Exterior cleaning in Devonport

Devonport is one of the oldest suburbs on the Shore and it shows in the streets: rows of timber villas, cottages and bungalows, most of them a century old or more, with the harbour and the Gulf on three sides. Those two facts, old timber and salt air, shape almost every exterior job we price here.

What are Devonport’s older homes built from?

Mostly timber. The Auckland Unitary Plan lists Devonport and Stanley Point as a Special Character Area and describes most of its character buildings as dating from about 1870 to 1940: cottages, villas, bungalows and some larger two-storey houses, nearly all of them timber framed and weatherboard clad, with wooden windows and doors and roofs of corrugated iron, plus the occasional slate or tile roof.

Old weatherboards reward a light touch. Many have been repainted dozens of times, the top coats can be thin over the corners and laps, and the timber underneath is often original. A high-pressure jet can lift paint, fur the grain and push water behind boards that no longer sit perfectly tight. That’s why every villa we quote here gets a low-pressure soft wash rather than a blast.

Do Devonport villas have lead paint?

Assume yes. For any home finished before the 1990s, WorkSafe’s starting assumption is lead somewhere in the paint, and the national lead paint guidelines add that white lead was a common pigment before 1945. A Devonport villa painted many times over a hundred years will almost certainly have lead under the current coat, even if the surface is modern paint.

For washing, that mainly means not disturbing loose or flaking paint. A soft wash cleans the surface without stripping it. If the crew sees paint lifting, they’ll flag it rather than wash it off, because lead flakes in the garden are a problem for children and pets. Repainting is a separate job with its own rules, and WorkSafe’s lead paint guidance is the place to start.

How much salt reaches a Devonport house?

More than most. Devonport sits on the southern tip of the peninsula with harbour beaches at Devonport and Duders and Cheltenham Beach facing the Gulf, so a large share of its homes are within 500 m of the water. NZS 3604 puts land within that distance of the coast, harbours included, into Zone D, its highest exposure band, because of the sea salt that lands there. For any one house that’s likely rather than certain, because the zone is confirmed site by site once local shelter and microclimate are weighed up; MBIE determination 2019/039, for example, moved a sheltered estuary-side site in Porirua from Zone D to Zone C.

On a villa, salt gathers under the verandah roof, along the soffits and on the fretwork and finials that rain rarely reaches. Those sheltered areas are worth washing at least yearly; homes right on the waterfront may need it twice. Corrugated-iron roofs get rinsed by rain, but the laps, flashings and fixings still pick up salt and are worth a look when the gutters are cleaned.

What jobs do Devonport homes book most?

A spring house wash is the most common, often with the windows and verandah done at the same visit. Old iron roofs that have chalked and faded are good candidates for roof painting, though a heritage or special character overlay can affect colour choices, so check with the council before picking a bold new colour. Gutters on older homes are often original profiles with internal sections that fill quickly, so a yearly clean is a sensible minimum.

Jobs we quote in Devonport

• House washing in Devonport

  Low-pressure only on old weatherboards, with soffits and verandahs given extra attention for salt.

• Roof painting in Devonport

  For faded corrugated iron. Check any special character rules on colour first.

• Gutter cleaning in Devonport

  Older internal and box gutters fill quickly and overflow inside the wall line.

• Window cleaning in Devonport

  Outside glass and timber sashes, with salt film off the seaward side.

Nearby suburbs

• Takapuna
• North Shore