Pressure Washing

What we clean, and how each one differs

• Concrete driveways, paths and patios — done with a rotary surface cleaner rather than a wand, which gives an even finish instead of the zebra striping you get from overlapping passes. Oil stains get a degreaser and a dwell time before anything else happens.
• Pavers and stencilcrete — lower pressure, because too much strips the sand out of the joints or takes the coating straight off stencilled concrete. Joints re-sanded afterwards where they need it.
• Timber decking — the lowest pressure of anything on this list. Timber is soft between the grain lines and hard along them, so excessive pressure carves the soft part out and leaves a furry, splintery surface that then needs sanding. Done properly, a deck comes up clean and stays smooth.
• Fencing — Colorbond, timber and rendered. Colorbond takes moderate pressure. Timber fencing is treated like decking. Render gets low pressure and a wide fan.
• House exteriors and facades — this is mostly a soft-wash job rather than a pressure job. High pressure on cladding, weatherboard or a rendered wall drives water behind it, and water behind a wall is a far bigger problem than the mould you were removing.
• Roofs — cleaned where the roof is sound and safe to walk. Old, brittle or cracked tiles we'll leave alone rather than turn a dirty roof into a leaking one.
• Bins, garages and common areas — the unglamorous ones. Strata bin rooms and garage floors come up better than most people expect.

Mould, algae and lichen

The green and black growth on a north-facing path or a shaded driveway is living, and pressure alone only removes the visible part. The spores stay in the pores of the concrete and it's back inside a season.

Treating it first with the right solution kills it, then the clean removes it. The difference in how long the result lasts is substantial and it's not an upsell — it's the difference between doing the job and doing half of it.

Lichen is the stubborn one. Those flat grey-green discs on a driveway have a root structure into the concrete surface and often leave a faint ghost even after treatment. We'll tell you if that's what you're dealing with before we start rather than after.

What pressure washing won't fix

Worth setting expectations, because a driveway that's been dirty for fifteen years won't come back to new.

• Deep oil that's soaked into the pores of the concrete will lighten considerably but often leaves a shadow
• Rust from a bar fridge, a trailer or steel garden edging needs an acid treatment and doesn't always go completely
• Tyre marks from a car that's been sitting in the same spot, particularly in summer, can be permanent
• Concrete that's been sealed badly and gone patchy — cleaning it makes the patchiness more obvious, not less. That's a strip-and-reseal job.
• Discolouration in the slab itself from the original pour, which no amount of surface cleaning touches

Where a surface isn't going to come back to an even finish, sealing or painting it afterwards is usually the answer. We'll say so up front, and we do that work too.

Seal it afterwards or you'll be back

Bare concrete is porous. Once it's clean it starts holding dirt, oil and mould again straight away, and within a year or two you're paying for the same clean.

Sealing after a wash is what stops that. It costs more on the day and saves money over three or four years, and it makes every future clean quicker and cheaper. It's not right for every surface and we won't push it where it isn't, but if you've had the same driveway cleaned twice already it's worth a conversation.