Low-pressure wall treatment across Slapton
Freshwater Ley and WWII heritage coast.
We work Slapton as part of the Kingsbridge round, which keeps travel down. Wall softwash is the service most often asked about here because cob and painted render shows growth earlier than brick does.
Quote for a Slapton property
Monday to Saturday, 8am – 7pm
Shade, damp and run-off
- A downpipe discharging onto a hard surface next to the wall sends the water straight back at the brickwork.
- Roof debris shed from a mossy slope lands on the same band of wall year after year.
- Salt-laden air roughens exposed surfaces slightly, and rougher surfaces hold more moisture.
- Ground-level render behind a planted border is wet from irrigation as much as from weather.
- Pebbledash holds water in the shadow of every stone, so it stays damp long after a flat render has dried.
- Rain running off an unsealed timber fascia carries tannin down the wall as a brown stripe, not growth at all.
- A tree removed years ago can leave a wall that greened in its shade and never fully recovered.
- Where a downpipe discharges into a gully that has silted, the overflow soaks the wall base each winter.
- Overflowing gutters feed the top of the wall continuously through the wet months.
Slapton at a glance
- Typical roof covering here is slate and thatch, which affects what washes down onto the walls.
- Nearest full coverage hub: Kingsbridge (TQ7), South Hams District Council.
- Kingsbridge sits about 2.1 miles from Slapton on our round, so visits are often shared.
- Access is usually via A379 and A381.
- Postcode district: TQ7. County: Devon. Approx 18.3 miles from the PL3 base.
Surfaces this page is written for
- Render that has lost its water repellency absorbs surface water instead of shedding it, which extends every damp spell.
- Render responds to dwell time better than almost any other finish, which is what makes softwash suit it.
- Where a painted wall has been patch-repainted, the patches clean at a different rate.
- Gloss-painted details like cills are wiped rather than sprayed.
- Cob and lime-finished walls are moisture-sensitive by design.
- Cob walls dry slowly, so work is planned for a dry settled stretch.
Reading the surface
- 01A test patch at low strength shows what the surface will do before the full elevation commits to it.
- 02Where the pattern is a band at the bottom, splash from the ground is doing it.
- 03The underside of the soffit is checked, because staining there rarely stays there.
- 04Previous cleaning is usually visible as a slightly different texture rather than a different colour.
- 05Where the wall carries a previous coating over render, its edges are inspected for lifting.
- 06The direction the growth thickens in points at the source of the moisture.
- 07Colour matters: green suggests algae, black suggests fungal spotting, grey-white crust suggests lichen.
- 08A fingernail drawn across the growth says more in a second than a photograph does.
First, next, last
Driveways come after walls so that run-off from the elevation is rinsed away as part of the drive work.
Solar panels are cleaned separately from the roof slope they sit on, and after it.
Patio joints are checked before the wall above them is treated, since loose sand washes into puddles.
A first clean is heavier work than the ones that follow, so the interval afterwards can be longer than people expect.
Before the day in Slapton
- Note where hoses can be run without crossing a doorway.
- Tell us if there is a low wall or a step at the base of the elevation that gets slippery.
- Note any external socket or garden power run near the base of the wall.
- If there are children's toys or a trampoline against the wall, they need to move.
- Tell us about any previous treatment that came back quickly, and how quickly.
- Tell us if a fence panel is loose, because sheeting gets pegged to something solid.
- Say whether the property is occupied during the day, since that changes nothing technically but helps the plan.
- Say if there is a wasp or bird nest under the eaves, and we will plan around it.
Within a short run of Slapton
Questions Slapton owners ask
- Do you clean chimney stacks?
- Where they can be reached safely from a position that keeps us off the roof covering.
- Can you treat a wall that has already been jet washed?
- Yes. The damaged band is worked at a reduced strength because it is more open than the rest.
- Will the colour be even afterwards?
- Working bottom-up and one elevation at a time is what keeps it even.
- Do you clean soffits and fascias?
- They are in the same spray path, so they are done as part of the wall visit.
- Can you get behind downpipes?
- Yes, by hand. It is the part a sprayed pattern always misses.
- Can you do it while I am at work?
- Yes, as long as gates are unlocked and we can reach the elevations.
- Can lichen be removed completely?
- The organism is killed, and what is left weathers off. Deeply rooted lichen on stone can take a season to fade.
- Do you clean stonework?
- Yes, with the method set by the softest part of the wall, which is almost always the mortar.
Ask about the surface first
Tell us the wall finish and we will tell you the method we would use on it.
Guides worth a look first
To sum up for TQ7
Read the staining pattern first and the answer usually names itself. Prep takes longer than application, and that is the right way round. Softwash trades speed for safety on the finish, and that trade is worth making on any coated wall.