Every Summer we like to get outdoors to clean and restore patios and exterior tiles. We are able to deep clean and remove mold and lichens, including dreaded black spots. We can repair pointing and loose tiles and will thoroughly seal your stone once it has been cleaned!. We work on limestone, sandstone, York stone, slate, granite and porcelain tiles and offer a comprehensive patio tile cleaning service in Barnet North London
Here you can see the dramatic difference that our patio cleaning service can provide. These are just ordinary concrete pavers but the process is the same as cleaning natural stone.
In the above pic you can see a large patio that has been cleaned and the pointing has been repaired. These tiles are sandstone and have a rich varied very warm colour. You can see the before pic where the moss and algae have made it look drab and grey. It really doesn’t take that much to kill the mold and bring out the colour again.
Afterwards this sandstone was properly sealed to full saturation and hopefully this one is still looking fresh today.
Our cleaning process for exterior patio tiles & stone
We use only tried and tested chemicals on your stone that are safe to use and will not damage it. We will first apply mold remover to penetrate deep into the stone and kill the growth that has taken hold. Once the mold and algae is dead it is easy to remove it with even a medium powered pressure wash. We still need to be very careful not to damage stone with the jet of water ( especially sandstone) and to avoid lifting grout or damaging it. With other types of contamination such as limescale , oil, rust we will use appropriate chemicals and tried and tested cleaning processes. Not every tile and stone behaves the same when cleaning so we will use a combination of rotary floor machines, chemicals and pressure washing to clean them.
Not all exterior tile cleaning is done on patios. This front entrance tiled pathway was cleaned and resealed. You can see the dramatic difference that was relatively easy to achieve
Rust stain removal on Limestone and Sand stone tiles
We find rust stains on allot of stone that it is caused by metallic items left on the patio and also from metallic and lead pot plants. With limestone and sand stone we find the rust has gone very deep into the tile and often takes allot of time to remove completely. This is best done whilst we are on the job cleaning the patio tiles as we can apply our chemicals and allow to work as many times as is required to remove all the rust. Some rust stains can take up to 3-4 hours to remove as the rust removing chemical needs to be reapplied several times and only removes a percentage of the rust with each application.
Here you can see this grand entrance to a house in West Hampstead. The York stone and tiles clean up lovely
When we clean an entrance way or tiled pathway no pressure washing is used. This is more of a hand detailed scrubbing approach and applying appropriate detergents. With this pathway and steps cleaned in the pic above, we applied our mold removing chemical followed by a high alkaline degreasing detergent. We where then able to apply a mild acidic cleaner to the tiles to deep clean them.