Pebbledash is a huge surface area folded into a small wall, which is exactly why it goes blotchy and exactly why it is easy to damage. Every stone is held by a thin bed of mortar that pressure removes very efficiently.
The blotchiness problem
Growth sits in the shadowed side of each stone, so the wall reads patchy rather than uniformly green. Rinsing hits the exposed faces and misses the shadows, which is why hosed pebbledash looks worse afterwards.
This guide sits under our Wall Cleaning & Softwash work, covering 20-mile radius of Plymouth.
Losing stone
If a contractor leaves a line of bare mortar and a pile of gravel below, the pressure was too high. On older dash, some loss can happen at any pressure - we test and show you first.
Even coverage
A dwell-time treatment reaches the shadowed side of the aggregate that water alone never touches, which is what gives an even result across the elevation.
Questions we get on this
- Will some stones come off?
- On sound dash, very few. On failing dash, we will show you the test patch before continuing.
- Can painted pebbledash be cleaned?
- Yes, and softwash is the only method we would use on it.
- Does it look new afterwards?
- It looks like clean pebbledash. Where the dash has been patched previously, those patches will still read differently.
Related reading
- Indian sandstone patios: cleaning without blotching
- Porcelain paving: low maintenance, not no maintenance
- Solar panels, roof access and cleaning around them
- Flat roofs, valleys and where water actually goes wrong