Brick Cleaning and Soft Washing
in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

The treatment was applied across every brick face and coping at low pressure, working from the top of each wall down so the whole surface was covered evenly.

Chiltern Surface Co technicians choose the treatment for the surface and the growth in front of them.

On this brick, the treatment breaks down the algae, lichen and moss in the face of the brick and in the joints, where a pressure washer cannot reach without doing damage.

The treatment is then left to work. This is the step that does the cleaning.

Soft washing is, in essence, letting the treatment do the work instead of the pressure. The growth is broken down where it lives, in the face of the brick and in the joints, and then rinsed away gently.

That matters on brick. Too much pressure can etch the face of a brick, strip its fired surface and wash out mortar, and the damage is permanent.

Chiltern Surface Co has a range of approaches, treatments and chemicals. Knowing which one to use, on which surface and when, is instilled in every Chiltern Surface Co technician.

That knowledge is what turns a wall like this round in a day without harming it.

The long ramp wall beside the railings shows the change most clearly. The same brickwork, photographed from the same spot, before the treatment went on and after the rinse.

The brickwork was finished in a single day. Higher up, the stone corbels at the roofline had efflorescence and mineral staining, which needed a different treatment.

At the roofline, the stone corbels had a different problem: efflorescence and mineral staining. Efflorescence is the white, chalky bloom left when water moves through masonry, dissolves the natural salts inside it and carries them to the surface. When the water evaporates, the salts stay behind.

Here it had built up over years, fed by water running through the stone and brick around the old leadwork, leaving white streaks and dark mineral staining down the face of each corbel.

Mineral salts are not organic growth, so a soft wash does not shift them. They need a different treatment, applied with care, because the stone underneath must not be harmed.

A test patch on one corbel established the right method. Chiltern Surface Co technicians then returned for a full day of specialist treatment across the high-level stonework.

The black algae, lichen and moss were treated and rinsed from the brick faces, retaining walls and copings along the whole front approach.

The walls now read as they were built: warm red brick, dark blue headers and clean, pale joints, with the brick face and the mortar left intact.

Chiltern Surface Co carried out this brick cleaning and soft washing in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. We also offer exterior surface cleaning, patio cleaning, driveway cleaning, roof cleaning and roof moss removal across Oxfordshire and Berkshire, including Henley-on-Thames, Thame, Windsor and Wokingham.

Algae and lichen live in the face of a brick, not just on it. A lasting result comes from the right treatment for the surface, time for it to work, a gentle rinse and protection with Chiltern EverGuard™, rather than a pressure washer that strips the brick to get the growth off.