Power wash damage

Cope · Post: # 96736Post **Cope** Sun Mar 30, 2014 7:32 pm

Please help. I had a guy round last week who offer to repoint my patio. He said he needed to remove the old loose pointing and that he would also clean the stones up with a power washer. He left a workman on site who used the power washer to remove the loose pointing during Friday. On Saturday morning when the patio had dried off i noticed that in many places, particularly around the edges of the stones, the surface of the stones has been removed leaving concrete exposed. The stones are Marshall heritage Old Yorkstone which i know are made from concrete to look like Yorkstone. Can anyone advise what i can do? Can the stones be re-coated with whatever coating they originally had? Or is the patio totally ruined? What should i say to this guy?

Post: # 96740Post **Dave_L** Sun Mar 30, 2014 8:20 pm

A photo would really help here, have a look in the Noticeboard area here about posting pics.

Cope · Post: # 96742Post **Cope** Sun Mar 30, 2014 8:45 pm

Here are some pics

Not sure my links are working, so just in case :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7a8nuzp2k5mwyg8/IMAG0862.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/95kmrnz9kirj3ex/IMAG0861.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kfd23whyy2wst1d/IMAG0855.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/66t27m22k8vidzx/IMAG0853.jpg

Cope · Post: # 96744Post **Cope** Sun Mar 30, 2014 9:11 pm

Now i think perhaps these stones were Stonemarket Millstone - if that makes a difference?

r896neo · Post: # 96748Post **r896neo** Sun Mar 30, 2014 10:44 pm

He has obviously tried to use the power washer to remove the pointing and used a very high pressure jet to dislodge it. This is an ill advised technique and is only done out of laziness to save him getting on his hands and knees and raking it out normally.

This has stripped some of the face off leaving the white aggregate in the concrete more exposed.

There is no remedy for this other than to do the rest to even it up.

As a side note the paving looks like it has been down a while and concrete paving will always begin to go like this with age, with or without pressure washing.

The pressure washing will speed up the process but in this case the fact that it has been done just in some areas has left the paving very patchy makes it a problem.

In terms of what to do next, its hard to say? How long has the patio been down? Any chance of photo showing a wider view?

Cope · Post: # 96749Post **Cope** Sun Mar 30, 2014 11:09 pm

The patio was laid in 2002. I'll try to take a wider view photo tomorrow.

Post: # 96760Post **Tony McC** Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:11 am

r896neo wrote:In terms of what to do next, its hard to say?

No it's not: sue the bugger!

There are far too many of these paving destroyers out there at the moment, and especially at this time of year. Armed with a power washer they bought at Machine Mart and sod-all knowledge about paving, they trawl the nation's housing estates looking for patios and driveways to balls-up.

Email after email after phone call comes in at the onset of Spring, all variations on a theme - they said they were specialists; they said they had to blast out all the "dirty" jointing sand; they said they use a special treatment to make it all look like new.

Bollocks!

The vast majority of them are chancers who don't have a clue about what they are doing and we need to drive them out of our industry.

Any pavior with a bit of experience would know that you do NOT put a high pressure lance anywhere near concrete reproduction flagstones, and especially not those that are more than a couple of years old. If you must clean, you use a Rotary Head Cleaner, or, better still, a stiff brush and detergent. Any so-called "professional" cleaning company would know this. It is not rocket salad!

So: you employed a 'professional' to clean the paving and their lack of professionalism, and lack of knowledge, has effectively destroyed your patio to a point where it is beyond repair.

Therefore, they owe you a replacement patio.

By suing, or threatening to do so, they will definitely learn the lesson and could well be persuaded to go back to their real job flogging cheap plastic tat on the local market, leaving the cleaning of paving trade to those who actually know what they are doing.

RAPressureWashing · Mon Mar 31, 2014 8:10 pm

Pity you didn't find us before you went down this sorry route, we could have cleaned and got the patio re-pointed without the damage you have now.
Which company pressure washer this out of interest, as we are Surrey based as well.

Cope · Post: # 96787Post **Cope** Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:43 pm

My wife spoke to him today and told him that we're not happy. He said that he used a low power washer and that there's no other way to clean a patio. Then he said the damage was already there before. We don't have any photos to prove otherwise, so it's his word against ours.

Cope · Post: # 96790Post **Cope** Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:50 pm

R&A Pressure Washing wrote:Pity you didn't find us before you went down this sorry route, we could have cleaned and got the patio re-pointed without the damage you have now.

I don't own a pressure washer and had no idea that this was even a risk so it never occurred to me to look for a specialist for a job like this. Do real stones have this same risk or is it peculiar to 'fake' stones only?

RAPressureWashing · Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:38 pm

Cope wrote:
R&A Pressure Washing wrote:Pity you didn't find us before you went down this sorry route, we could have cleaned and got the patio re-pointed without the damage you have now.

I don't own a pressure washer and had no idea that this was even a risk so it never occurred to me to look for a specialist for a job like this. Do real stones have this same risk or is it peculiar to 'fake' stones only?

Natural Stone is easily damaged as is concrete, if not cleaned correctly. The usual problem is people getting to close with the lance thinking they are doing a better job, also but not in your case using these "patio" cleaners bought from some of the big DIY sheds without reading the labels or understanding what chemicals are in them and then using on the wrong surface thus doing serious damage.

Post: # 96925Post **Tony McC** Sun Apr 06, 2014 10:39 am

Cope wrote:He said that he used a low power washer and that there's no other way to clean a patio.

I doubt very much that the first part of that statement is true and I know for a fact that the second part is a lie.

Using a low pressure setting (assuming his kit even has such a setting) would result in the job taking longer. How likely is it that this clown would purposely invest more time in the job? My experience of these ephemeral patio cleaners is they use full power, blast the bejaysus out of everything in sight, grab the money and bugger off quick before you realise just how shoddy the job is.

And as for no alternative: how did we clean paving in the days before we had power washers? Yes, there was a time before high-pressure water jets, and we tended to use stiff brushes, water and basic detergents. It took longer, it required much more effort, but it didn't cause any damage!