Driveway & Patio Cleaning in Eastbourne

Eastbourne is 12 miles from Seaford, either over Beachy Head on a good day or round via the A27, and it is really two different working areas that happen to share a name.

The western side

Meads and Old Town are Victorian and Edwardian, and a good proportion of the original hard landscaping is still there. Geometric tiled paths from the gate to the front door. Stone steps up to a raised entrance. York flags in side passages. Low brick walls with stone copings.

These are the surfaces I am most careful with in the whole of my patch, and the reason is that they cannot be replaced. A modern block paved drive that gets damaged can be relaid with matching blocks from a builders’ merchant. An 1890s encaustic tiled path cannot.

Those tiles are usually unglazed clay bodies with the pattern running through the material, bedded on lime mortar. High pressure does two things to them: it erodes the tile face, which dulls the colour permanently, and it blows out the lime pointing between them, after which individual tiles start to lift.

So the method is a cleaning solution, real dwell time, a brush, and a low pressure rinse. It takes considerably longer than jet washing the same area and I charge the same rate for it. On some paths the correct answer is to do the whole thing by hand, and I will say so.

Worn stone steps are the other Meads speciality. Decades of feet wear a dish into the tread, water sits in it, algae grows in the exact spot where somebody puts their weight coming down. I will do steps as a standalone job below my usual minimum because it is the smallest amount of money that removes the largest actual risk on a property.

The eastern side

Hampden Park and the post-war estates are ordinary work: concrete drives, slab paths, some block paving. Nothing fragile, nothing unusual, priced straight off the rate card.

Sovereign Harbour is different again. It is new, built on made ground rather than the chalk that underlies the western half of the town, and it is surrounded by water on three sides.

The paving out there is modern block and porcelain, so there is nothing delicate about it. What there is, is salt. A marina property takes salt loading comparable to a clifftop, and the practical effects are the ones I see everywhere on this coast: joint sand goes faster, algae returns sooner, and surfaces stay damp longer than the rainfall alone would explain.

Sovereign Harbour drives need doing more often than the same drive would in Hailsham. That is not a fault in the paving, it is where it lives.

Chalk one end, made ground the other

The geology splits along much the same line as the housing. Meads and Old Town sit on chalk, which drains fast and rarely settles. Out towards the harbour it is reclaimed and made ground, and settlement there is more common.

If part of your drive at that end of town has dropped, it is worth looking at before cleaning rather than after, because a uniformly clean surface shows a dip far more clearly than a dirty one.

Getting here

Twelve miles, about 25 minutes. In summer the coast road over Beachy Head is slower and considerably nicer; the A27 through Polegate is quicker. Neither affects your price.

What it costs

Natural stone, which covers York flags and most original path material, is £5 a square metre. Tiled paths cleaned by hand are quoted at the same rate and simply take longer. Slabs and concrete are £4.50. Block paving is £5.50 with re-sanding included. Minimum job £150, and steps are the exception I will happily make.

Getting here

12 road miles from Seaford, about 25 minutes via the A259 over Beachy Head or the A27 via Polegate. Travel is my cost to carry, so the square metre rate and the minimum charge are the same here as they are on my own street.

Villages and areas I work in around Eastbourne: Meads, Old Town, Hampden Park, Sovereign Harbour, Willingdon. If you are somewhere not on that list but nearby, ask anyway.