Pressure Washing in Bridgend for Concrete Driveways & Block Paving

Bridgend driveways: concrete first, block paving second

Drive round Brackla, Litchard, Wildmill or Cefn Glas and the same driveway keeps turning up. The original is a poured concrete slab, or a pair of concrete strips, laid when the house was built and jointed every couple of metres. Decades of Welsh weather wear the cement paste off the top, the aggregate comes proud and the surface drinks water, so algae sits in the concrete rather than on it. A domestic machine lifts the loose green and leaves tiger stripes where the passes overlapped. The job wants a rotary surface cleaner held at a constant height, then a rinse that carries the dirt off the slab instead of forcing it into the joints.

The newer parts of the borough behave differently. Broadlands, Parc Derwen at Coity and the estates around Pencoed went up when block paving and imprinted concrete were the default. Block paving loses its joint sand, sinks where cars turn in, and grows weeds from the top down rather than from underneath. Imprinted concrete almost never fails at the concrete. It fails at the sealer, which goes milky, flakes at the edges and lifts the moment a lance gets too close. We clean it at low pressure, and where the old sealer has already gone cloudy or started peeling we strip it back properly before resealing, because fresh sealer laid over failing sealer simply comes off again inside a year.

Why Bridgend grows more moss than it should

The town sits where three valleys meet, with the Bristol Channel a few miles south. The Llynfi, Garw and Ogmore funnel wet weather down onto it, and ground here stays damp long after a shower has cleared Cardiff. Head north to Maesteg, Pontycymer or Nantymoel and the rainfall climbs again, the valley sides are steeper, and winter sun is off a north-facing terrace by early afternoon. Those are the streets where moss on a path gets measured in centimetres rather than just noticed.

The coast has the opposite problem. Porthcawl, Newton, Ogmore-by-Sea and Southerndown take a salt-laden south-westerly straight off the channel, and fine sand blows in from Merthyr Mawr Warren and the dunes behind Rest Bay. Salt and sand together work like a grinding paste on render and uPVC, and they pack block paving joints faster than anything inland does.

Pressure washing Bridgend houses is mostly not pressure washing

The estate housing put up between 1960 and 1990 across Brackla, Bryntirion, Litchard and Cefn Glas is largely pebbledash and roughcast render. The newer builds at Parc Derwen, Broadlands and the Pencoed fringes use thin coat silicone and mineral renders, K Rend among them. Neither should ever meet a lance. Pebbledash sheds its stones, roughcast crumbles at the edges and corners, and thin coat render is only a few millimetres of textured topcoat over a grey basecoat, so a lance burnishes the texture flat and cuts through to the basecoat in patches that will not blend back. We soft wash instead. Low pressure biocide, time to dwell, a controlled rinse, and the colour keeps coming back over the following fortnight as the dead growth weathers off. The same method suits uPVC, cladding, conservatory roofs and the painted brick on the older terraces around Oldcastle and Newcastle.

Roofs, gutters and everything above head height

Almost every estate roof in Bridgend is concrete interlocking tile, the profiled type laid from the 1960s onwards. Concrete tile is rough and absorbent, which is exactly what moss wants, so a north-facing roof here with a bit of tree cover carries a full mat inside fifteen years. That moss holds water against the tile, fills the gutters every autumn and lifts under the laps in a gale. We take it off, clear the gutters and downpipes it has already blocked, then treat the tiles so it does not come straight back. Slate on the older town terraces grows lichen rather than moss, and slate is treated, never scraped, because scraping takes the face of the slate with it.

Gutter work goes with it. A gutter vacuum on carbon poles reaches most two-storey Bridgend houses from the ground, with a camera on the pole so you can see inside your own guttering before and after. Downpipes are flushed separately, because a clear gutter feeding a blocked downpipe still puts water down your wall.

What we clean across Bridgend

• Driveway cleaning on concrete, block paving, tarmac, imprinted concrete and resin
• Patio cleaning, including black spot lichen on Indian sandstone and old riven slabs
• Block paving cleaning, kiln-dried re-sanding and sealing
• House washing and render cleaning by soft wash, K Rend and pebbledash included
• Roof cleaning, moss removal and biocide treatment
• Gutter clearing, downpipe flushing, fascia and soffit cleaning
• Decking, fencing and garden wall cleaning
• Conservatory roof and solar panel cleaning
• Oil stain and graffiti removal, with hot water where the stain needs it
• Commercial pressure washing for shops, forecourts, yards and car parks

How a Bridgend job runs

1. Tell us the surface and the size. Call or text 07576 128903, or email Liamdunn2406@outlook.com, with your postcode, what the surface actually is and a rough measurement. One photo taken from the front door tells us more than a paragraph does.
2. Price and a date. Most Bridgend jobs price from photos and a measurement. Roofs, large areas and anything with awkward access get looked at in person first. The quote is free either way, and it is a quote rather than a sales visit.
3. Protection before water. Air bricks, door and window seals, borders, ponds and low sills get covered. We work out where your surface water drain runs before anything is rinsed towards it, which matters most on the older town streets where the gullies silt up.
4. The clean itself. Flat surfaces go in overlapping passes with a rotary surface cleaner, then the edges and awkward corners are cut in by lance. Walls, render and roofs are soft washed. Hot water comes out for oil, chewing gum and ingrained grease.
5. Rinse, re-sand, seal. Everything is rinsed down so no residue dries on the surface. Block paving is re-sanded with kiln-dried sand once the joints have dried out, and sealed at that point only if you have asked for it.

Where we cover from Bridgend

Bridgend is a straight run west from Cardiff on the M4. Junction 35 for Pencoed, 36 for Sarn and Brackla, 37 for Pyle and Porthcawl, so distance inside the borough is not a problem. We cover the town and its estates: Brackla, Broadlands, Litchard, Wildmill, Bryntirion, Cefn Glas, Coity, Pen-y-fai, Newcastle, Oldcastle and Laleston. West to Sarn, Aberkenfig, Tondu, Cefn Cribwr, Kenfig Hill, Pyle and North Cornelly, then out to Porthcawl, Nottage and Newton. East to Coychurch, Pencoed and Brynna. South through Ewenny and St Brides Major to Ogmore-by-Sea and Southerndown. North up the valleys to Bettws, Blackmill, Ogmore Vale, Nantymoel, Pontycymer, Blaengarw, Llangynwyd, Maesteg and Caerau.

We work Monday to Sunday, 7:00 to 21:30. Early starts suit driveways on the busier estate roads, where moving the car and finishing before the school run saves everybody trouble. If you are on a terrace in Maesteg or up the Garw with no off-street parking, say so when you book and we will plan the van and the hose run around it.

Commercial work around the borough

There is a lot of hard standing in Bridgend that nobody looks at until it starts to embarrass them: the industrial estates at Waterton and Brackla, the retail units around Sarn, pub and takeaway forecourts through the town centre and out at Pencoed. We clean yards, service areas, loading bays, bin stores, fire escapes and staff car parks, lift chewing gum and grease off shop fronts, and take graffiti off brick, render and signage. Working outside trading hours is normal on this sort of job, which is part of why our day runs to 21:30.

Getting a price

Quotes are free and nobody turns up to sell you something. Call or text 07576 128903, or email Liamdunn2406@outlook.com. We are based in Cardiff, and we have been cleaning exteriors across Cardiff and South Wales since 2019. Our Google rating is 5.0 from five reviews, all of them five stars. That is a small number of reviews, and we would rather say so than dress it up.