Commercial Pressure Washing Cardiff

What we clean for commercial clients

Commercial work splits into two jobs. Hard surfaces the public walks on, which is a safety problem, and elevations the public looks at, which is a presentation problem. Most sites have both, and almost none of them want two separate visits.

• Car parks, ramps, service yards and multi-storey stairwell cores
• Petrol and dealership forecourts, service bays and oil stained concrete
• Shop fronts, canopies and the paving immediately outside the door
• Loading bays, goods doors and the mud tracked in around them
• Bin stores and refuse compounds, including the standing area under the bins
• Communal paths, steps, fire escapes and external stairwells
• School playgrounds, covered paths, canopies and nursery play areas
• Pub frontages, beer gardens, smoking shelters and outdoor seating
• Industrial units, warehouse aprons and roller shutter surrounds
• Cladding, render, signage panels and uPVC on retail parks

None of those take the same machine setting. Poured concrete and tarmac take full pressure and a rotary surface cleaner. Block paving needs the pressure backed off and the joints refilled with kiln dried sand afterwards, or you get sunken blocks and weeds back inside a season. Painted line markings, resin bound surfaces and rubber play surfacing are treated far more gently, because a surface cleaner held still for two seconds leaves a permanent circle.

Slip risk is why most sites call us

Algae, diesel film and rotting leaf mulch are what put people on the floor. Algae is worst on north-facing paths and under trees, and it is most dangerous when it is barely visible. A thin green film goes from grippy to treacherous the moment it rains, and Cardiff gives it plenty of chances. Steps, ramps and the transition from car park to entrance are where the incidents happen.

You have a duty of care to everyone who comes onto your site under the Occupiers' Liability Act, and a slip claim costs you money long before it reaches an insurer. We log every visit with dates and photographs, so there is something in the file if an incident is raised months later. That is why most managed sites move to a schedule rather than ringing us once it already looks bad.

Chewing gum removal

Cold water will not shift chewing gum. It flattens it and works it further into the surface. We lift gum with heat and a low pressure lance, which softens it and releases it without blasting a lighter patch into the paving around it. On a busy parade you can be working through hundreds of pieces across a single frontage. Gum is priced by area or by the hour, because the time it takes has very little to do with the size of the site.

Car parks, forecourts and loading bays

Car parks are mostly a logistics problem. Bays have to come clear in blocks, so it is either a section at a time behind cones or a full clear overnight. We check where the gullies run before we start rather than after they back up. On forecourts the real work is the oil. Diesel and engine oil soak into unsealed concrete and cold water only spreads them, so those areas get a degreaser, dwell time and hot water.

Loading bays and yards on the trading estates around Cardiff, Leckwith and Cardiff Gate collect oil, rubber and whatever the last delivery leaked. None of it lifts in one pass. If a stain is a shadow that will never fully go, we tell you before we quote rather than after we have finished. Unsealed concrete holds a ghost of anything that has sat on it for years.

Shop fronts, cladding, stairwells and bin stores

Cladding and painted render are not pressure washing jobs. Composite panels, powder coated aluminium and coloured render get soft washed, which means a low pressure application of a diluted biocide that kills the algae and lichen sitting in the surface, time for it to work, then a gentle rinse. We keep bleach based mixes off coloured render and paintwork, because they lighten pigment and mark whatever sits below them. A turbo nozzle on a panel joint drives water behind the cladding and strips the coating, and that streaking never comes back out.

Stairwells, bin stores and refuse compounds are the jobs nobody wants and the ones tenants complain about most. They are enclosed, so containment matters. We cover drains where the work needs it, keep dirty water out of surface water gullies, and sanitise bin areas rather than moving the smell around. On the managed blocks around Cathays, Roath and the Bay, the bin store needs doing more often than anything else on site.

Pubs, beer gardens and schools

Most beer garden work lands in March and April. Timber decking goes green over the winter and gets slippery enough to close a terrace, and the wood is soft, so it takes a wide fan worked along the grain rather than a hammering that raises the fibres. Terraces, smoking shelters and the step up from the pavement are the parts that matter. Pub work in Canton, Pontcanna and Whitchurch usually goes in on a Monday morning before opening.

School sites get cleaned when the pupils are not in. Playgrounds, canopies, covered areas and nursery surfaces are done over the summer or at half term. We sign in, work to your safeguarding rules, and fence the working area off from any part of the site still in use. Painted playground markings and rubber safety surfacing need controlled pressure, or you take them off along with the dirt.

How a commercial pressure washing job in Cardiff runs

1. Site visit and written quote. We walk the site with you, measure the areas and note access, water supply and drainage. The quote is split section by section, so you can add or drop parts of the site rather than take one lump figure.
2. Paperwork before the date. A risk assessment and method statement written for your site, plus whatever your contractor induction, permit to work or approved supplier process needs. It goes over in advance, so your facilities or health and safety contact has time to read it.
3. Agreeing the window. Overnight, before opening, after close or a weekend. We confirm which sections are cleared and when, and who holds keys, alarm codes and barrier access.
4. Setting up. Cones, barriers and wet floor signs, drains protected where needed, hoses run clear of pedestrian routes. Water supply is settled at the quote stage, not discovered on the morning.
5. Pre-treat, wash, detail. Treatment goes on first and is left to dwell, then the machine work, then the edges, kerbs, steps and the ground around bollards where a surface cleaner cannot reach. Gum, oil and graffiti are handled separately.
6. Sign off and invoice. We walk the finished area with you, or send dated photographs if the work was done overnight. The invoice follows by email with your order reference on it.

Out of hours and weekend working

We are set up for it. Our hours run 7:00 to 21:30, seven days a week, and most commercial work sits at the ends of those days. Retail before opening, pubs on a Monday morning, offices and car parks on a Sunday, schools in the holidays. Weekend slots are not automatically dearer. They are often better value, because we are not stopping every ten minutes for cars and pedestrians.

Scheduled maintenance contracts

One off cleans are fine, but a site is cheaper to keep clean than to rescue. A schedule stops algae ever getting established, so later visits are shorter and cost less than the first deep clean did. The patterns that work:

• Bin stores and refuse areas, monthly or every six weeks
• Shop fronts, entrances and gum hotspots, monthly or quarterly
• Car parks, service yards and loading bays, spring and autumn
• Beer gardens and outdoor seating, before the season and again in autumn
• Communal paths, steps and stairwells on managed blocks, quarterly
• Cladding, render and signage soft washing, once a year

Dates are fixed in advance, so the work lands in your diary and your budget instead of turning up as an emergency in October when the first wet week makes the steps slippery.

Quotes, paperwork and invoicing

Quotes are free and written. For anything bigger than a shop front we would rather visit than price off a map, because access, water supply and the actual state of the surface move the figure more than the area does. Every quote is itemised section by section, and the price holds unless the site changes between the visit and the date.

We invoice by email with your purchase order or job reference on it, and work to normal commercial terms rather than asking for payment on the day. Clients with several sites can have one invoice per site or one consolidated invoice, whichever suits your accounts team.

Talk to us about your site

Call 07576 128903 or email Liamdunn2406@outlook.com with the site, the surfaces and the window you can give us. We are based in Cardiff, and we cover Cardiff, Barry, Newport and the rest of South Wales. We have been cleaning commercial and domestic property here since 2019, and our Google rating is 5.0 from five reviews.