Driveway Pressure Washing Northampton

There is a sentence worth saying before any driveway is cleaned, because it saves everyone a difficult conversation afterwards: cleaning is not sealing. They are two different jobs, with two different products and two different prices. A cleaned drive that has lost its sealant will look flat and dry when it is finished, because it is dry. The depth and colour saturation people remember came from a coating, and that coating is not something water puts back.

Block paving is usually sealed after laying. The sealant soaks into the top of the concrete, deepens the pigment and puts a slight sheen on it, and then it wears — under tyres, under UV, under frost — over roughly three to five years. Nothing about that is a fault. But once it has gone, the block underneath is a matt, porous, mineral surface, and matt porous mineral is exactly how it will look once it is clean.

This drive had a specific history. It had recently been extended and the house had been worked on, and the surface was carrying the evidence: cured concrete splash, tarmac dragged in from the road, silicone, and oil. That is a post-construction clean rather than a maintenance clean, and it is a different discipline. Maintenance cleaning removes what grew. Post-construction cleaning removes what someone else left, and most of it is harder than biology.

Cement is the difficult one. Algae sits on a surface and can be released chemically; cured cementitious splash does not sit on block paving at all — it cures into the surface texture and becomes mechanically keyed to it. There is no chemistry that removes it without also attacking the block, because the block is made of the same family of material. That leaves controlled mechanical removal, and nothing else.

So the lance came out, which on block paving is always a judgement rather than a default. Held too long or too close it erodes the block face and strips jointing sand, and the damage is permanent. Used briefly, at distance, and only where cured cement left no alternative, it removes the deposit and leaves the block. The skill is entirely in knowing when to stop, and that is not something a machine setting can decide for you.

The other decision that day was not to use chemicals at all. It was around thirty degrees with no shade, and the block surface was considerably hotter than the air. Sodium hypochlorite on hot coloured concrete flash-dries before it has time to work, and what it leaves behind is bleaching and streaking that no second clean removes. On a coloured drive in full summer sun, the professional choice is to withhold the treatment, not to apply it carefully.

Not everything was difficult. The oil staining lifted with water alone — no solvent, no degreaser — which is more common than people expect on a porous block that has not been sealed for a while. The road silt and algal film released almost immediately. It is worth saying, because it cuts against the instinct that a bad-looking drive needs strong chemistry. Most of what makes a drive look bad is loose, and comes off with heat, flow and patience.

The finished drive was clear of everything that had been left on it, and flat in colour, because that is what an unsealed block drive looks like when it is genuinely clean. Restoring the depth is a sealing job — a separate visit, a separate product, and worth doing while the surface is clean and dry. Said before the work rather than after, it turns a disappointment into a plan.