Ten years of this, and I still cannot leave an edge unfinished

Ten years and a bit

I have been cleaning hard surfaces on and off for ten years. Not ten years of full-time trading. It has come and gone around everything else life throws at you, but the work and the standard have been the same throughout.

The photographs on this site happen to cover an eighteen-month stretch in 2020 and 2021, Surrey to begin with and then across into East Sussex around Heathfield and Burwash. That is when I was in the habit of taking pictures, not when I started.

I have moved back to Seaford and I am doing it properly now: on my own books, prices published, quotes in writing.

What has not changed in ten years is that I cannot walk away from a job that is nearly right. I have OCD, which is a mixed blessing in most of life and an unambiguously good one in this trade. It means the edges get done, the joints get done, the bit behind the bins gets done, and I will still be there at six going over a corner you would never have looked at. Nobody has ever had to ring me back to finish something.

Every photograph on this site is from earlier work. None of them are Seaford jobs and I am not going to caption them as though they were. Local ones will replace them as I do them.

What ten years actually teaches you

Mostly how much damage this equipment can do in the wrong hands. Nearly everything I have learned since the first year is about using less pressure rather than more, reading the surface before the trigger comes anywhere near it, and knowing which problems are not cleaning problems at all.

That is the difference between someone with a machine and someone who has been doing this for a decade. Anyone can make paving wet. Knowing what a surface will take, and stopping at the point where more pressure starts costing you the stone, is the whole job.

Black spot lichen will not blast off, and trying takes the face off your paving. Efflorescence is not dirt and washing it makes it worse. A drive that has settled needs a groundworker, not me. Roofs should never see a pressure washer. Tarmac usually should not either. Those are the four conversations I have most often and all four of them lose me work.

What I cannot do

I do not treat weeds. Applying herbicide commercially requires PA1 and PA6 certificates which I have not got yet. So I will not advertise weed treatment, and I will not quietly do it anyway on the day. Cleaning removes what is growing now and re-sanding makes it much harder for the next seed to establish. If you want the ground genuinely treated, you want somebody qualified.

I do not seal, at least not at the moment. Done properly it is a second visit on a settled dry forecast with a product chosen for the stone, and I would rather leave it off the list than sell it as an add-on nobody ever checks. Get the paving cleaned first, then find somebody who seals for a living.

I do not clear gutters, wash render or clean roofs, and I do not do decking. Driveways and patios are the whole list. Plenty of one-man rounds advertise all of it, and fair play to the ones who can, but I would be learning on your house and that is not a good trade for either of us.

I do not lay or repair paving either. Where a drive needs a groundworker I will say so instead of taking the money.

I have no trade association memberships or accreditations, and you will not find badges on this website, because I have not earned any and I would rather you judged the work. When that changes they will go on, and not before.

Why the prices are published

Out of roughly twenty firms working this stretch of coast, two put a price anywhere on their website. The rest want you to ring so they can size the job, and the house, and you, before committing to a number.

Publishing the rate means I cannot charge the house with the new car on the drive more than the one without. It also means you can work out roughly what your job costs at eleven o'clock at night without speaking to anybody, which is how I would want to buy something.

How I work

You send photographs and a rough size. I send a fixed price in writing that says what is included and how long I expect to be there. If the job turns out bigger than I judged, the price stays where it is, because that was my judgement to get right.

I do not take deposits on domestic work, I do not ask for cash, and there is nothing to pay if you are not happy with what I have done.