Pressure Washing Smithfield

Everything here runs downhill

Smithfield is where the highway splits, one road climbing the Macalister Range toward Kuranda and the other carrying on to the northern beaches. The suburb wraps around the base of that range, and the newer estates have been pushed further and further up the lower slopes over the last twenty years. That slope is the single biggest thing shaping what the exterior of a Smithfield house looks like.

Rain that falls on the range does not soak in on the way down. It runs, and it carries the red brown lateritic soil that the range is made of. After a solid wet season week you get that colour fanned across driveways, aprons, garden edges, retaining walls and the lower part of anything with a pale finish. Splashback off garden beds puts it on the first half metre of render and on the bottom of Colorbond fencing, always on the uphill side.

Red soil staining is not mould and it is not general grime. It is iron rich mineral, it bonds hard to porous concrete, and the longer it sits the more it behaves like a dye rather than a deposit. Fresh, it lifts readily. Three seasons deep in an old broom finished driveway, it will lighten substantially and it may not go completely. That is worth being told before the job rather than after it.

Student housing and the turnover clock

The other thing that makes Smithfield different is the James Cook University campus and everything that has grown up around it. There is an enormous amount of rental stock here, a lot of it changing hands on the academic calendar rather than the property calendar. That produces steady end of lease and between tenant work, and it comes with a hard date attached.

The exterior work is usually the part left to last: a driveway that has gone black, a carport slab, a rear patio, fencing, and window frames. None of that is complicated, but it does need scheduling around the actual handover rather than the day the truck happens to be free. Book turnover cleans with the date attached and it gets planned properly.

Newer builds, careful methods

Most of the housing on the slopes is recent construction. Rendered block, painted fibre cement, Colorbond roofing, exposed aggregate or stencilled concrete driveways. Render and painted sheet want a soft wash, meaning low pressure, the right chemistry and a proper rinse. Stencilled and coloured concrete is the one people get wrong most often, because the colour and sealer sit in a thin surface layer and a high pressure lance held too close will strip it off in a visible stripe that no amount of further cleaning will fix.

Steep driveways also need thinking about. Everything you lift runs down onto the street or into the neighbour’s yard unless it is controlled, and on a slope that happens fast.

Getting a look at it

Smithfield is an easy run from base and sits on the same trip as the beaches. If it is a rental with a handover date, mention the date first. If it is red staining, a photo taken in daylight tells us more than a description will. Call 07 4028 4268 or send it through the form.