Driveway and Patio Cleaningin Covington

Pressure washing, in our own words

Pressure Washing: Both Driveways and Walkways, or softwash homes.

We can pressure wash your driveway, sidewalks, walkways, decks, basketball courts, and patio. Cut through the grime and moss and let your pathways shine!

Flat hard surfaces are what pressure is for

Pressure washing has a right target, and this is it: the concrete, pavers, brick and wood you walk and park on. These surfaces are built to take weather, they sit flat where dirt and organic growth settle on them, and they have no seams where driven water could get somewhere it should not.

That is a meaningful distinction, because the same machine pointed at the wrong thing does damage. Siding, painted trim and roofing are not flat hard surfaces, and they get a different treatment entirely. We explain where the line falls in pressure washing and soft washing are not the same job.

What is actually on your driveway

Most of what darkens a driveway here is not dirt. It is alive.

Algae is the thin green or black film that spreads in a uniform sheet, usually worse where a tree or a roofline keeps the slab in shade. It is a living layer sitting on the surface of the concrete, and it comes off cleanly when it is lifted rather than scrubbed at.

Moss is the next stage: thicker, spongy, and usually starting in the joints between pavers, along the crack lines in concrete and at the edge where the slab meets the lawn. It holds water, which keeps the surface below it wet, which encourages more moss.

Then there is the ordinary layer underneath, the traffic film, tire rubber, pollen, needle litter and grit that builds up on any outdoor surface over a season. On a shaded driveway the three combine into a dark grey green that most homeowners stop noticing until the first clean pass shows what the concrete actually looks like.

Not every surface takes the same approach

Concrete is the most forgiving surface on the list, but it is not indestructible. Held in one place, a narrow stream carves visible lines, and older concrete with a weathered or spalling face gives up its surface faster than a newer pour. Even, overlapping, constantly moving passes are what produce an even finish.

Pavers and brick add a variable: the sand in the joints. Aim carelessly and the joints blow out, which leaves a surface that looks clean and sits loose.

Decks are wood, and wood is soft. A deck does not want the same setting as a driveway, and the passes have to run with the grain and the length of the board rather than across it. Board condition matters more than square footage on a deck. Older, greyed or cupped boards need a lighter hand.

Basketball courts and sport slabs are usually painted or coated, and a coating is only as durable as its bond to the concrete underneath. The goal there is to lift the green film off the surface without lifting the paint with it.

Where the water goes

Anything that comes off a surface leaves with the water, which is worth thinking about before the job rather than after. Runoff from a driveway flows to the lowest point, and that is often a garden bed, a lawn edge or the sidewalk at the street.

Part of doing this properly is rinsing the boundaries so the grime does not dry as a tide line where the washing stopped. The garage apron, the join between walkway and driveway and the edge against the lawn all get attention. A clean slab with a visible dirty border around it is a job half finished.

Getting ready for us

A short list:

• Move vehicles off the driveway and out of the immediate area.
• Clear pots, furniture, toys, mats and hoses off the surfaces being cleaned, or tell us and we will move what we can.
• Close the windows and doors on the side of the house we are working on.
• Unlock the gates and let us know about pets in the yard.
• Point out any cracked, loose or lifting concrete and any loose deck boards before we start.

What pressure washing does not cover

This page is deliberately about flat hard surfaces. Two jobs that sound similar are genuinely different work:

• Your siding wants a soft wash, which uses low pressure and a cleaning solution to lift dirt and grime off the house without forcing water where it should not go.
• Your roof wants brushing and a moss treatment, never pressure. Pressure and asphalt shingles do not belong on the same roof.

Plenty of homeowners do all three in one stretch, and there is a sensible order to it. Our season by season rhythm for South Sound homes walks through which jobs pair and which ones want to happen first. Cleaning the gutters before washing the driveway underneath them, for instance, saves doing the driveway twice.

Driveway and patio cleaning across the South Sound

We pressure wash driveways, walkways and patios for homes in Covington and across South King County, Pierce County and Thurston County, including Kent, Renton, Maple Valley, Auburn, Federal Way, Puyallup, Sammamish, Issaquah and Olympia. The full list is on our service areas page. We work on homes only.

Book online or contact us with a rough idea of the square footage and what is growing on it.