Pressure washing

Pressure washing uses pressurised water to lift algae, moss, lichen and ingrained dirt from hard surfaces. It is also called power washing or jet washing. Blooming Marvellous Gardens cleans patios, paths, driveways and decking around Banbury and across Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Gloucestershire.

Washing is booked either as a service or as an hourly visit, with a minimum booking of 2 hours, and it is often taken on as part of a wider tidy rather than on its own. Customers on our regular garden and grounds rounds usually have the hard surfaces done once a year, ahead of the season when the terrace actually gets used.

Surfaces

What pressure washing suits

Block paving, concrete, flagstones, decking and steps all clean up well. Block paving in particular changes completely, because the sand joints and the surface of each block hold a film of algae that dulls the colour long before anyone would call the drive dirty. Concrete and flagstones take a firmer approach and come back to their original tone.

Steps are worth singling out. A green step is a genuine hazard in winter, and it is usually the first thing worth washing on a property even if the rest of the terrace can wait. Timber decking cleans well too, worked along the grain rather than across it so the boards are not furred up.

Care

Where care is needed

Soft limestone, old lime mortar and aged pointing can all be damaged by too much pressure. On older surfaces the pressure is dropped and the lance is kept moving, so no one spot takes a sustained blast. Getting this wrong strips the surface of the stone, and once the face of a limestone flag has been cut away it does not come back: the damage shows as bright patches and a rough, water-holding texture that then greens up faster than the stone around it.

The same caution applies to joints. A washer will happily blow the sand out of block paving or the remains of a soft lime pointing out of a path, so joints are worked deliberately and re-sanded or made good afterwards where that is needed.

Regrowth

Why moss and algae come back

Washing removes the growth but not the conditions that produced it. A shaded, damp surface under trees or on the north side of a house will green up again within a season or two, whatever is done to it. That is not a failure of the work; it is what those surfaces do. Most sites are better served by a scheduled repeat, usually annual, than by a one-off wash that is left for five years and then needs everything taking back to bare surface again.

Where regrowth is unusually fast, it is often worth looking at what is keeping the surface wet: overhanging growth that can be reduced, a blocked gully, or a bed spilling soil onto the paving.

Not the same job

Weeds in the joints are separate work

Washing lifts algae and moss off the surface, but weeds rooted in the joints of a path or drive grow back from what is left below. Those are dealt with through our treatment and prevention for hard surfaces, which is a different job and often best timed before the wash so the surface is clear when the water goes on.