Driveway & Patio Cleaning in Bexhill-on-Sea

Bexhill is 22 miles from Seaford and roughly 45 minutes, which puts it past the 20 mile radius I usually quote. I go anyway, and I am upfront that it means grouping jobs rather than driving out for one small patio.

Edwardian front gardens

The character of the work here comes from the way the town was laid out. Bexhill developed as a resort in the late Victorian and Edwardian period, and the villas along and behind the front were built with unusually deep front gardens.

That gives you a long path from the gate to the door, and in a lot of houses that path is still the original: geometric encaustic tiles in a repeating pattern, edged with soft red brick set on end, bedded on lime mortar.

These are the surfaces I treat most carefully anywhere I work, and it is worth being blunt about why. The tiles are unglazed clay with the pattern through the body, and a pressure washer erodes the face, which permanently dulls the colour. The lime pointing between them blows out at pressures far below what a modern drive shrugs off, and once the pointing has gone, tiles begin to lift.

The brick edging is worse again. Handmade brick has a hard fire skin formed in the kiln, and underneath it the material is soft. On a lot of Bexhill edging that skin has already gone at the corners, and every pass with a lance takes more.

So the method here is chemistry and time rather than pressure. A cleaning solution, fifteen minutes of dwell, a stiff brush on the stubborn areas, and a gentle rinse. It takes two or three times as long as jet washing the same area would, and I charge the same square metre rate. On some paths the correct answer is a bucket and a brush and no machine at all.

Flat ground and slow drainage

Bexhill sits on flat coastal ground and there is very little gradient anywhere near the front. Water goes where it lands and stays there.

That affects paving in a way people notice as staining rather than drainage. Slabs that stay wet for two days after rain grow algae and black spot considerably faster than slabs that drain in an hour, and it means my drying time before re-sanding is longer here than at Seaford.

It also means that when I wash a long front path, the run-off has nowhere obvious to go. I plan that before I start rather than discovering it halfway down the garden.

Salt

Bexhill takes the same coastal salt loading as the rest of this stretch of the south coast, and the same consequences follow: surfaces stay damp because salt holds moisture, algae has more hours in which to grow, and the interval between cleans is shorter than it would be inland.

The biocide treatment is worth taking here.

Little Common, Cooden and Sidley

Little Common is a different job, and an easier one. Largely bungalows with modern drives and standard paving, no fragile original material, straightforward access. Cooden takes the full seafront exposure. Sidley is more mixed and mostly ordinary work.

What it costs

The rate card applies exactly as it does everywhere: £4.50 a square metre for slabs and concrete, £5.50 for block paving with re-sanding, £5 for natural stone. Original tiled paths cleaned by hand are quoted at the natural stone rate.

Minimum job £150, and because Bexhill is at the edge of my range I would rather combine a path and a patio into one visit than come out twice.

Getting here

22 road miles from Seaford, about 42 minutes via the A27 then A259 east through Pevensey. Bexhill-on-Sea is at the outer edge of what I cover, so I try to book it alongside another job in the same direction. It does not change your price, it just means I may offer you a particular week rather than any day you like.

Villages and areas I work in around Bexhill-on-Sea: Little Common, Cooden, Sidley, Normans Bay. If you are somewhere not on that list but nearby, ask anyway.