The builder’s clean on a brand new Pakenham home.
Handover leaves render splatter, slurry on the drive, overspray on the frames and dust through the eaves. It is a careful job on new finishes, and the timing matters more than anything. Here is how to get it right once.
Pakenham is still building, and it shows on every new house.
Cardinia Shire has been one of the fastest growing municipalities in Victoria for years, and the evidence is on the render of every recently handed over home through Cardinia Lakes, Lakeside, Pakenham East and across the Officer estates around Arcadia, Timbertop, Kaduna Park and Brunt Road. A new home in an active estate does not just carry its own construction residue. It carries the residue of every house still going up around it, which is why an exterior handover clean in a half-built street is a different proposition to one in an established suburb.
The list is fairly consistent: render splatter and mortar smears down the walls, concrete slurry and tyre marks on the new driveway, paint overspray on window frames and brickwork, render and plaster dust caked into the eaves and the window tracks, brickies acid burn marks along the base courses, and footprints through the lot. None of that is a builder being sloppy. It is what a build site produces. But the presentation clean is very often not included in the contract, and that is when people ring us.
Do not touch that new driveway yet.
This is the one that catches new owners, because the driveway is the thing they most want to clean and it is the thing they most easily ruin. Concrete does not dry out, it cures, through an ongoing chemical reaction, and it reaches the bulk of its design strength at around the 28 day mark. That is not a tradesman’s rule of thumb: AS 3600, the Australian Standard for concrete structures, specifies characteristic compressive strength at 28 days, which is where the number comes from. Before that it is green, and the surface paste, the fine layer that gives it its finish, has not hardened properly.
Put a pressure washer on green concrete and you will erode that paste, expose the sand beneath it, and leave a permanently rough, blotchy patch. No later clean fixes it, because you have not dirtied the surface, you have removed it. So if your builder poured at handover, note the date and wait the month. Wait longer again for sealing, typically 28 to 90 days, because a new slab has to release its construction moisture before you close the pores over it. Seal too early and that trapped moisture gives you a milky, blotchy finish that is a genuine job to strip. There is more on sealing timing in our seasonal guide.
After the landscaper. Not before.
This is the most expensive mistake in the new estates and it is entirely avoidable. You get the keys, the house looks dusty, you book an exterior clean, it comes up beautifully, and the following Monday the landscaper turns up with a bobcat, a load of topsoil, crushed rock, mulch and a concrete saw. Two weeks later the render has a mud splash line right around the house, the new driveway has slurry and tyre tracks on it, and you are paying for the same job a second time.
The right order is: builder finishes, landscaper finishes, fencing goes in, then one proper clean. The only exception worth making is if you are moving in long before landscaping starts and you simply cannot live with the eaves and the window tracks as they are, in which case do those now and leave the walls and driveway for the end. If you are in that situation, tell us and we will split it sensibly rather than just quoting the lot.
The white bloom on your new walls is normal.
Almost every new home in Pakenham gets this call in its first winter. A white powdery bloom appears on the brickwork or the render, usually low down and usually after rain, and the owner is convinced something has gone wrong. It is efflorescence, and it is a normal part of new masonry drying out. Residual water inside the wall dissolves salts as it works its way out, and those salts crystallise white on the surface as the water evaporates away.
It is most obvious in the first twelve months and it can return after each wet spell until the wall has properly dried. It washes off. What matters is what you do not do: do not let anyone attack it with acid on rendered walls. Acid damages the texture coat, and on top of that it can draw more salt to the surface and make the next bloom worse. Gentle repeat soft washing and patience is the whole answer, and if someone quotes you an acid wash on new render, that is the moment to check our how to choose a pressure washer guide.
Solar, roofs and the bits people forget.
A brand new roof does not need cleaning, and if anyone offers, decline. What does often need attention on a new build is the solar array, because commissioning dust plus the dust off every unbuilt block in the street settles on it from day one and it is quietly costing you output before you have had a single bill. Solar cleaning is $8 to $15 per panel with a $150 minimum call-out, so it makes sense bundled with the handover clean rather than as its own visit.
Window tracks and eaves are the other forgotten items. Render dust packs into sliding door tracks hard enough to wreck the rollers over time, and it sits in the eaves lining where you will never see it from the ground but where it streaks down the wall with the first proper rain. Both are quick while someone is already on site with the gear.
Worked example: a Pakenham East handover.
A new single-storey four bedroom home in Pakenham East, handed over in February, landscaping finished in April, aggregate driveway poured at handover. The sensible plan: nothing in February beyond living in it. In late April, once the landscaper is off site and the driveway is well past its 28 days, one visit covering render walls, eaves, window frames and tracks, paths and the driveway, at about $550. Add the 20 panel array at about $200. Total roughly $750 for a house that looks like the display home rather than a build site. Compare that to the common version, $450 in February plus $550 again in April because the landscaper undid it, which is $1,000 for the same result and two months of it looking rough. Full ranges are on our pricing guide.
New build questions.
When should I pressure wash a new driveway in Pakenham?
Wait at least 28 days after the pour. Concrete does not dry, it cures through a chemical reaction, and it reaches most of its design strength at around 28 days. Put a pressure washer on green concrete before then and you will erode the surface paste, expose the sand and leave a permanently rough patch that no later clean can fix. If your builder poured the driveway at handover, put a note in the calendar rather than getting excited about it on the first weekend. Sealing waits longer again, usually 28 to 90 days, because the slab has to release its construction moisture first.
What is a builder's clean on a new Pakenham home?
It is the exterior clean-up of everything construction leaves behind, and it is a different job to a house wash. The usual list on an Officer or Pakenham East handover is render splatter and mortar smears down the walls, concrete slurry and tyre marks on the new driveway, paint overspray on window frames and brickwork, plaster and render dust caked in the eaves and window tracks, brickies acid burn marks, and footprints through everything. It is more careful and more detailed than a maintenance wash because you are removing construction residue without damaging brand new finishes.
Should I do the builder's clean before or after landscaping?
After. This is the single most common and most expensive sequencing mistake we see in the new estates. Landscapers bring soil, mulch, crushed rock and concrete cutting slurry, and all of it ends up splashed up the render and tracked across the driveway. If you have the exterior professionally cleaned at handover and then the landscaper starts the following week, you are paying for the job twice. Wait until the driveway, the paths, the fencing and the garden beds are all finished, then do one proper clean.
What is the white powder on my new render or brickwork?
That is efflorescence, and it is normal on new construction. As the residual water in fresh masonry and render works its way out, it carries dissolved salts with it, and those salts crystallise white on the surface as the water evaporates. It is most obvious in the first twelve months and it can come back after each wet spell until the wall has properly dried out. It washes off, but do not let anyone attack it with acid on rendered walls, because acid damages the texture coat and can actually pull more salt to the surface. Gentle repeat washing is the answer, and patience.
How much does a new home exterior clean cost in Pakenham?
A typical new single-storey home handover clean in Pakenham or Officer runs $350 to $650, covering the render walls, eaves, window frames and tracks, the driveway and the paths. Double-storey sits higher because of the reach and access. If the driveway is still inside its 28 day cure window we split the job, doing the walls and eaves now and coming back for the driveway once it has cured, and that split does not usually cost extra if the return visit is booked at the same time.
New estates we work in.
Just got the keys? Tell us when the landscaper finishes.
We will time it right, split it if the driveway is still curing, and do it once properly. Free written quote.