Fascia and Soffit Cleaning Cardiff

What a fascia and soffit clean actually covers

The roofline is more than the board you see from the pavement. On a standard Cardiff semi there is usually 30 to 40 metres of plastic once you count the soffit as well as the fascia and go round the back, and the parts holding the most dirt are the ones nobody looks at. We clean the whole run: front, back, sides and gable ends.

• Fascia boards, the upright plank your gutter brackets screw into
• Soffits, the underside between fascia and wall, vented panels included
• Bargeboards and verge trims on gable ends, which take the weather with no gutter above them for shelter
• The outer faces of the gutters, where dark streaking shows first
• Downpipes, their brackets and the wall behind them
• uPVC cladding, porch canopies, dormer cheeks and window trims
• Conservatory frames and box gutters where they meet the roofline

Why Cardiff rooflines go green, then black

Two problems land on the same piece of plastic. The green is algae, a living film feeding on damp and airborne organic dust. It takes hold fastest on north-facing and shaded elevations, under overhanging trees, and round the back where the sun never fully dries the board. The mature garden suburbs get it worst, Penylan, Cyncoed, Lisvane and Rhiwbina especially, because the tree cover that makes those streets pleasant also keeps the roofline wet. Rain does not wash it off. Rain is what feeds it.

The grey-black film is traffic soot: diesel particulates, brake dust and tyre rubber bound into a greasy layer that keys into plastic and will not shift with a sponge. Houses on Newport Road, Cowbridge Road East, Western Avenue and the A470 run into town wear it heaviest. Dark stripes running down the fascia below a gutter joint are something else again. That is dirty overflow water, and it means the guttering needs clearing as well.

Why bleach and a scourer ruin the surface

Household bleach on a cloth looks like it works. It kills the top of the growth and bleaches the stain pale, but the dead film stays on the board, so the green is back within a couple of months. It does nothing at all to oily traffic film. Whatever runs off the board then goes down your render, your brickwork and your planting, and we have seen walls left streaked for good that way.

The scourer does the lasting damage. uPVC leaves the factory with a thin glossy skin, and that skin is the only thing keeping dirt on the surface instead of in it. Green scourers, wire wool, abrasive cream cleaners and melamine foam sponges all take it off. What is left is a matte, finely scratched surface that holds dirt in every scratch and greens up faster than it did before. Washing will not bring the gloss back. From there it is a restoration job, or a replacement job.

And never a pressure washer at the roofline

A lance pointed up at a fascia forces water behind the board and into the soffit void, up under the eaves felt and into the loft. It blows sealant out of joints, pops clip-on trims loose, blasts the slots out of vented soffits, and splits boards that have gone brittle after twenty summers of ultraviolet. We own plenty of pressure washers. We just never point one at a roofline.

The pure water pole method

Everything above ground floor level is cleaned with a water-fed pole. Cardiff mains water is soft by UK standards, which helps, but soft is not pure, and plastic washed with it straight off the tap dries spotted. So it runs through sediment and carbon filters, then a reverse osmosis membrane, then a de-ionising resin vessel, until the TDS meter reads zero dissolved solids. Pure water is chemically hungry. It lifts dirt off the surface, holds it in suspension, and dries without a spot or a streak, because there is nothing left in it to dry on.

The head is a soft filament brush on a carbon fibre pole, long enough to take a three storey roofline from the ground. No ladder leaning on your guttering, no scaffold, nobody walking across your roof tiles. It also means we can reach over a conservatory or a back extension without trampling the borders to get there.

Light green comes off with brush and pure water alone. Heavier traffic film gets a pre-treatment made for uPVC, left to dwell so it can break the grease down before we agitate it. Where growth is thick we use a soft wash biocide, which kills the algae outright, spores included, rather than taking the visible film off and leaving the rest to regrow. That is what makes the clean last.

1. A price before we come. Send photos from the pavement, or we call round and look. We measure the runs, count the downpipes, check the boards for oxidation, and give you a fixed figure.
2. Set up and protect. We park close, run the hose out, sheet anything sitting under the eaves, and ask that windows are shut and cars are clear of the area we are working over.
3. Guttering first. If the gutters are part of the job they are cleared first, by vacuum from the ground, and the downpipes are flushed through and rodded if anything is stuck. No sense washing a fascia and then letting a blockage overflow down it.
4. Pre-treat the heavy areas. Bonded traffic film and thick algae are treated and left to dwell. This is the part that separates a proper clean from a wet wipe.
5. Brush and rinse, top down. Fascias, soffit vents, bargeboards, gutter faces and downpipes are brushed, then flood rinsed with pure water from the highest point down.
6. Walk round with you. We go round the house with you before the kit goes back in the van. Nothing dries onto the plastic, so the house looks better an hour after we leave than it does while it is still wet.

uPVC restoration for oxidised, chalky plastic

Rub an old fascia with your finger. If it comes away white, the board is oxidised and no amount of washing will fix it. Ultraviolet breaks down the surface of the plastic over fifteen or twenty years, the additives that hold the colour migrate out, and a dead chalky layer is left sitting on top. The board goes matte, then a yellowed grey, and rain drags the chalk down the wall in streaks.

Restoration is a different job to a wash. The dead layer is cut back with a compound made for uPVC, worked by hand or with a slow-speed polisher, then a restorer brings the colour back and leaves a protective film over it. It is close range, hands-on work, done off a ladder or a tower rather than a pole, and we price it separately.

Restoration does not save every board, and we will tell you straight when it will not. Painted boards, cracked or crazed boards, and foil woodgrain boards that have lost their foil are past restoring. Where it does work, the finish comes back close to new for a fraction of what a full replacement roofline costs.

Ready when you are: arrange your fascia & soffit cleaning quote

Roofline cleaning and gutter clearing need the same access, the same visit and largely the same kit, which is why most people book the two together. It is also the right order of work, since blocked guttering is usually the reason a fascia is streaked in the first place. Doing both on one visit costs less than bringing us out twice.

How long it takes and what changes the price

A three-bed terrace or semi, roofline only, is normally 60 to 90 minutes. A detached house with a conservatory, a back extension and a gable end either side is closer to half a day. The price follows total metres of roofline, the height, how tight the access is round the back, how many years it has been left, vented soffits against solid ones, light green against bonded traffic film, and whether guttering or restoration goes on the same visit. You get a fixed figure before we start, not a rate per hour.

Fascia & Soffit Cleaning expertise across Cardiff and South Wales

We work out of a unit in Cardiff, so most of the city is a short run for us. Roofline work goes out regularly to Roath, Penylan, Cyncoed, Lisvane, Llanishen, Whitchurch, Rhiwbina, Radyr, Llandaff, Canton, Pontcanna, Grangetown, Splott, Rumney, Llanrumney and Cathays, and we cover Barry, Newport and the rest of South Wales.

We have been cleaning exteriors around Cardiff since 2019, and our Google rating is 5.0 from five reviews, all of them five-star. Phone or text 07576 128903, or email Liamdunn2406@outlook.com with a couple of photos of your roofline, and we will come back with a price. Someone answers seven days a week, 7:00 to 21:30.