Selly Oak Patio Cleaning for Green Back Yards and Shared Entries
Most of Selly Oak is Victorian terrace built without off-street parking. Where a house has anything at the front it is usually a small paved forecourt holding bins and bikes, and that forecourt is worth cleaning along with the back.
What B29 does have splits three ways: green, slippery rear yards behind the terraces, the shared entries running between houses, and proper driveways on the interwar semis towards Selly Park and the Raddlebarn Road end. The first two are about safety as much as looks. An enclosed north-facing yard behind a house let to six people grows algae fast and turns treacherous by December, and that is a liability for whoever owns it.
- Service
- Patio & Driveway Cleaning
- Area covered
- Selly Oak, B29
- Local authority
- Birmingham
- How we do it
- Rotary flat surface cleaner at a pressure the surface can take
- From our Selly Oak base
- On the doorstep
- Price
- Quoted per property before we start (quoting and booking questions)
- Booking
- Call or WhatsApp 07788 574283
Shaded back yards and shared entries before any driveway
Surface cleaning in B29 has a particular shape. Terrace back yards are small, walled and shaded for most of the day, which makes them a dependable algae surface year after year. The entries between houses stay damp underfoot and are the route every tenant takes to the bins in the dark. Front forecourts along the Bristol Road gather traffic grime, with weeds rooting in the joints. A few streets away, the owner-occupied semis have ordinary drives with ordinary problems.
- Enclosed north-facing rear yards behind the terraces, permanently shaded and slippery by December
- Shared entries between houses, damp brick underfoot and the route to the bins after dark
- Small front forecourts given over to bin standing and bike storage, with no car in sight
- Proper concrete and block driveways on the interwar semis towards Selly Park and Raddlebarn Road
- Landlords wanting a slip hazard dealt with before winter on a house occupied by six tenants
Engineering brick, concrete, quarry tile: one street, many surfaces
Identifying the surface comes first, and it varies more on one Selly Oak street than you would expect: blue engineering brick in an entry, poured concrete in a back yard, quarry tile on an Edwardian front path, block paving on a 1930s drive round the corner. Sound concrete and engineering brick take rotary pressure cleaning happily. Original tiled front paths and lime-jointed brickwork do not, and are soft-washed instead. In an enclosed rear yard the real problem is drainage: there is one gully and nowhere else for the water to go, so we work in sections and lift the silt out rather than washing it into the drain.
- Rotary cleaning on sound concrete and engineering brick, soft-washing on original tiled front paths
- Worked in sections in an enclosed yard, because there is a single gully and it will silt up
- Moss and weed growth taken out of the joints, since that is what makes an entry slippery underfoot
- Displaced silt bagged and carried out through the entry, never left heaped by the back gate
More detail on the equipment and the order of work: patio & driveway cleaning across Birmingham.
Yards, entries and the drives towards Selly Park
On a terrace the job nearly always happens at the back: a yard four or five metres square, a bin standing, and an entry running out to the street. Access is most of the story, because every piece of equipment has to come in by hand through that passage. The real driveway work sits on the semis towards Selly Park Road and Raddlebarn Road, and on newer houses near Battery Retail Park. Spring is the natural season once winter growth is visible, though landlords more often book in late summer while a student house sits empty between tenancies.
Why a small yard is not cheap for its size
Small areas are not cheap in proportion, for a simple reason. Setup takes the same time for twenty square metres as for two hundred, and on a Selly Oak terrace the kit is carried by hand through a narrow entry instead of running straight off the van onto a drive. Quoting the back yard and the entry together is far better value than either alone. On the Selly Park semis the usual variables apply: area, surface type and how long it has been left. Cleaning block paving can loosen the jointing sand, and re-sanding is quoted separately when the joints need it.
An autumn clean on a shaded yard behind a shared house
An enclosed, shaded back yard behind a shared house wants doing every year, and autumn is the sensible slot, because the point is getting through winter without a tenant slipping on the way to the bins. Shared entries are the same. Front forecourts along the Bristol Road can usually go two years. The drives on the Selly Park semis are entirely ordinary: every one to two years, with spring the natural moment once the winter growth shows.
Great services delivered by Charles recommend for others
Charles was great. He was very professional and did a great job.
Absolutely brilliant service. Adefem was professional, job well done. Everything was left beautifully clean, and I was genuinely impressed.
Selly Oak · Patio & Driveway Cleaning
Frequently asked questions
The back yard, the shared entry and the front forecourt, all of which are worth cleaning, and on a shaded terrace the yard and entry are the ones that matter, because that is where the algae and the slip risk are. If there is genuinely nothing worth doing, we will tell you so.
Yes, and on a walked route it is worth doing properly. The green film is algae growing on permanently damp brick, and it lifts off with soft-washing, which brings the grip back. It will return, because the entry stays shaded all year, so an annual clean before winter is the realistic approach.
No. Everything comes in by hand through the entry, which is why we ask for the gate to be unlocked and the bins and bikes moved before we arrive. On a gated entry with nobody home we cannot get round the back at all, and we would rather rearrange than turn up and lose the slot.
At low pressure, never high. High pressure lifts original path tiles and blows out the soft jointing beneath them, and relaying Edwardian tiling costs far more than any clean. Period front paths are soft-washed at low pressure, which shifts the moss and leaves the bedding alone.
Mainly for safety. The yard and the entry are the usual targets, done before winter or in the empty summer weeks, because slip risk in a shared house is the real reason, with appearance a distant second.
Other cleaning we do in Selly Oak
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