Driveway & Patio Cleaning in Lewes

Lewes is the job where restraint earns its money. Almost everything about the town pushes against using a pressure washer the way you would on a modern block paved drive.

The county town is built on a chalk spur above the Ouse, and the housing reflects several centuries of building on a constrained site. Georgian townhouses fronting straight onto the pavement on the High Street and Keere Street. Flint and brick cottages through Cliffe and Southover, a good number of them listed. Then post-war and modern housing spreading up Landport and Nevill, which is ordinary work and behaves like anywhere else.

It is the older half that needs a different approach.

Old stone does not behave like new stone

The paving I meet in the older parts of Lewes is generally one of three things, and none of them like high pressure.

York stone flags, often a century or more old, laid on lime mortar or straight onto sand. York stone splits along its bedding planes, and where a flag has begun to delaminate a jet finds the weakness and takes the top layer off in sheets. Once that has happened there is no putting it back.

Old brick paving, usually softer than modern brick and frequently already spalling at the arrises. Pressure rounds the edges further and opens the face.

Lime pointing, which is everywhere in this town and is the single easiest thing to destroy with a lance. Lime mortar is deliberately softer than the stone it beds, so that movement cracks the mortar rather than the stone. Water at pressure blows it straight out, and then you have an open joint feeding water into the wall or the sub-base behind.

So in the old parts of Lewes I work at pressures that would look almost pointless to somebody watching me do a driveway at Polegate. Wide fan, long standoff, more dwell time with a cleaning solution, and on plenty of surfaces a soft wash and a brush instead of a machine.

Gradient changes the job

Lewes is steep, and gradient affects the work in ways that are easy to overlook.

Cleaning solution runs off before it has time to work, so on a sloping path I have to apply in sections and work upwards rather than treating the whole area and coming back to it.

Run-off has somewhere to go and it goes there fast. On the steeper streets I need to know where the water will end up before I start, because downhill from your path is frequently somebody else’s front door.

Access is the third one. On the narrow streets there is often nowhere to leave a van within hose reach of the job. It is nearly always solvable, and it is much better solved by looking at a photograph beforehand than by me arriving and standing in the road.

Chalk underneath

Lewes sits on chalk, so drainage is quick and settlement is rare, in common with Seaford and unlike the clay towns further north. Where paving in Lewes has moved it is usually because of a tree, a drain, or the fact that it was laid on a slope without adequate restraint at the bottom.

Kingston, Offham and the villages

Kingston, Offham, Rodmell and the rest of the Ouse valley villages come under the same working area and the same rate. The village properties tend to have more space, more natural stone, and rather more mature trees overhanging the paving, which brings leaf tannin staining into the conversation in a way it does not in town.

What it costs

Natural stone is £5 a square metre, which covers York stone, sandstone and limestone. Standard slabs and concrete are £4.50. Block paving is £5.50 with re-sanding.

Where a surface needs a soft wash rather than a jet wash I quote it at the same rate and simply take longer over it. The minimum job is £150. Lewes is 10 miles and about 20 minutes up the A26.

Getting here

10 road miles from Seaford, about 20 minutes via the A26 north up the Ouse valley. 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 Lewes: Kingston, Southover, Cliffe, Landport, Offham, Rodmell. If you are somewhere not on that list but nearby, ask anyway.