Straight answers.

No. It is an independent enquiry service. We do not clean, repoint or restore anything. Your enquiry goes to one established London specialist firm, which contacts you directly. More on who runs it.

No. The firm pays us for genuine enquiries in its area; you never pay us and the firm's price to you is not increased to cover it.

No. One firm receives your enquiry. If they cannot help, they will tell you, and you are free to go elsewhere.

For small jobs, sometimes, from photographs. For cleaning and repointing a front, no serious firm will price without seeing the brick or stone and, for cleaning, doing a trial patch.

A brand of superheated water cleaning system made by Stonehealth. Water reaches about 150°C at the nozzle and is delivered gently with low volume, so it lifts soot and biological growth without blasting the surface. Many firms use it; the name has become shorthand for the method. Stonehealth runs an approved-contractor scheme and issues an ID card, which you can ask to see.

The wrong method can: domestic pressure washers and sandblasting have scarred thousands of London fronts. Superheated water, chemical poultices and low-pressure abrasive in trained hands, after a trial patch, should not. Insist on the trial patch.

If the building is listed, cleaning and substantial repointing usually need listed building consent, and doing it without is a criminal offence. In a conservation area alone you usually do not need consent for cleaning or like-for-like repointing, but the council may have a view. Full answer here.

For anything built before about 1920, lime, nearly always. Cement is harder than old brick and traps water in it, which is why so many Victorian fronts have crumbling brick and perfect joints. The firm should tell you what mortar it proposes and why.

A terrace front clean is typically one to three days once access is up. Repointing a front is longer, and lime needs weeks of protection to cure. Scaffold licences and parking suspensions add lead time in London.

Hot water cleaning produces run-off that has to be contained and, for chemical methods, neutralised. The firm should protect windows, ironwork, paving and planting and leave the pavement as it found it.

Your enquiry is sent to one firm and kept by us only to count enquiries and to check the service is working. The privacy notice sets it out.