Soft Washing in Randwick

What dirties a Randwick wall is mostly shade and moisture rather than pollution or heavy salt.

The suburb's mature figs and plane trees throw dense shade over whole elevations, and walls beneath them hold damp from one rain event to the next. That grows the green-black film you see starting low and working upward, and it concentrates wherever established planting sits close to the wall or a narrow side passage never sees sun.

The substrates vary more than in most suburbs. In the conservation areas near The Spot there is Victorian and Federation face brick laid in lime mortar, with rendered and painted detailing over it. Lime mortar is deliberately softer than the brick around it, and pressure scours it straight out of the joints. The post-war streets are painted brick and rendered piers, and the newer duplexes and townhouses closer to the university are modern render, which lifts and blisters if water is driven behind the coating.

A light salt film off the easterly holds airborne dust in place on the eastern elevations, so those grey off faster than the sheltered sides.

We work at low pressure with a biodegradable solution and proper dwell time, and rinse thoroughly so nothing is left on the surface to attract the next round.

The clearest return on soft washing here is how much longer your paint lasts.

Mould growing in and under a paint film holds moisture permanently against it, and the coating degrades from behind rather than from weathering. On the shaded southern elevations that get no sun, Randwick owners routinely find themselves repainting one side of a house years before the rest needs it. Washing on a schedule keeps the whole property on a single, longer repaint cycle, and repainting a house runs to many thousands where a wash does not.

On the heritage stock the argument is about protection rather than economy. Face brick in lime mortar and original rendered detailing are expensive to repair and difficult to match, and a wash that removes growth without touching the mortar keeps an original facade original. That is not something a pressure washer can offer.

Presentation matters here more than in most suburbs. Randwick has a lot of investor-owned housing serving the university and the hospital, and a facade carrying a dark film shapes what a property achieves at inspection and how quickly it lets.

Because the solution kills growth at the root rather than stripping the visible layer, the result holds through the following winter instead of returning within months.