Pakenham Exterior Maintenance Schedule: Make It Last

Printable checklist

The schedule, by frequency, with the DIY jobs separated from the pro jobs.

Print it and stick it inside a cupboard door. Green DIY items cost you nothing but half an hour. Amber pro items are the ones where the tool, the height or the chemistry makes it worth paying for. Your ticks are saved in this browser so you can come back to it.

After every storm or big blow, inside 48 hours

DIY Walk the block and photograph anything damaged before you clear it, in case it turns into an insurance matter.
DIY Squeegee or shovel storm silt off paths and the driveway while it is still wet. Cardinia clay sets hard in about a day and a half.
DIY Clear leaf, bark and gum nuts off ground-level drain grates and the top of the downpipe cage.
DIY Look at the gutter line from the ground for a sag, a split, or a fresh dirt streak running down the wall.
PRO Book a gutter and roof debris clear if a limb came down or a gutter overflowed. $150 to $350 single-storey.
PRO Book a silt clean-out if mud came through the garage or is banked against a wall. $250 to $600.

Every season, four times a year

DIY Hose out the leaf litter that collects in the corner behind the downpipe and along the fence line.
DIY Pull mulch, soil and garden beds back so they sit clear of the weep holes at the base of brick walls.
DIY Rinse the Colorbond and painted cladding that rain never reaches: under eaves, verandah walls, carport posts, the sheltered side of a garage door.
DIY Check the shaded south and south-east walls for the first grey-green film and write the date down.
DIY Test the paths and steps with a wet shoe before somebody finds out the hard way.
PRO Book the wash as soon as the film appears rather than waiting for it to go black. Early is always cheaper.

Every year

DIY Gutters cleared twice a year at minimum, and always before the fire danger period. Cardinia Shire has designated bushfire prone areas and issues fire prevention notices ahead of summer.
DIY Rinse the solar array from the ground with clean water and a soft brush on a pole, never a pressure washer.
DIY Trim back anything that touches the roof, the gutter or a wall. Contact is how lichen and vermin get up there.
PRO Soft wash the house, especially the south and south-east elevations. $350 to $600 single-storey, $600 to $1,100 double.
PRO Pressure clean the driveway, paths, porch and steps. $180 to $320, plus $80 to $250 for paths and steps.
PRO Clean the alfresco, decking and any shaded outdoor tiling. $150 to $400.
PRO Solar panel clean with deionised water where the array sits under trees or is not rinsed by rain. $8 to $15 per panel, $150 minimum.

Every three to five years

DIY Photograph the roof from the same spot each spring so you can see the change over years instead of guessing.
PRO Roof soft wash and lichen treatment. $600 to $1,000 single-storey, $1,000 to $1,800 double or steep. Never high pressure.
PRO Reseal the driveway if it is exposed aggregate or takes regular oil. $6 to $12 per square metre.
PRO Have gutters and downpipe outlets inspected properly for rust and fall, not just emptied.
PRO Have the render and paint film looked at while the house is being washed, so you find failing paint before water does.

Never do these, whatever the internet says

Never run high pressure over acrylic render, painted weatherboard, roof tiles or fibre cement. It removes the coating and the warranty with it.
Never pressure wash anything that might be asbestos cement on a pre-1990 house. Victorian occupational health and safety regulations prohibit it outright.
Never walk a wet roof. A fall risk above 2 metres is high risk work needing proper fall protection.
Never let detergent, oil or sediment run into a kerb, a stormwater pit or a table drain.
Never use household bleach at a guessed dilution on render, paint or Colorbond.
Never use an abrasive pad, a scourer or any pressure washer on solar panels or their frame seals.

What is actually eating your exterior in Cardinia.

A long, cool, damp winter. This is the wetter, cooler edge of Melbourne’s south-east, and Pakenham Upper and the hills behind it are wetter again. From about May to September a south or south-east wall barely dries out between fronts, and that is all algae and lichen need. It is why the same house can have a spotless north wall and a black south wall, and why washing the whole house every year is cheaper than washing one wall every six months.

Eucalypt litter. Gum leaf, bark strip and gum nuts do three things: they block gutters, they hold water against roof tiles and decking, and they stain. Anywhere with mature gums, which is most of Pakenham Upper, Nar Nar Goon and the older township streets, gutters need clearing quarterly rather than twice a year.

