Soft Wash Treatment &
Porcelain Patio Restoration

Alison contacted Chiltern Surface Co about the exterior of her contemporary home in Stratford‑upon‑Avon, Warwickshire.

The house is finished in white render with deep, painted soffits and fascias — a design that looks superb when it is clean, and shows every mark when it is not. The property had a real problem with spiders: webs and nests had built up across the render, in the corners of the soffits and around every window, and with them came the dirt and staining that webs trap.

Wrapping around the rear and side of the house is a large porcelain patio. It was dirty, with a fair amount of algae in places, and the jointing between the tiles was beginning to fail. Alison simply wanted it looking fresh and new.

Site Assessment

Our site assessment confirmed that neither surface was a candidate for conventional pressure washing. Render is easily damaged by high pressure, and porcelain jointing can be blown out of the joints, so both required a controlled approach.

For the house we recommended a full soft wash treatment of the render and the complete exterior — a low‑pressure application that clears the webs and nests, kills the organic growth on the render, soffits and fascias, and leaves the whole house looking fresher and newer — followed by Chiltern EverGuard™.

For the patio we recommended going further than a clean: grinding out the failing jointing, a full deep clean, and a complete repoint of every joint, finished with Chiltern EverGuard™.

The soft wash covered the complete house — front, rear and both sides — so that every elevation finished the same bright, even white.

The deep soffits are the feature that defines this house, and they were also where the spiders had settled: webs and nests strung between the rafters and packed into every corner, with dirt and staining across the panels beneath.

Every run of soffit and fascia, and the render above it, was reached with telescopic lances from the ground and from the appropriate access equipment — nobody walks on a roof to clean it.

Each section was treated with the soft wash solution, allowed to dwell, then carefully rinsed. The glazing beneath was protected and cleaned down afterwards, and we worked from the top of the house downwards so nothing rinsed from above landed on a finished surface.

Render, painted timber and uPVC are all surfaces that high‑pressure washing damages: it can drive water behind the render, strip paint from the soffits and leave streaks that never quite go away.

Soft washing is the opposite. The solution is applied at little more than garden‑hose pressure and is left to do the work itself — clearing the webs and nests, breaking down the soiling and killing the algae and organic growth at the root, before everything is rinsed away gently.

There is no single soft wash. We have a range of approaches, treatments and chemicals available to us, and each surface, each type of growth and each level of soiling calls for a different one, at a different strength, left for a different length of time.

Knowing which to use, and when, is instilled in every Chiltern Surface Co technician. It is that knowledge, as much as the equipment, that we believe sets us apart — and it is why the house stays cleaner for far longer, typically two to three years before any treatment is needed again.

The jointing between the porcelain tiles had been beginning to fail, with sections cracked, sunken or missing altogether — so rather than patching the worst areas, we recommended a complete repoint of the whole patio.

Failed joints are not just a cosmetic issue. They let water into the bedding, allow the tiles to move, and give weeds and moss the foothold they need to establish.

Once the patio had dried, every joint was repointed with a resin jointing compound suited to porcelain — one that bonds to the tile edges, remains slightly flexible and resists the growth that had taken hold in the old joints.

The excess was carefully cleaned from the tile faces, so the new joints read as crisp, consistent lines across the whole patio — the same tiles, but a patio that reads as new.

The final stage was the application of Chiltern EverGuard™ across the completed porcelain patio, just as the house had received it after the soft wash.

Chiltern EverGuard™ is a professional biocide treatment. It penetrates the pores of the material and the joints, kills the microscopic spores responsible for algae, moss and lichen, and prevents the growth from re‑establishing.

A patio surrounded by planting and shaded by the house is exactly the kind of surface that greens over quickly after a clean, so this treatment is what makes the difference between a patio that looks good for a season and one that stays clean for years.

Protection typically lasts twelve to twenty‑four months on a patio, depending on shade, moisture and surrounding trees.

The completed project transformed the whole exterior of the house.

The soft wash treatment cleared the spiders' webs and nests and removed the soiling from the render, soffits and fascias, returning the house to a uniform, bright white that reads clearly against the dark window frames and roofline — and Chiltern EverGuard™ will keep it that way.

The porcelain patio had its failing joints ground out, was deep cleaned back to its original pale grey, completely repointed and treated with Chiltern EverGuard™ to keep the growth from returning.

The result is exactly what Alison asked for: a house that looks fresher and newer, and a patio that looks fresh and new.

Chiltern Surface Co carried out this project in Stratford‑upon‑Avon, Warwickshire.

We also carry out patio cleaning, driveway cleaning, roof cleaning and roof moss removal for premium homes across Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire, including Amersham, Nettlebed and Hurley.

Following an assessment of your property, we can recommend from a wide range of exterior cleaning and restoration services, including soft wash treatment for render, soffits and fascias, roof cleaning and roof moss removal, patio cleaning and porcelain or natural stone restoration, re‑jointing and repointing, block paved driveway cleaning and restoration, gutter cleaning, and long‑term protection against regrowth with Chiltern EverGuard™.