Mobile DPF Cleaning covering The Folly, Hertfordshire
The car sits put — mobile DPF cleaning travels to it. Your vehicle will not be taken away and the filter will not budge. A fitter turns up at your address over in The Folly, treats the diesel particulate filter on the vehicle and runs a DPF regeneration.
Budget for the visit taking typically around 2 hours. The clean opens from £299, settled by the phone before anyone sets off.
Written for the situation most drivers are in: the light on already, the motor starved for power, and the clean still to fix.
DPF light on? What to do
Not the unit, necessarily. First thing to say. That light can follow several faults, not only one, so the visit starts with a diagnostic and not with cleaning.
The use you manage in the meantime counts. That is the other thing.
- Motor still driving fine on an amber light — have a go at a long constant run first. It costs nothing and often sorts the filter without assistance.
- A drive will not reach it now — limp mode means that window has by then closed.
- Get it looked at rather than driving it — diesel in the interior, or smoke on hard acceleration, has gone well past the long-run stage.
The car has been telling you already
Last news, the light. The symptoms usually grow for a while before it appears:
- less power, above all climbing uphill
- the revs no longer climb the way they always did
- the fuel use is down
- stop/start without a word packing in
- smoke under acceleration, or a diesel smell inside
That is not proof by itself. It is a fair assumption the filter is full once the light is there too.
Why diesel particulate filters block round The Folly
For a DPF, the least kind motoring is the kind you meet across a village such as The Folly. The school run to St Helen's Church of England Primary School, Folly Fields at a crawl at half past eight, five minutes to Co-op Food, the run to Harpenden — none of it goes on long enough or is hot enough for the filter to finish a regeneration. Instead of clearing, the unburnt soot collects.
The map does not assist either. The A1(M) is under 5 miles from The Folly and St Albans is under 5 miles away, so unless something carries you out that way routinely, whole weeks pass without the long steady run that could clear the filter alone.
Why limp mode prevents a DPF regeneration
What limp mode comes down to is the car defending itself. A proper drive works by triggering a regeneration, and that is precisely what limp mode prevents: power limited, revs kept low, no regeneration possible.
Taking it up the motorway is the standard advice, and it works up to a line. The filter requires treatment rather than driving once the motor has slipped into limp mode.
DPF cleaning at the car in The Folly
Nothing leaves the vehicle. That catches out people. The DPF stays bolted where it is and the work is done around it, on a forecourt, in a works car park, wherever it can wait for a couple of hours.
Nothing is touched until other faults are ruled out. That involves a check first: real-time data off the ECU, soot load by percent and by weight, and a look over of the sensor readings, glow plugs and related hardware.
Then the treatment. A cleaning solution is fed in through the access port on that vehicle and spreads inside the filter, loosening the soot and ash a regeneration by itself will never shift. A second pass is sometimes required on heavily loaded filters.
Then a regeneration, to burn off what the clean has freed. If you are there, that is done as a monitored drive out of The Folly; if not, in place where the motor sits, with the real-time data read after.
Then a second check, verifying the change, resetting the warning light and noting anything still outstanding. Both sets of figures are emailed over, so the before and after figures are kept.
The faults a DPF clean cannot cure
Treatment cures one thing: a filter clogged with soot and ash. It does nothing for:
- a temperature or pressure sensor reporting a block that is not there
- an EGR valve jammed open
- an AdBlue system problem
- injectors or glow plugs that prevent a regeneration running at all
- turbo trouble, with oil entering the filter
Finding that out is the first check's job. If it proves to be one of those, you are warned before any work begins rather than after you have handed over anything.
Gutting the filter out is not a solution: without a working DPF a vehicle will fail its MOT, and driving it is an offence. DPF renewal is the term people look up, though nothing is replaced — your own filter is treated in place and sent back into use. Two more worth knowing.
The cost of DPF cleaning around The Folly
Each visit takes a call-out charge — coming out to you, setting up the booking, running the diagnostic and giving the advice. The clean itself starts from £299.
No single flat rate would be straight, so the price is agreed by the phone once we are told the vehicle and what the filter is going to need. What you drive and where you are both shift it: The Folly itself, over at Lea Valley, or further out across the AL postcode area.
Where the diagnostic says treatment will not do it, you are not asked to pay for cleaning. What still holds is the call-out charge, since the visit was made, the diagnostic was done and the advice was passed on.
Aftercare is included by a 30-day warranty: should the light return within it, an engineer heads back to The Folly.
Had my cars dpf cleaned 3 days ago and warning light has not come on. Its a little early to tell if its fixed, but so far so good.
Great job by baz clean my dpf in the van and restored it to perfection in have power back and dives great. Baz was quick and effective so thank u baz.
Daz turned up and did a good job on the fix even though he wasn't feeling too well! Would highly recommend him and DPF Fixer service again!
The vehicles we clean and the area we reach round The Folly
The filter is cleaned on the vehicle on all of them: private cars, vans of any size and light commercials, HGVs, plant and construction machinery, agricultural vehicles. Nothing is taken anywhere.
Technicians are along Folly Fields week in week out, so The Folly is hardly ever a special trip, and the same run takes in Lea Valley, Amwell and the places out past Wheathampstead. Coverage reaches UK-wide, so farther out through Hertfordshire is even so worth a ring, and what settles between today and tomorrow is the calendar rather than the distance.
The Folly itself
The Folly is a small village in Hertfordshire, situated on the riverside in the Lea Valley. The Folly has a population of around 352 people and is characterized by its predominantly detached housing. The Folly is located near Leasey Bridge and Marshalls Heath, and is close to the city of St Albans. The Folly sits at an elevation of 86 metres, within commuting distance of London at 22.8 miles away.
Questions The Folly drivers ask about DPF cleaning
- Will a long drive shift it?
- If you get it early, and the motor is not in limp mode, sometimes. That requires motorway speed for a sustained run, rather than a short trip to Co-op Food.
- Roughly how long does it last?
- Plan on typically around 2 hours — heavily blocked filters sometimes need a second pass, which adds to it.
- Around The Folly, what does it come to?
- The call-out charge covers the visit, the scan and the advice; treatment itself begins from £299. Both the vehicle and where you are change it, which is why quoting is done by phone.
- Do I have to be around?
- The car needs a space for two hours or so. Nobody expects you to be in it. The regeneration can be done as a supervised drive if you would sooner ride along.
- How soon can someone get to The Folly?
- Depending on the diary, often same-day or next-day is normal. Ask 0303 330 1830 what is open across the AL area.
- Does the filter leave the vehicle?
- Treated where it stands, on this service, so no. That job — a filter off, a filter back on — is not a job we do.
- What if the light returns?
- Aftercare comes inside the 30-day warranty, and that includes an engineer heading back to The Folly.
Have a DPF clean booked in The Folly
Phone 0303 330 1830 and set out what the car is doing: light, limp mode, smoke, whatever it is. Before anyone sets off for The Folly, you will have both a quote and a date. Beyond phone hours, email enquiries@dpf-fixer.co.uk and it is picked up first thing.
Our engineers carry full public liability insurance, and we are SafeContractor approved, ISO 9001 certified, ISO 14001 certified and SSIP Approved.
Mobile DPF Cleaner is a trading name of DPF Fixer Ltd, which is rated 4.5 out of 5 from 1,989 reviews on Trustpilot. The rating is held by DPF Fixer Ltd.