Reactive clay. The heavy grey clay across the Cardinia plains and the old Koo Wee Rup swamp fringe swells wet and shrinks dry. It moves slabs, opens joints in paths and driveways and creates the low spots where water sits and algae starts. Cleaning does not fix movement, but keeping water moving off a slab instead of pooling on it slows what the movement does to the surface.

Frost, then UV. The flats out toward Nar Nar Goon and Tynong get genuine frosts, and freeze-and-thaw works at any surface that is already porous. Then summer arrives and the same surface takes months of high UV, which is what fades render pigment and chalks paint. The two together are harder on a coating than either alone.

What is not a problem here, honestly. Salt air is a Mornington Peninsula and bayside issue, not really a Pakenham one, so you do not need the wash frequency a beachfront house does. Melbourne’s water supply is soft, so hard-water scale on glass and panels is far less of an issue here than in many other parts of Australia. If someone is selling you a treatment for either of those, ask them why.

What you should expect these surfaces to last.

Service life is the number that makes the maintenance argument, so here are the honest ones. A properly laid concrete driveway lasts 30 to 40 years, and cleaning does not extend the slab, it extends the surface: the top few millimetres that spall, stain and go slippery. A penetrating sealer lasts about 3 to 5 years, a topical acrylic 2 to 3, and both need the surface clean and dry when they go on.

A concrete roof tile itself can last 40 to 50 years, but the factory surface coating that keeps it from absorbing water usually starts giving up around 20 to 25 years, and lichen accelerates that because it holds moisture against the tile and its rootlets work into the surface. Colorbond and other coated steel roofing is a long-life product, well beyond 30 years in an inland setting like this, provided the unwashed areas actually get washed. Acrylic render texture coat is generally repainted every 10 to 15 years, and exterior paint on weatherboard in this climate runs 7 to 10 years on the exposed elevations.

Put the maintenance numbers next to the replacement numbers and the case makes itself. A yearly $350 to $600 house wash against an $8,000 to $15,000 repaint. A $600 to $1,000 roof clean and treatment every three to five years against a $6,500 to $12,000 restoration, or $20,000 and up to re-roof. A $150 to $350 gutter clear against water in a ceiling, which is a roof plumber, a plasterer and a painter before you are done.

None of that means cleaning something every year is automatically right. Our page on how long a clean lasts in Pakenham goes through why one house needs it annually and the one next door does not, and the aftercare guide covers what you can do between visits to stretch the interval.

Put it on an annual booking and forget it.

One visit a year: driveway, paths and a house soft wash, with the roof added every few years. Fixed price, no need to be home.

☎ Call (03) 9003 0108 Set up a yearly service

What voids a manufacturer warranty.

This catches people out constantly, and it works in both directions: you can lose a warranty by not cleaning, and you can lose it by cleaning the wrong way.

Steel roofing and wall cladding. Coated steel warranties generally include a maintenance condition requiring that surfaces not regularly washed by rainfall be rinsed with clean water at least every 6 months, and more frequently in harsher environments. That means under the eaves, the sheltered side of a garage, the wall behind a verandah, the underside of a carport. It takes fifteen minutes with a hose and it is the single most commonly ignored warranty condition in Australian housing.

Paint and render coatings. Exterior paint warranties normally require periodic maintenance washing to remove dirt, salt and biological growth, and they almost always exclude damage from high-pressure cleaning, abrasive cleaning or unsuitable chemicals. Take 3,000 PSI to a texture coat and you have both breached the maintenance requirement and caused an excluded form of damage in the same afternoon.

Solar panels. Panel makers specify cleaning with clean water and a soft, non-abrasive implement, and exclude damage from high pressure, abrasives and harsh chemicals. Walking on an array is its own problem: microcracks in cells do not show up until output drops. This is why our solar cleaning uses deionised water and a soft brush and nothing else.

Roof tiles and coatings. Tile and roof coating warranties typically exclude damage from high-pressure cleaning and from walking on the roof outside proper access practice. If someone quotes you a cheap roof clean and mentions how many PSI their machine puts out, that is the wrong quote. Roof cleaning is a soft wash and a treatment, not a blast.

