Soft Washing Services Surrey & Sussex

Professional low pressure render cleaning & soft wash across the South East including Surrey, East Sussex, Kent, London & Essex

We are a professional, experenced soft washing and render cleaning company based in Kent and operating across the south east region of the UK.

What is soft washing?

Soft wash is a technique developed to clean outdoor areas and hard surfaces at a very low pressure and utilising specalist cleaning products. These products are specifically developed to effectively clean and remove staining caused by black, green, red algae, mould, mildew, moss, lichen and other biological stains.

Soft washing is particularly effective for cleaning more fragile outdoor surfaces that could be damaged by high powered pressure washing. It is specifically intended and developed for :

• render cleaning, K Rend, Weber Rend, Monocouche
• brickwork
• painted walls
• UPVC and timber cladding cleaning
• exterior house and building cleaning
• roofs and roof tile cleaning
• awning and canvas cleaning
• shop canopies

Soft washng is defined in Wikipedia as : Soft washing is a low pressure cleaning process commonly used to safely treat and remove organic matter: mildew, bacteria, algae, fungus, moss, lichens in addition to dirt, grime and spiderwebs. Soft washing originated as an alternative to power washing where high pressure can cause damages.

source: wikipedia.org/Soft_washing

Soft washing can be adapted for all exterior house and building cleaning, patios and outdoor areas. At Gleam Team we also use soft wash for cleaning pattern imprinted concrete driveways and also sometimes for natural stone patios made of Indian Sandstone or limestone. The very low pressure and gentle pressure involved with soft wash makes it a safer opton for soft stone or cracked imprinted concrete, amongst other things.

How is soft wash different to pressure washing?

Jet washing or pressure washing are both the same thing and rely on the power of high pressure water being blasted against a surface to clean it. It is the perfect method of cleanng block paved driveways or concrete patio slabs, but clearly this is not a sensible way of cleaning soft rendered walls or brickwork. Our brick, wall and render cleaning services in Surrey, West Sussex and the south east are always done at low pressure. We follow the best practices recommended in the UK’s Code of Practice for Cleaning and Surface Repair of Buildings 2000 , for cleaning natural stone, brick, terracotta and concrete.

This code clearly states that building cleaning should be done using the lowest possible pressure and the minimum amount of water necessary. House exterors should not be subjected to excessve pressure or water saturation. In addition to the damage that can be caused by blasting render or to the bric face or mortar joints, water could also penetrate into a wall and freeze during winter months. Frozen water expands in volume and could cause or worsen cracks in a wall as it continues through a freeze – thaw cycle.

Soft wash brick cleaning in Sussex, Surrey and Essex

Exterior house and building cleaning in Surrey, Sussex, Essex and the south east needs to be done by experienced professionals such as Maidstone Gleam Team.

To put the different water pressures involved with soft wash and jet wash into some context, our professional pressure washers operate at up to 4000 PSI (pounds per square inch) whereas soft wash is a gentle pressure with less power than a garden hose. It’s the specialist cleaning soaps and products used in soft washing that makes it so effective.

We can safely clean away even the most heavy algae staining on brickwork and restore domestic and commercial buildings and walls. We can also treat the surfaces with the market leading biocide for long lasting residual protection against re-colonisation. The photos below show brick walls with heavy black staining that makes them look dirty and neglected. However, the black stains are in fact black algae and untreated it has allowed the algae colonisation to multiply and get heavier and heavier. and spread to other parts of the wall. It has reached the point where the bricks are smothered in a dense layer of algae and lichen.

As a result it has turned the perimeter walls of an exclusive residential area in Surrey into an eyesore that look old, dirty and in need of replacement. But of course, nothing so drastic is required and we were soon able to get the brickwork looking like new again with our professional soft washing services in Surrey.

What cleaning products and chemicals are used in soft washing?

Here at Gleam Team we use only safe and approved products that have been specially designed and developed for removing algae – black, green, yellow and red algae, mould, moss, lichen black spots and other tough staining from external areas and hard surfaces such as rendered walls, monocouche, Weber Rend, K Rend, pebbledash, brick, block paving, concrete, natural stone, drives, patios, roof tiles, cladding and most other outdoor areas.

We use professional soft washing products that are safe, biodegradable and approved by the UK Health and Safety Executive.

The products we use are NOT classed as hazardous or corrosive and when used as instructed are perefctly safe for people, pets and the environment.

We use only the best and most effectve professional grade soft wash cleaning products that we know deliver the results we require. Our customers want and expect immediate and dramatic results and that’s what we give them.

Black spot lichen removal

Lichen are the white and black spots commonly found on paving, concrete, brick and other exterior hard surfaces. Black spot are notoriously difficult to remove because they embed themselves into the surface. They are a combination of algae and fungi and very few products are capable of rapid removal of black spots and algae, but Gleam Team soft washing services in West Susssex, Surrey and Essex can safely and effectively remove lichen and algae staining and produce immediate results when cleaning render, brickwork, roofs, paving and house and building exteriors. Just take a look at the dramatic results we achieved on the stone and concrete paving in the photos below. They demonstrate the effectiveness of softwashing for staining and algae removal.

Advantages of softwashing

In addition to being able to clean fragile surfaces at very low pressure, soft wash also gives a deeper, longer lasting clean. Porous surfaces such as render, stone and brick absorb algae spores below the surface and jet washing can only clean what is on the surface. Even then it can’t remove all the embedded lichen and black spots. After jet washing the spores belowwall or paving will re-surface and immediately re-colonise the surface.

Soft wash chemicals kill all the algae spores and make surfaces easier to clean and remove black spots completely. However, some of the soft wash biocidal cleaning product is also absorbed below the surface killing all the invisible spores hiding below it meaning it is cleaned more deeply and will stay cleaner for longer free of algae and staining.

Long lasting residual protection against algae, lichen, moss, fungi and more

We can also treat exterior hard surfaces with a highly effective and safe biocide that keeps on preventing and killing lchen and all types of biological spores including black, green, yellow and red alage for a minimum of 12 months. This specialist softwashing product also has an ongoing cleaning effect so surfaces get cleaner over time. It can be used as a stand-alone cleaner or combined with others for more immediate results.

Low pressure soft wash roof cleaning in Surrey & Sussex

We also offer a professional, low pressure sift wash roof cleaning service in Surrey, Sussex and the south east. We do NOT jet wash roofs as this is specifcally warned against by roof tile manufacturers including Marley Tiles. Jet washing can strip away the rough exterior coating on roof tiles and also damage or dislodge the tiles. Jet washing roofs is also extremely messy and could lead to water entering loft spaces.

How do we remove moss & clean roofs in Surrey & Sussex?

For roof moss removal we manually scrape away the moss from ladders or a scaffold tower using extendable telescipic poles with moss scrapers attached to the end. When the moss has been removed we then gently spray the roof tiles at very low pressure with a soft washing cleaning product to clean and remove dirt, algae and lichen leaving the roof looking like new.

The roof cleaning process is finshed off with a treatment of moss inhibiting biocide that we guarantee wll keep your roof free of moss for at least 12 months. Should moss begin to grow again within 12 months we will return and treat it again free of charge.

In which locations do we provide soft washing services?

We provide professional residential and commercial soft washing services across the south east including :

Sussex

Surrey

London

Kent

Essex

We also cover the following towns and surrounding areas: