The 4 Main Roof Cleaning Methods to Restore Your Roof Tiles Back to Their Original Glory
As the video above summarises, we at LBC Exterior Cleaning uses four different roof cleaning methods when it comes to cleaning our customers’ roof tiles:
- Pressure Washing
- Soft Washing
- Roof Moss Removal
- Steam Cleaning
As if choosing a reliable, professional roof cleaning company wasn’t hard enough, it is essential you consider which roof cleaning method is best for your roof. Depending on the level of roof cleaning required, the level of algae and moss growth, and the materials used to make your roof tiles, it is important to not damage your roof types. This is especially true in London, where different homes have different tiles, even on the same roof.
Fortunately, we here at LBC do roof tile inspections free of charge. We survey your property and quote to clean your roof using the most suitable method that will give you the best results without damaging your roof. However, after reading this article you will become an informed buyer and should know which roof cleaning method is best for you.
The main reason for the different methods of roof cleaning is that there are many different variations of roof tiles and roofing. The main factors which we consider when picking a roof cleaning method are:
- The age of the roof
- The condition of the roof
- The type of tiles on the roof
The first two of these are often correlated, if the roof hasn’t been cleaned before then the older the roof, often the more mossy/dirty the roof is. However, the age of the roof does not always correlate with the amount of moss on the roof. The level of moss is determined by several other factors including the texture of the roof tile, the amount of sunlight the roof gets, the amount of rainfall the roof receives and also local conditions such as the number of nearby trees.
The reason for selecting different cleaning methods based on the above factors is that we do not want to damage the roof, for example, pressure washing is fine for roofs in good condition and with certain types of tiles however it may not be the best method for cleaning other more sandy faced concrete tiles in poorer conditions.
Pressure Washing
Despite hearsay, pressure washing is suitable for a large number of roofs. According to Roofs UK, the most common type of roof tile in the UK is concrete roof tile, with over 60% of houses having concrete roof tiles. Before these types of tiles became popular clay and slate roof tiles would have been the most popular roof tiles on homes in the UK. Slate and clay tiles by their nature are smoother and less water absorbent than concrete tiles making them more susceptible to pressure washing roof cleaning methods, however concrete tiles in good condition, with the same colour throughout and no sandy face can also be okay to pressure wash.
Soft Washing
For delicate roof tiles, particularly clay tiles, are can use our soft washing method to clean and protect the roof. This is a more gentle use of spray technology that can completely transform a roof back to looking new again.
Roof Moss Removal
For sandy faced concrete tiles a better roof cleaning method would be the moss removal roof cleaning method, this is where we use telescopic scrapers to manually scrape and remove the moss from the roof tiles and then treat the moss with a fungicidal wash (biocide or fungicide treatment) which helps to deter future moss growth by killing any remaining moss spores.
Steam Cleaning
For extra delicate roofs or if the organic growth is very established and there are stubborn white and black lichen spots on the roof then we will opt to steam clean the roof, this is because steam cleaning is cleaning at lower pressure and higher temperature, this not only decreases the risk of damaging fragile surfaces but also cleans kills more organic growth when cleaning.