Keep the invoices. A warranty claim that depends on you having maintained the surface is much easier to run when you can produce dated invoices describing the method used. Every job we do is invoiced with the surfaces, the method and the date, which is exactly what a manufacturer asks for.

Where we tell people to spend less.

Plenty of the schedule above is DIY, and we would rather you did those bits yourself than paid us for them. Rinsing the unwashed areas of cladding, keeping mulch off the weep holes, hosing the leaf out of the corner behind the downpipe, brushing the solar array from the ground: none of that needs a truck in your driveway. Our DIY versus professional guide is honest about where the line sits.

We would also tell you not to over-clean. A Colorbond roof in the open with no tree cover, getting a proper rain rinse, does not need a wash every year and often does not need one for five. A north-facing render wall that dries out by mid-morning can go two or three years. Cleaning things that do not need it wastes money and, on coated surfaces, every unnecessary clean is a small amount of wear you did not have to spend.

And there are jobs we simply do not do: roof repairs, re-pointing, gutter replacement, painting, internal mould remediation and anything involving asbestos-containing material. If the wash uncovers one of those, we will tell you plainly what we saw and who you need. If something goes wrong between scheduled visits, the emergency page tells you what to do in the first hour and whether it can wait. Owners of tenanted properties should also read the rental obligations page, because some of these items sit on a legal clock rather than a maintenance one.

Get a price

Get your yearly exterior service priced in one go

Tell us the property and we will price the annual visit and the every-few-years extras separately, usually within one business day.

Maintenance questions.

How often should a house be washed in Pakenham?

Once a year for the shaded south and south-east walls, every two years for the walls that get sun and wind. Pakenham sits on the cool, damp edge of Melbourne south-east and the difference between two aspects of the same house is dramatic. A single-storey soft wash is $350 to $600, and doing it annually keeps you in that band instead of pushing you into heavy build-up pricing.

How often should gutters be cleared in Pakenham?

Twice a year as a minimum, and quarterly where eucalypts overhang, which covers most of Pakenham Upper and a lot of the older township streets. Do one clear in late autumn after the leaf drop and one in late spring before the fire danger period, because Cardinia Shire has designated bushfire prone areas and a gutter packed with gum litter is an ember trap. Budget $150 to $350 single-storey.

Does skipping cleaning really shorten the life of a roof?

Yes, although not as fast as anyone selling you a roof restoration will claim. Lichen roots into the surface of a concrete tile and holds moisture against it, which accelerates the loss of the factory surface coating that would otherwise last around 20 to 25 years. Cleaning and treating every 3 to 5 years at $600 to $1,000 is the cheap end of that curve. A full restoration once the surface has gone is $6,500 to $12,000.

What voids a Colorbond or exterior paint warranty?

Two things mostly: not washing, and washing wrongly. Steel roofing and cladding warranties generally require that areas rain never reaches, such as under eaves and covered walls, be rinsed at least every 6 months and more often in harsher environments. Paint and render coating warranties also require maintenance washing, and most of them exclude damage caused by high-pressure cleaning. A soft wash protects the warranty and a 3,000 PSI blast can end it.

Can I clean my own solar panels?

You can rinse panels from the ground with clean water and a soft brush on a pole, and that is fine. What you must not do is walk on the array, use a detergent that leaves a film, or point a pressure washer at the glass or the frame seals, because almost every panel warranty excludes high-pressure and abrasive cleaning. We use deionised water and a soft brush at $8 to $15 a panel with a $150 minimum call-out.

Do I really need to seal a driveway in Pakenham?

No, and plenty of driveways here go decades without it. Sealing at $6 to $12 per square metre earns its place in two situations: exposed aggregate, where it keeps the stones bound and the surface easy to clean, and any driveway where oil drips are a regular event. A penetrating sealer lasts roughly 3 to 5 years and a topical acrylic 2 to 3. If neither situation is yours, keep the money.

More reading: 2026 pricing, the best time of year to book, house soft washing, and what to clean before you sell. We work across Pakenham Upper, Nar Nar Goon and the whole Cardinia service area.

Make your Pakenham driveway, roof and render last twice as long.