When driveway cleaning makes the biggest difference
Driveway cleaning is the highest-return exterior job on most houses, and it is almost never booked at the moment it would pay best.
Before the photographs, not after the viewings
The single biggest return is a pre-sale clean, and the timing is specific: before the estate agent photographs the property, not after it has been on the market a month. The front elevation and the drive are the first frame of every listing and the thing every buyer sees from the car. A day's work changes that photograph more than anything else available at the same money.
People routinely spend four figures on staging the inside and nothing on the twenty square metres a buyer looks at first.
Late spring, once the growth has finished
For an ordinary maintenance clean, late spring is the sensible window. The winter growth has run its course, the surface dries properly between passes, and an aftercare biocide applied then carries you through the following autumn — which is when a north-facing drive would otherwise go green.
Cleaning in February gets you a clean drive in February and a green one by October.
Before the joints empty, not after the weeds arrive
Once weeds are rooted through block paving, the jointing sand has already gone and the cheap fix is behind you. Cleaning and re-sanding at that point is a bigger job than it needed to be. If you can see soil in the joints rather than sand, that is the moment.
When it does not make much difference
Honestly: on a drive cleaned eighteen months ago that is only lightly green, another deep clean is not the best use of the money. A biocide topper costs a fraction and buys most of the same result. We will say so rather than take the booking, because the customer who gets told that is the customer who calls us in three years.
The one that surprises people
Pattern-imprinted concrete is not a driveway cleaning job. It is a clean, dry and re-seal job. Cleaning it takes the old sealer off, and if the sealer is not replaced the colour fades and the surface starts holding stains it used to shed. If you are getting quotes and nobody has mentioned resealing, they are planning to leave you worse off.
What driveway cleaning costs in Bristol · Driveway & patio cleaning