Patio and driveway pavers get dirty over time and grow black mold, moss and weeds. Most paver owners think to hire a pressure washing company to clean them or run out to the local hardware store and rent a pressure washer and try to pressure wash the pavers themselves. Pressure washing concrete pavers, especially newer ones, can easily damage the surface finish and we strongly suggest not pressure washing unless you are highly experienced and have the right equipment to pressure wash pavers.

In most cases, to get pavers clean with a pressure washer it requires using a jet style tip. This amount of pressure will easily damage the surface. Using a fan tip typically will not damage, but likely won’t achieve the level of clean you’re after.

Concrete pavers are made from a concrete mixture of small aggregates all the way down to fines. Concrete paver manufacturers have created ways to get the surface of the paver smoother by getting the fines up to the top. It’s easy for a high-psi pressure washer and an unexperienced operator to remove these fines from the surface exposing the smaller aggregates in the paver. These fines in the paver are also what hold a lot of the color in the surface of the paver. The small aggregates don’t absorb color nearly as much, so without the fines you’ll basically be left with whatever color the small aggregate is.

So how do we get pavers clean?
We use high heat (steam) and lower pressure equipment to clean our pavers. We also utilize walk behind surface cleaners instead of primarily using wands.