What Does It Cost to Clean a Commercial Car Park?

Almost nobody publishes a commercial car park price, and the reason is not commercial secrecy. It is that the area is the least important variable in the job, so a per square metre figure on its own would be close to meaningless.

Here is what actually drives the number, in the order it matters.

The four things a survey is really checking

How much of the site can be shut at once. This is the big one. A car park that can be emptied for a morning is a different job from one where I am working around parked cars all day, and the difference is easily a third of the price. Phased working costs more per square metre because the machine stops and starts, cones move, and the same square metre gets approached twice.

Whether it has to be out of hours. Adding a quarter to the price to start at five in the morning sounds expensive until you price the alternative, which for a hotel is either unhappy guests or a closed car park during check-in.

What the surface is made of. Tarmac takes a surface cleaner at speed. Block paved car parks, which are common on newer office and residential developments, are much slower because the dirt is in the joints rather than on the face.

How much of it is oil rather than dirt. A green film across a shaded run washes off at walking pace. Twenty oil drips per bay across a hundred bay site is a degreasing job with a wash attached, and it prices differently.

Rough shape of the numbers

Open hard standing over 200m² sits somewhere from about £2.50 a square metre. That is cheaper than a domestic driveway, which usually surprises people. The reason is edge work: on a driveway a large share of the time goes on the borders, the step, the awkward corner by the bin. On an open car park the machine runs in long uninterrupted passes and the ratio of edge to open surface collapses.

Most car parks end up bought as day rates rather than by area, because a single operator covers a fairly predictable amount of ground in a day and that is easier for both sides to plan around. A day on site for one operator sits around £600 as a working figure, and half days around £350.

Out of hours adds roughly a quarter. There is a minimum visit charge, because getting a machine to site and away again is most of a small job.

Why the cheap quote is usually cheap

If a quote comes back very low against the others, it is worth asking three questions before taking it.

Is a surface cleaner being used, or a lance? A lance leaves banding on open tarmac that shows up in low sun for years afterwards, and it is slower, which is why the price only works if the job is rushed.

What happens to the bay markings? Old painted markings lift under a straight lance held too close. Repainting a car park costs far more than cleaning it.

And where are the washings going? On a site with an oil interceptor, pushing a heavy degreasing load through it without checking its capacity is somebody’s problem later.

What I would do with a fixed budget

If the budget will not cover the whole site, do not spread it thinly across everything. Do the parts people walk on and look at: the entrance, the disabled bays, the route from the bays to the door, and the shaded run where the algae actually is.

A car park cleaned in the places that matter looks maintained. A car park cleaned uniformly and lightly all over looks the same as it did.

I survey commercial sites across East Sussex and put a fixed price in writing before anything starts. The commercial car park page covers how the work runs on a live site.