Driveway & Patio Cleaning in Radcliffe on Trent

Driveway & Patio Cleaning for Radcliffe on Trent homes

Three grounds. Block paving laid twenty odd years ago with the sand gone from the wheel tracks. Pattern imprinted concrete of the same vintage, which is a failed sealer rather than a dirty slab. Walled yards in the centre reached only through the house.

Three grounds here and only two of them want a jet. The estate drives were mostly block paved in the twenty odd years after the original tarmac gave up, and those are now at the age where the kiln dried sand has washed out of the joints along the wheel tracks and the weed has moved in behind it. The second is pattern imprinted concrete, laid across the same estates in the same period, and it needs saying plainly: what has gone wrong there is the sealer coat lifting and greying, not dirt on the concrete underneath. Jetting takes off more of what is left. Third is the older core, where there is no drive at all and the ground that needs cleaning is a small walled yard or a flagged path behind the house.

Radcliffe on Trent sits in NG12, under Rushcliffe Borough Council. Weekday mornings empty a good part of this village onto the platform, so regular work is unattended and the slot is agreed once rather than renegotiated. Deep cleans land in spring, after months of a house shut up all day. Window work runs on a rota, since the shaded elevation loses its finish within weeks.

What we run into on Radcliffe on Trent driveway & patio cleaning jobs

The wheel tracks are where a block drive here shows its age first, and the reason is mechanical rather than dirt. A car turning in off the road puts a twisting load through the same two curved strips every time, and that works the sand up out of the joints. Once a joint is empty the blocks either side can move, the edges chip against each other, and moss finds a seed bed in the gap. You can read the car's turning circle off the drive. Sand goes back into those joints in stages after the wash, brushed in, wetted, left to settle and topped up again, because a single scattering sweeps off and leaves the joint half empty.

How a Radcliffe on Trent driveway & patio cleaning job actually runs

Where the water goes is the whole plan here, and it changes between the estates and the centre. On an estate drive falling back toward an integral garage there is usually a channel drain across the threshold, and it is normally half full of the same sand and grit that came off the paving, so that gets cleared first rather than being asked to take a wash it cannot handle. On a drive falling to the road, everything we lift runs to the kerb and into a road gully, which it must not, so the slurry is swept and vacuumed instead. Neighbours come into this more than people expect. A good number of these drives were laid in pairs with no upstand between them, so what leaves yours crosses theirs, and a shared drive needs both households told which day it is happening. Cars come off for the whole session and go back only once the surface is dry, and bins, planters and anything wooden are moved or sheeted. Sealing, where it is wanted at all, is a separate visit on a dry surface rather than the same afternoon.

Who books it here

The housing here is mostly Victorian and Edwardian villas near the church and the cliff top, older cottages in the centre, interwar and postwar semis behind them, and large estates of detached houses added from the 1960s onward, and that is what shapes this job more than the floor area does.

We run Radcliffe on Trent on the same round as West Bridgford, Gamston and Bingham.

What we check on every Radcliffe on Trent job

Black spot is the marking most people here mistake for dirt. It shows on slabs and blocks alike as flat black discs about the size of a coin, dead level with the surface and quite unlike the loose green film around them, and it does not move under a jet. It is a lichen with its holdfast down in the top few millimetres of the paving, so anybody trying to blast it off is removing the surface it is growing in, which on a pressed concrete slab leaves an exposed aggregate patch that never matches again. It comes off with a proprietary remover and time, applied and left, sometimes across more than one visit, and even then it fades in stages rather than clearing at once. We point it out and price it separately before starting, because a drive washed with the black spot left on it looks like a job half done, and a drive scoured to remove it is a job that cannot be undone.

What the driveway & patio cleaning covers

A sample of what is included

• The clean: Black spot lichen treated with a proprietary remover and dwell time, because pressure alone does not lift it and pressure hard enough to try will damage the slab
• 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
• 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
• The clean: Pressure and nozzle set to the surface, well down on sandstone, limestone and porcelain from what concrete takes

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.