Pressure washing in Cairns that shifts wet season grime for good

Why exteriors go bad so fast up here

A house in Cairns weathers on a completely different clock to one down south. Between the humidity, the run of afternoon storms from December through March, and the salt coming off the water, a surface that was clean in April can be visibly green by Christmas. It is not neglect. It is the climate doing what it always does.

The three things we deal with constantly are mould on rendered walls, lichen locking into roof tiles, and that dark biological film that turns a concrete driveway from pale grey to almost black over a couple of seasons. All three are living growth, not dirt sitting on the surface, which is why hosing them or scrubbing with a broom never lasts more than a few weeks.

Pressure is not always the answer

Plenty of exterior cleaning genuinely needs high pressure. A concrete driveway, a block retaining wall, a paved pool surround: those surfaces are hard enough to take it and they come up beautifully.

Roof tiles and painted render are a different story. Point a high pressure lance at a tiled roof and you will strip the protective glaze off, force water back under the laps, and buy yourself a leak. Do it to painted fibre cement and you will drive water into the sheet joins. On those surfaces we soft wash instead: a low pressure application that kills the growth chemically and lets it rinse away, so nothing is blasted off and nothing gets driven where it should not go.

Knowing which of the two a surface needs is most of the job. If someone quotes you a whole house at high pressure without looking at what it is made of, be careful.

What we will tell you honestly

Some things are not worth cleaning. If a roof has degraded to the point where the tiles are porous and crumbling, washing it is money spent on a surface that needs replacing. If paint is already failing and lifting, a wash will accelerate it rather than freshen it up. We would rather say that on the phone than take the job and hand you a worse problem.

Equally, some jobs are far easier than people expect. A driveway that looks permanently stained is usually just biological growth sitting in the surface pores, and it lifts in a single visit.

Getting a price

Every quote is free and there is no obligation attached to it. Cost depends on the surface, the access, and how far the growth has gone, so we will not put a number on a job we have not seen properly. Call and describe it, or send a photo through the form, and you will get a straight answer about what it needs and what it costs.

There is more detail on the individual jobs in our exterior cleaning advice, including what actually drives the cost of a wash and how to tell when a roof has gone too far to be worth cleaning.