Salt drift off the coast meets farmland dust coming the other way, and both of them land on the ground. A drive out here has more feeding it than most, which is exactly why treating it beats scrubbing it.
Where each job starts, so nobody has to ring three firms to find the ballpark.
These are floors, not what you will pay. The surface decides most of it — block paving, concrete, flagstone and stone each respond differently and take different dwell times — then area, then how established the growth is. Driveways scale with length above all. A photo from one end turns all of that into one figure for your own ground.
Both look finished the day they are done. The difference shows up the following autumn, underfoot.
Force strips the visible film and the paving looks transformed. What it cannot reach is the growth down in the joints and in the pores of the block, and on a drive fed by coastal damp and field dust that reserve is substantial. It is back, and slippery again, by the next wet autumn.
The solution runs into the joints and soaks into the pores rather than skating across the top, and it kills the colony there. The surface comes back over the following days, and what lands on it afterwards has nothing established to join.
Most of the work happens before anything is applied.
Block, concrete, flagstone and stone all take the treatment differently. One photograph down the length of the drive tells us the surface and the size in one go.
Drains covered, planting along the edges soaked down, and any run to open water accounted for. On a rural drive that preparation is the bulk of the job.
The solution goes on at low pressure and is left to work. The film lifts, the last of it clears over the following days, and you are told what to expect so you are not left guessing.
A quick check and a short read, both free.
What the growth needs, why clearing the surface leaves it with all of it, and what actually changes the interval.
The Gutter Check takes under a minute. Where paving stays green in one particular patch, an overflowing gutter above it is very often the reason.
Covering drains and planting for a driveway takes as long as it does for a whole house, so anything else on the visit rides on work already done.
Mostly about how soon it is safe to walk on again.
It is, and that is usually the reason people ring about it. The slipperiness comes from a living film across the surface, so killing the film takes the cause away rather than scrubbing at the symptom. Worth doing before winter rather than after.
Eventually, anywhere damp enough, and nobody can honestly say otherwise. What changes is the interval. Because the treatment works on the organism rather than just rinsing the staining away, a treated wall typically holds for twelve months or more, and considerably longer on an elevation that gets some sun.
They get dealt with before the wall does — watered down or sheeted so nothing lands on them dry. It is the part of the job that takes the most preparation and the part people notice least, which is rather the point.
Not usually. Where lichen is heavily bonded in we will arrange to look at it again once it has died back, and that return is part of the job rather than another bill.
The main softwashing page explains what goes on the surface, how long it wants, and why soaking in beats working at it from outside.
A photo of the drive or the patio and a rough idea of the size is enough to start with.
Phone: 089-949-1525
WhatsApp: Send a couple of photos
Email: info@eireshine.ie
Send a photograph and we will tell you what is on it and what clears it. Far better sorted before the winter than after somebody has slipped on it.
One picture taken from one end gives us the length, which is what drives the price.
