Driveway & Patio Cleaning in Lenton Abbey

Driveway & Patio Cleaning for Lenton Abbey homes

Front gardens were paved over one house at a time, so concrete, slabs and block paving meet with no kerb between neighbours. Round the back is original in situ concrete, north facing and green for most of the year.

There is no standard drive on this estate, because the front gardens were paved over one house at a time as they were bought. A single pair can carry a poured concrete slab from the seventies on one side and block paving from the last few years on the other, meeting in the middle with no kerb between them. Those two surfaces want different pressure, different chemistry and a different finish, and only one of them needs its joints re sanded afterwards. Round the back, the original path to the outbuilding is in situ concrete laid in bays, north facing down most of its length and green for most of the year. That path, not the front, is the one people actually slip on.

Lenton Abbey sits in NG9, under Nottingham City Council. End of tenancy work leads, and it spreads through the year rather than landing in one summer fortnight, because the lets here are whole houses on twelve month agreements to postgraduates and staff. Around that sit fortnightly visits for settled households, and deep cleans booked before a relet or when a house finally gets its first.

What we run into on Lenton Abbey driveway & patio cleaning jobs

Old in situ concrete records where it has been walked. The bay nearest the back door is worn smooth and slightly dished, so it holds a film of water after a wash and greens up first, while the bays further along still carry the tamped finish they were laid with and grip properly. That difference survives cleaning, and it is wear rather than soil. What does lift is the black lichen along the bay joints, and that needs a proprietary remover and dwell time, because pressure hard enough to shift it takes the top off the concrete with it. We work the wash toward the garden rather than back at the house, and sweep and vacuum the slurry instead of flushing it into the border.

How a Lenton Abbey driveway & patio cleaning job actually runs

On most of these houses the hardstanding across the front is the job, and the awkward parts are water in and the car out. There is rarely an outside tap at the front, so the hose comes from the back either round the side or through the house on a mat, and that is better agreed at the quote than discovered on the morning. The car is the bigger question. To do a surface properly it has to be off the frontage for the whole visit and for a while after it, and on this street in term time there is nowhere obvious to put it, so choose a day when it can go somewhere else entirely rather than round the block. Two smaller things follow the wash itself. Block paving needs kiln dried sand brushed back into the joints once the surface has dried out, which is normally a short second call rather than the same afternoon, and sealing, if you want it at all, is a separate return visit on properly dry paving. Anyone offering to seal a surface the same day they washed it is selling you next winter's problem.

Who books it here

The housing here is mostly a single interwar municipal estate of small semis and short terraces on a regular layout, brick with rendered upper storeys, some bought and extended over the years and some still let, and that is what shapes this job more than the floor area does.

We run Lenton Abbey on the same round as Beeston, Dunkirk and Wollaton Park.

What we check on every Lenton Abbey job

Narrow frontages leave a very particular pattern on block paving here. There is only room to swing in and reverse out in one movement, so the same two arcs are turned over month after month, and the blocks along them are polished smooth and hold rubber rather than soil. That is chemistry and dwell time, not more pressure. Between the arcs sits the drip line under where the engine stands, which lightens and rarely clears completely. The edge is the other thing to settle before anybody starts. Where a frontage was block paved up against a neighbouring concrete slab there is often no edge restraint on that side at all, just blocks laid to the line, so the outer course has already crept and the joints have opened and emptied. A rotary head passing over that will take out more. We point it out first, work away from that edge and refill those joints last.

What the driveway & patio cleaning covers

A sample of what is included

• Before the water goes on: Established weeds, roots and thick moss pulled and scraped out of the joints by hand first
• The clean: Pressure and nozzle set to the surface, well down on sandstone, limestone and porcelain from what concrete takes
• Putting it back: Jointing compound instead of loose sand where joints are wide, on a slope, or where you want the weeds held down longer
• Before the water goes on: Gullies, air bricks and door thresholds covered, and the route the water will take worked out before it starts taking it

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full driveway & patio cleaning page sets out every section of the scope, what is deliberately excluded and why, how long it takes on each property size, and what tends to go wrong.