It doesn’t matter what you do to a surface you’ve cleaned, you can put weedkiller down, you can use sealant, you can even do a little dance, in my experience none of it will make a whole lot of difference, the surface will get dirty again in a year or so.

Sometimes a customer will phone up and moan about this sorry situation, but what can you do? If you clean something, it doesn’t matter what it is, it will get dirty again. Some people however will not willingly accept what I thought was a commonly known fact.

Take this example. I cleaned one rich guy’s block-paved driveway and he was happy with it. He then phoned me ten months later telling me I hadn’t done the job properly and it was streaky. I asked him why he didn’t let me know there was a problem just after I had done the job. He informed me it was too wet for him to tell. I recalled that it had been raining for almost the entire time I cleaned the gigantic driveway of his country mansion. But I also remember he was there inspecting my work when I sanded the huge expanse, on a beautifully sun-drenched day. And I know we don’t have great weather in England, but I’m fairly sure his driveway couldn’t have been wet every day for the ten months afterward.

I informed him the drive had gotten dirty again because that’s what happens to things that are cleaned. I also broke it to him that he’d need the whole lot cleaning again. Immediately after this I was then shocked to hear a guttural gurgling emanate from my phone. Momentarily taken aback and unsure of what to do, I breathed a sigh of relief when I realised it was my miffed customer and not the phone: the painful prospect of having to part with more money was clearly not an attractive proposition for him. He shouted some abuse and then hung up.

I think the moral of the story here is, if you happen to get rich and buy a huge house, be aware that a huge house will cost huge money to maintain. If you aren’t keen on paying out massive maintenance costs for the rest of your property-owning future, live in a shoebox instead.

Fortunately, being rich and owning a massive house isn’t something that will ever likely apply to us pressure washing folk, so it’s one less thing to worry about I guess.