The Brew Cabin

I moved to a new house last year and the builder had laid Marshalls 900x600 Saxon Buff pavers around the house and patio area. They looked very nice but they are so difficult to keep clean !!- hence my Topic desciption.
I think they are dreadful and am seriously thinking of lifting the whole lot and replacing with Indian sandstone.
I have recently laid a grey Indian sanstone terrace and it looks beautiful and is functional and easy to keep clean.
I would like to know if anybody has found the same problem with Marshalls Saxon Buff pavers?

This usually depends on their location ie if they are in a shaded area or near a lawn most flags are prone to dirt and slime build up however i agree that saxons are worse than most due to their sharp textured finish which leaves plenty of holes for dirt to take hold. All that to one side i do like the saxon range it just depends on how much time you have on your hands to keep them clean.

To be fair, it's not just Saxon paving, but any of the shot blasted/ bush-hammered "textured" flags and blocks suffer just the same. The textured surface is undeniably attractive and many designers are drawn to it through some misguided belief that it offers exceptional traction, when the truth is that they are not that much better in that respect than most other non-textured concrete pavers, but they are a bugger for attracting detritus, grime, crud, mosses, lichens and loads of other undesirables.

If you think about it, the textured surface actually creates a massively increased surface area, because of all the "ups and downs", so, a 450x450 flags, which could be assumed to have a surface area of 0.2025m² may well have an effective surface area of twice that figure.

They do tend to be reasonably self-cleaning in high traffic areas, but then the high traffic tends to abrade the textured surface and you lose the supposed 'appeal' of the units. The good news is that they do scrub up well - there's a picture on the Power washing page that shows just what a difference can be made by blasting them with a jet of water, but, for patios and residential paving, does the client really want the hassle of having to clean them so intensively every few months? I think not, which is why, when asked to suggest a flag for this type of project, I normally suggest the ground finish products, such as Marshalls' Perfecta or the Terrapave from Acheson-Glover, as they have a much longer 'clean life' than textured finish products.