Driveway & Concrete Cleaning

The one surface that actually wants pressure

Almost everything else on your property should be soft washed. Flatwork is the exception: concrete, brick and stone are hard, non-porous enough, and take real pressure without complaint. The difference between a good driveway clean and a bad one is not how much pressure — it is what the water comes out of.

Surface cleaner, not a wand

A rotary surface cleaner is a shrouded disc with two jets spinning under it. It cleans a fixed width at a fixed height, at a walking pace, which produces an even finish across the whole slab. A wand cleans in a fan, in arcs, and every hesitation in the operator’s hand is recorded permanently in the concrete as a lighter or darker stripe.

Those zebra stripes are the single most common thing we are called out to fix, and there is no fixing them beyond cleaning the entire surface properly. So we start properly.

Stains we treat separately

• Oil and transmission fluid — hot water and a dedicated degreaser, applied and left to work before the surface cleaner goes over it.
• Rust — from sprinkler well water, fertiliser or a rusting fixture. Needs an oxalic treatment; pressure alone will not touch it.
• Leaf and berry tannin — the brown ghosting under a tree line, common where oaks overhang a driveway.
• Tire marks and hot-tire pickup — worst on sealed driveways in summer.
• Battery acid and de-icing salt damage — cleanable, but the pitting underneath is permanent.

Detail work is where jobs are won

A surface cleaner cannot reach the last inch against a garage door, a curb, a bed edge or an expansion joint. Those get a wand pass by hand afterwards, which is the step that makes the difference between a clean driveway and a clean driveway with a dirty frame around it.

Post-treatment

Once the slab is clean we apply a treatment that kills the algae spores left in the pores of the concrete. It costs a little more and it roughly doubles how long the surface stays looking clean, particularly on shaded walkways and pool surrounds that never dry out properly.

Pavers are a different job

If your driveway or patio is interlocking pavers, cleaning washes out the joint sand and the surface needs re-sanding afterwards or the pavers start to shift. That is covered under paver sealing and re-sanding.