Pressure Washing Manunda

An older suburb with an older building material

Manunda filled in through the post-war decades, and much of the housing still standing dates from roughly the late 1940s through to the 1980s. Low-set and high-set timber framed houses, some chamferboard, a lot of flat sheet cladding, cement tile and corrugated roofs, single carports, and concrete driveways that have been there a very long time.

That era brings one issue outranking everything else about cleaning a house here, and it is the reason this page exists. A great deal of the flat sheet cladding from that period is asbestos cement sheeting, which almost everyone still calls fibro. It turns up as external wall sheet with timber cover strips, as eaves and soffit lining, as fencing, and on some houses as corrugated roof sheeting.

Fibro must not be pressure washed

This is not a cautious in-house preference. Using high pressure water on asbestos cement sheeting is prohibited under Queensland work health and safety law, and the reason is straightforward. Bonded asbestos is safe while the fibres stay locked in the cement matrix. High pressure erodes that matrix, releases loose fibres into the water and the spray, and spreads contaminated slurry across the yard, the driveway and the neighbouring property. A stable sheet becomes airborne and ground contamination, and cleaning that up is a licensed job costing far more than the wash ever would.

Age is a rough guide. If the house predates the late 1980s and has flat sheet cladding or sheet eaves, treat it as asbestos until proven otherwise. Age is not proof either way, and neither is looking at it. The only definitive answer comes from a sample tested by a laboratory, arranged through a licensed asbestos assessor.

So on any Manunda job where the cladding or eaves look like fibro, we stop and say so before quoting that surface rather than finding out halfway through.

What we do instead

There are safe options and they are worth knowing.

If the sheeting is sound, painted and unbroken, it can be washed by hand at low pressure: a garden hose or gentle rinse, a soft brush or sponge, a mild detergent, and no abrasion of the surface. It comes up better than people expect, because on painted fibro the growth sits on the paint film rather than in the sheet.

If the paint is chalking, flaking or cracked, or the sheet edges are broken and crumbling, the honest advice is to leave it alone. Scrubbing damaged sheeting disturbs fibres just as effectively as a pressure washer does. At that point it is a removal or encapsulation question for a licensed asbestos removalist, not a cleaning question, and we will say so rather than take the job.

Everything else on the property is unaffected. Concrete driveways, paths, carport slabs, masonry, Colorbond fencing, roofs that are genuinely metal, timber weatherboard and rendered sections all get cleaned normally. Plenty of Manunda houses end up a mixed job: pressure on the concrete and the metal, low pressure by hand on the fibro, and one wall left as it is.

Getting a straight answer

If you are not sure what your walls are made of, that is completely normal and it is the right question to ask before booking anyone. Send a close photo of the cladding, the cover strips and the eaves, or call 07 4028 4268 and describe the house and its age. You will get a direct answer, including the answer that some of it should not be washed at all.