I was called out to a house in Duxford to quote for cleaning kitchen floor tiles when the customer realised, we could also clean and re-sand block paved patios. We provided her with a quote and booked the work in alongside her kitchen tiles which I will detail in another post.
Duxford is a small village around 10 miles from Cambridge, and is an area which is rich in history. Duxford is most famous for RAF Duxford, a former RAF airfield that was used as a sector station during the Battle of Britain. Back in 1972 the Ministry of Defence began to store historically important aircraft in the hangars on the airfield and it is now used to house the Duxford Imperial War Museum .
The block paved patio was looking worse for wear after the winter, what was once lovely shades of red brick was now dark and almost black in places with dirt and algae. Regular maintenance is always suggested to ensure the paving is looked after and to prevent it becoming slippery.
Cleaning an outside Block Paved Patio
Our first job was to sweep the patio down to remove loose dirt and leaves.
Next job was to tackle the heavily stained areas that were treated with Tile Doctor Pro-Clean solution which was applied neat and left to soak in for fifteen minutes. Normally I would dilute Pro-Clean with water but in this case, I needed the full power of the product and even applying such a strong solution would not cause the brick pavers any harm. Whilst the Tile Doctor Pro-Clean was soaking in, I set up the high-pressure machine in my van and ran the long hose out to the garden area.
The Tile Doctor Pro-Clean was then scrubbed in by hand with a long handled scrubbing brush. The area was quite large, so this took most of the morning. The patio really was very dirty so lifting the layers of dirt took some time.
Next the block paving was deep cleaned using water delivered under high pressure from a wand supplied by our truck mounted cleaning machine. This machine can deliver water at various pressure levels, much higher than your average Karcher and makes easy work of cleaning patios. Immediately the patio started to look dramatically cleaner.
Once the block patio was done, I left it to dry and turned my attention to the decking around the other side of the house.
Re Sanding a Block Paved Patio
After a day of drying out we returned the following morning to re-sand the patio with kiln-dried sand which is essential to maintain the integrity of the patio and keeping the weeds down.
The renovation process worked really well, and the patio now looks as new as it did when it was laid. My customer was overjoyed with the results, hopefully the weather will enable them to get the patio furniture out so they can have lots of barbeques this year and make the most of the space.
Source: Brick Paved Patio Cleaning, Polishing and Sealing Service in Duxford, Cambridge
Cleaning Tile 