Driveway & Patio Cleaning in Erdington

Green semi drives and shared parking courts nobody cleans

The demand splits between appearance on the houses and risk on the shared surfaces. A semi drive that has never been cleaned since it was laid goes green on the shaded side, grows weed in the joints and holds tyre and oil marks, and that is purely how it looks. A bin store apron is different: it collects spillage, it grows algae in a spot that never sees sun, and every resident in the building walks across it carrying a bag. The same applies to an entrance path in constant use. On the older streets near the old centre there are original tessellated paths at the front of the villas, which are the one surface here that a pressure washer will destroy outright.

• Concrete, tarmac and block drives on the interwar semis, a great many never cleaned since the day they were laid
• Parking courts and entrance paths at the blocks, where the slip risk sits with the freeholder, not a resident
• Bin store aprons collecting spillage and algae, walked across by everybody in the building
• Original tessellated front paths on the villas near the old centre, which lift if anyone hits them with pressure
• Leaf tannin staining slabs and paths on the Pype Hayes and Brookvale side of the area

Four surfaces, four ways to fail: identifying yours first

The surface gets identified before anything is switched on, because the four common surfaces here fail in four different ways: sound concrete takes rotary cleaning happily, block paving takes it and may then need re-sanding, quoted separately, tarmac loosens if you hit it hard, and a tessellated Victorian path lifts altogether. Growth comes out of the joints, since that is what makes a path slippery and not merely green, and oil and tyre marks are treated separately from the general wash. On a communal court we work in sections, so residents always have somewhere to leave a car and a dry route to the door.

• Surface identified first, because tarmac, resin and Victorian tile all fail under pressure that sound concrete shrugs off
• Communal courts worked in sections, keeping parking and a dry walking route available all day
• Block paving re-sanded where the joints need it, quoted separately
• Displaced silt lifted and carried away, never pushed into the nearest gully

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: our patio & driveway cleaning method.

Drives, courts and bin store aprons

Driveway work sits out on the semis towards Pype Hayes, Brookvale and the Kingstanding edge, where the van goes straight onto the property and the job is efficient. The communal surfaces are at the blocks dotted between the High Street and the outer estates, and those need the agent to pick the day with us so the bins have been collected first. Period front paths turn up on the older streets nearer the station. Spring is the main season on both sides, and grouping two or three exterior jobs on the same scheduled Erdington day makes sense for everyone.

Where setup time makes a parking court good value

Area and condition set the price, but setup time does not scale down, so a small path is never cheap in proportion to a large drive. A parking court, by contrast, is a big area cleaned in one visit and paid for through the service charge. On block paving, re-sanding is quoted separately when the joints need it. And old oil that has soaked into porous concrete lightens substantially without vanishing, which you should know before you pay.

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Every year or two for a semi drive, yearly where it stays shaded

Every one to two years suits most semi drives here, with spring the natural moment once the winter growth has shown itself. Anything permanently shaded wants annual attention, and that includes side paths down the north face of a semi. Communal surfaces are on a different logic: bin store aprons and entrance paths are worth doing every year and worth timing for autumn, since the point is getting a whole building through the winter without somebody going over on wet algae.