Soft Washing in Annandale

Council's conservation guidance for Annandale is direct about walls. Original plastered and face brick walls are to be kept, face brick is not to be painted or plastered over, and plaster is not to be stripped from walls that were built rendered. Whatever finish your house started with is the one it is expected to keep, so on face brick especially, the way back to a good-looking wall is cleaning rather than paint.

What dirties those walls depends on where you are. Along the southern boundary, council's statement for the Parramatta Road conservation area records high levels of traffic noise and pollution, and the street-facing walls of nearby homes are exposed to that soot.

Down the slopes toward the creeks, small resubdivided lots put houses close together, and side walls facing each other across a narrow gap see little sun. Mould and algae can take hold there on render and on the paintwork of the remaining weatherboard houses.

A soft wash handles both. A specialised solution goes on at low pressure, loosens the soot, mould and grime, and comes off with a gentle rinse that suits the plaster mouldings over doors and windows, the eaves, the fascia and the facade itself.

For face brick the reward is simple: you see the brick again. Under a film of grime, dry pressed brick reads flat and dull, and a soft wash can bring back the colour it was laid with, without a drop of paint, which is exactly the outcome council's guidance points to.

Along Parramatta Road the case is written into council's own heritage statement, which asks that the pre-1939 facades on that strip be maintained, cleaned and painted. The two-storey shop-top buildings there carry ornate parapets and awnings above heavy traffic, and a low-pressure wash cleans that detail without eroding it.

Weatherboard needs the gentlest approach of all. With so few left in Annandale, and council wanting them retained, a clean that lifts mould without driving water behind the boards or stripping paint is the kind of care that helps one of them last.

Our cleaning solutions are biodegradable and safe around gardens, pets and children. That matters in a suburb where council wants green garden space kept, and where the rinse from a facade often runs into a front garden behind an iron palisade fence.

Every house wash is recorded with before-and-after photos, so you can see the difference on walls you walk past every day.