Exterior cleaning in Saanich

Exterior cleaning in Saanich

Saanich is the largest municipality in Greater Victoria and it has the heaviest tree cover of any of them. Mature Douglas fir and western red cedar stand over a great deal of the housing, and that single fact decides most of the exterior cleaning work here.

Shade is the reason. A roof under conifers stays damp for days after the rain stops, and on a coast where it rains from October to April that means the shingles spend most of the year wet. Moss takes hold on the north slopes first and works across. The same trees drop needles continuously rather than in one autumn fall, so gutters here do not fill once a year — they fill all year, and the packed needle mat holds water against the fascia through the whole wet season.

That is why roof and gutters are usually worth doing together in Saanich rather than as separate visits. Everything scrubbed off a roof lands in the gutter below it, and a gutter already carrying a season of needles has nowhere to put it.

The area is not uniform. Gordon Head and Cadboro Bay run towards post-war and 1960s-70s housing on larger lots with established trees. Broadmead and Royal Oak are newer and more planned, with a lot of the housing built from the 1980s on. Tillicum and Gorge are older and closer in, on smaller lots. Cordova Bay sits on the water on the east side, which adds coastal exposure to the tree cover. Prospect Lake and Strawberry Vale run semi-rural, with the heaviest tree cover of the lot.

Almost all of it is asphalt shingle, which is the roof surface moss does the most damage to — the rhizoids lift the shingle edge, and a lifted shingle stops draining. It is also the surface that must never see a pressure washer, because high pressure takes the protective granules off and years off the roof with them.

Housing here

Mostly asphalt shingle over a wide age range — post-war and 1960s-70s housing in Gordon Head and Cadboro Bay, 1980s-onward development in Broadmead and Royal Oak, older and smaller lots in Tillicum and Gorge, semi-rural properties around Prospect Lake.

Where in Saanich

We work right across Saanich — University of Victoria, Mount Douglas Park, Swan Lake Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary, Cordova Bay, Royal Oak, Broadmead, Gordon Head, Cadboro Bay, Prospect Lake, Strawberry Vale, Tillicum, Blenkinsop Valley and everywhere between. Same crews and the same number as the rest of Greater Victoria: 778-561-0713.