Patio Cleaning in Reigate

Patio Cleaning for homes and businesses in Reigate

If your Reigate property has a proper natural stone terrace, Yorkstone or similar, laid on lime mortar and bedded in decades before anyone thought about pressure washers, it needs handling differently to anything modern. Those patios clean up beautifully, and they are also the ones most easily wrecked. The stone is usually fine. It is the mortar joints between it that will not survive a heavy hand.

The joints are the weak point, not the stone

Old lime mortar is deliberately softer than the stone around it, which is how traditional buildings are meant to work: the mortar takes the movement and the wear instead of the stone. That also means a jet that barely marks a Yorkstone slab will cut straight out of the joint beside it.

So on an old terrace the whole method is set by the pointing. We look at the joints before anything else, work at the pressure they can take, and keep the lance angled across the joints rather than down into them. Loose pointing gets flagged before anything starts, because cleaning will find every failing joint on the patio.

What weathered stone should look like afterwards

A century-old stone terrace is not supposed to come up looking like a new patio, and if it does, something has been taken off it. Weathered stone has a patina, slight colour variation and softened edges, and that is most of its character.

The aim on an old terrace is to remove the algae, the black growth and the ingrained dirt while leaving the surface itself alone. Clean, not new. Anyone promising an old stone patio will look freshly laid is telling you how much stone they intend to remove.

How we work

1. 1
   Free quote and stone identification

   The single most important step. Indian sandstone, limestone, porcelain, Yorkstone, concrete slab and clay pavers all behave differently under a washer, and getting this wrong is what causes the damage you see on badly cleaned patios.

2. 2
   Protect the borders and check the pointing

   Furniture and pots moved, nearby planting protected, and a look at the pointing. Slurry-pointed joints and loose mortar will lift under pressure, so we find that first and tell you instead of discovering it halfway through.

3. 3
   Set the pressure to the softest thing on the patio

   We work to whatever is most delicate, not whatever is toughest. Soft sandstone gets a gentler pass than the concrete edging next to it, even though both are getting cleaned in the same visit.

4. 4
   Treat black spot and lichen with chemistry, not force

   Black spot lichen roots into the stone. You cannot blast it off without taking the surface with it, so it needs a treatment and time to work. How much will shift, and how much may need a second visit, gets said before the job starts.

5. 5
   Rinse down, sweep and walk it with you

   Everything rinsed off, the silt cleared, furniture back, and a walk round so you can see the result and hear what we found while we were in there.

Black spot lichen roots into the stone, so it needs a treatment and time rather than more pressure. How much is likely to shift can be judged on the slabs themselves.

Other services in Reigate

Patio Cleaning near Reigate