Last month, our kitchen was officially finished. With all brickwork, concreting and plasterwork done and dusted – although dusted maybe isn’t the right word, as it was so unbelievably mucky – this means the skip could finally be taken away to skip heaven. Or wherever the heck they go.
For over 6 months, we’ve had a skip on the driveway and I’ve hated it. It looks horrible and it is just begging for people to take advantage of it. We’ve had scrappers come and fish for scrap metal (even on Christmas morning, isn’t that a sad state of the times?) and I can’t count the amount of people who have abused it, by throwing in their bags of dog dirt in. Many have missed and it’s ended up in our front garden. SOME PEOPLE!
I’m drifting a little here…
Needless to say, having the skip removed was a huge success for us moving on from the kitchen renovation. What I didn’t quite expect was the damage it had done to our driveway.
It would need a clean, this much was clear. But there was also lashings of rust completely engraved into the concrete that Joe painstakingly put in himself 2 summers ago. It looked like a rust goblin had just come onto our driveway and taken a leak all over it. I know that sounds weird. Welcome to my world.
I was kindly offered a power washer from Vax to try out, and I knew exactly where I would put it to the test: you guessed it, our driveway. (It was the PowerWash 2200W which can be found here: www.vax.co.uk/pressure-washers)
We got rid of the final bags of rubbish, mostly full of wood and leaves, and gave the driveway a good sweep with a hard bristled brush. With the addition of some rare Manchester sunshine, I threw on my scruffs and got to work.
The set up of the power washer was pretty straight forward thanks to the instructions. I started on the stubborn parts of the drive first, the rust, and I was seriously impressed upon first use. You can see in the images that the rust is starting to come away almost instantly thanks to the power of the washer.
Then, Joe has a go. He used one of the additional fixtures which I think he particularly liked because it made him feel like James Bond with it being all gun-like. He didn’t appreciate my ‘pew pew’ noises whilst he was concentrating though. Shucks.
He tackled the moss and general mucky growths that seen to have accumulated between our blue fence and where the skip was. They came off pretty quickly which was a relief as I was panicked that they’d stain.
Overall it’s a great power washer for general home use, and if you wanted to go crazy with attachments you really could! We were provided with more than we needed in the end, and whilst it’s nice to have more than you require, if you’re short on storage space like we are, it could become problematic.
I think for what we needed, it didn’t quite fit the bill. Whilst it took away all the grime beautifully, it also took away some of the concrete in some areas. Not so great. Perhaps this is more a sign of our inexperience, but I don’t want to need a degree to clean a pathway.
Whilst Joe enjoyed getting the driveway clean again, it was a struggle to do so. We have a slightly dipped driveway, meaning water collects when there are excess amounts. And boy were there excess amounts. Joe has always said that he is still waiting for the day a power washer is released that has a retractable power lead, as it can become an incredibly messy job when you’re already walking through puddles and then you’re whipping yourself pulling miles of cords towards you. This product doesn’t have that, sadly, so to the man of this house, it was just another washer, albeit a decent one.
For the most part, he’s excited to tackle the bird crap that accumulates weekly on our cars. Damn, you birds!
As for me? I really liked it. As someone who hates this kind of stuff, and I mean, really hate it, I thought it was easy to use and had we a driveway which didn’t collect water like it was going out of fashion, I don’t think we would have had an issues. Any hey, anything that gets that rusty goblin urine off the driveway is alright in my books.
Driveway Before
Driveway After
