Driveway cleaning, sealing & restoration in Macclesfield
A great many drives that people are pricing up to replace only need cleaning, re-sanding and sealing. Block paving in particular ages badly for cosmetic reasons long before it ages structurally: the joints empty, moss establishes in them, weeds follow, and a drive that is dimensionally perfect starts to look like it is finished. Restoring it costs a fraction of relaying it, and it is the first thing an honest contractor should check.
How it is cleaned matters far more than whether it is cleaned. A pressure washer held too close, or a spinning surface cleaner run at full pressure over block paving, blasts the jointing sand straight out of every joint — and blocks with empty joints have lost the interlock that holds them together. That is how a drive can be visibly worse six months after being cleaned than it was before. The correct sequence is clean at a sensible pressure, treat the moss and weed rather than just blasting it, let it dry properly, then re-sand every joint.
Sealing is worth doing on some surfaces and close to pointless on others. Kiln-dried sand stabilisers and block sealers genuinely help hold joints and resist staining. Imprinted concrete depends on its sealer for both colour and durability and needs recoating every few years. Loose gravel cannot be sealed in any meaningful sense, and resin bound does not want a sealer at all — putting a film over a permeable surface removes the one property you paid for.
The other half of maintenance is knowing when to leave it alone. Any sealer or coating painted over a drive that is actually failing underneath just hides the fault and makes the eventual repair harder. If a drive is moving, holding water or cracked right through, a shiny finish on the top does not address a single thing that is wrong with it, and nobody should be selling it as though it does.
Cleaning, sealing & restoration — every job, in detail.
6 jobs in this category. Each has its own page explaining what's involved, what your contractor checks and — just as importantly — when a job can safely wait.
Driveway cleaning
Cleaning a drive properly rather than blasting it — sensible pressure, moss and algae treated rather than just knocked off, and, on block paving, the joints re-sanded afterwards. A great many drives people are pricing up to replace only need this.
Read more →Driveway sealing
Sealing a drive where it genuinely helps — block paving, sandstone, imprinted concrete — and saying so where it does not. A sealer applied over a dirty, damp or failing surface locks the problem in, so what happens before the sealer goes on matters more than the sealer.
Read more →Block paving restoration
The full sequence on a tired block drive — treat, clean, repair the odd sunken or broken area, re-sand every joint, vibrate and seal. It is the job that most often makes a replacement quote unnecessary, and it is worth doing before anybody prices a new drive.
Read more →Weed & moss removal
Getting rid of weeds, moss, algae and lichen properly — treated at the root and in the joints rather than scraped off — and then dealing with the reason they were there, which is usually empty joints, standing water or permanent shade.
Read more →Oil & stain removal
Oil, diesel, rust, paint and organic staining lifted where it can be, and dealt with another way where it cannot — including swapping stained blocks for donors from a hidden part of the drive, which is a fix nothing else on this site can offer.
Read more →Driveway repointing
Raking out failed mortar joints in stone, sett and flag paving and repointing them properly — with a mortar that suits the stone, or a resin jointing compound where that is the better answer. Failed pointing is nearly always a specification problem rather than an age problem.
Read more →Not sure which one you need?
Describe it in your own words on the quote form. Your contractor will work out what the job actually is when they ring you back — usually the same day.
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