Driveway Cleaning in East Grinstead

Driveway Cleaning for homes and businesses in East Grinstead

Some of the more awkward drives to clean are not one surface at all, they are two or three, and East Grinstead has plenty of properties old enough to have been added to over the years. An original concrete apron by the garage, a newer block-paved section where the drive was widened, a strip of tarmac at the road end, and a gravel edge somewhere. Cleaning a mixed drive is more of a judgement call than a single-material one, because each part wants a different pressure and they all have to end up looking like they belong together.

Cleaning two materials to one finish

Concrete takes a lot more pressure than tarmac. Block paving takes more than old worn concrete. If you clean each part as hard as it will individually tolerate, you get a patchwork: one section bright, the next dull, and a hard line where they meet.

The way round it is to work each material at its own safe setting and then judge the finish by eye across the boundary, easing off on whichever side is running ahead. It is slower and it is the only way a mixed drive ends up looking like one drive.

The join is where the trouble is

Wherever two surfaces meet on a drive there is usually a mortar fillet, an edging course or a strip of sand, and that is where growth takes hold first. It stays damp, it collects grit, and it is the last place a careless clean reaches.

Those joins want lancing by hand. It is fiddly, but a drive where the middle is clean and every join is still green does not look cleaned, it looks half done.

How we work

1. 1
   Free quote and surface check

   Send photos or book a visit. We work out what the drive is made of, because block paving, concrete, imprinted concrete and tarmac all take a different approach. We also look for loose blocks, sunken sections, oil patches and anything that will not come out.

2. 2
   Clear the drive and plan the run-off

   Cars and bins off, loose debris swept up, and a look at where the dirty water is going to end up. It wants keeping away from planting and out of open drains as far as the layout allows, with anything vulnerable at the edges covered.

3. 3
   Rotary pass across the open areas

   A flat surface cleaner does the main run. It holds an even distance off the surface, so you get one consistent finish instead of the stripes you get from waving a lance about.

4. 4
   Lance the edges and detail work

   The rotary head cannot reach kerbs, gullies, drain surrounds or the tight run alongside a wall. That gets done by hand so the edges match the middle instead of framing the drive in green.

5. 5
   Joints, rinse and tidy

   Cleaning block paving pulls sand out of the joints, so we talk you through what the joints need afterwards and agree it before we start. Then a final rinse, with the silt swept up rather than washed into the nearest gully, and everything put back.

Not every surface suits high pressure. Where needed we use soft washing to protect the material while still getting a deep clean.

Other services in East Grinstead

Driveway Cleaning near East Grinstead