, not just the total. Does the price include the soffits and fascias, which are usually filthy if the render is? Does it include clearing the gutters while the access is already there, which is normally the cheapest gutter clear you will ever buy? Does it cover the garage, the porch, the boundary wall? Two quotes can look far apart and turn out to be near-identical once you line up what each actually covers.
Protection and making good
Treating render properly means sheeting or wetting down planting, covering vents and open windows, and rinsing hard landscaping afterwards so nothing dries onto the paving. That preparation takes real time on a planted frontage and effectively none on a bare one. If a quote is startlingly cheap, it is reasonable to ask how the borders under the wall will be protected, because that is one of the first things dropped when a price is squeezed.
How to get a quote you can rely on
Photographs are worth more than measurements. Send us a shot of each elevation from far enough back to see the whole wall, a close-up of the worst area, and a picture of anything awkward: a conservatory roof under the gable, a steep bank, a narrow side passage. With that we can usually give a written figure without a visit, and where we cannot, we will say so rather than guess and revise later.
Questions we get on this
- Can you quote render cleaning without visiting?
- Often yes, from photographs of each elevation plus anything awkward. Where height or access is unclear we will come and look rather than give a figure we might have to change.
- Is a cheaper quote always worse?
- Not automatically, but check the scope. Cheap quotes usually differ on elevations included, access method, or whether soffits and gutters are part of the job.
- Does cleaning cost less if I have it done regularly?
- Yes, in practical terms. Light growth is a shorter job than a decade of established lichen, which may need longer dwell or a second visit.
- Do you charge extra for awkward access?
- It is built into the quote rather than added afterwards. That is why we ask about banks, conservatories and narrow passages up front.
Related reading
- Solar panels, roof access and cleaning around them
- Flat roofs, valleys and where water actually goes wrong
- Chimneys, ridges and the growth nobody can see
- Victorian terraces: cleaning a house with no side access