Pressure washing day in Pakenham, stage by stage
A driveway plus a single-storey house wash is a half day: the crew arrives between 7.30am and 9am and is packed up by about 1pm. Add a roof and it becomes a full day. You do not need to be home if we have side gate access and a working outdoor tap. Move the cars, the bins and the pot plants, shut the windows on the wall being washed, and keep the dog inside for a couple of hours. The job uses roughly 1,800 to 4,500 litres of water off your meter, which is a few dollars, and you get before and after photos by text.
Stage by stage on a typical Pakenham job
The timings below are for the job we do most often across Cardinia Lakes, Lakeside, Officer and Pakenham East: a single-storey brick veneer with about 80 square metres of driveway, path and porch, and 140 to 150 square metres of wall and eave to soft wash. Roof and solar stages only apply if they are in your quote.
| Stage | How long | What happens | What you need to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Quote and booking | 1 to 3 business days before | Photos or a site visit, a fixed written price with the scope spelled out, and a date locked in. | Send photos with a car or a wheelie bin in shot for scale. Flag any access problem now. |
| 2. Confirmation | Afternoon before, by about 6pm | We check the forecast and either confirm or move the booking at no charge. | Reply so we know the gate will be unlocked and the cars moved. |
| 3. Arrival and walk-around | 15 to 20 minutes | Tap flow test, power point check, drain locations noted, existing damage photographed, before photos taken. | Ten minutes of your time if you are home. Point out the stains you actually care about. |
| 4. Set-up and protection | 20 to 30 minutes | Hoses run, garden beds pre-wetted, drain socks laid where needed, power points, vents and light fittings covered. | Cars already off the driveway. Nothing else. |
| 5. Pre-treatment and dwell | 15 to 45 minutes of dwell | Detergent or biocide applied at low pressure and left to work. This is where the result comes from, not the pressure. | Keep kids and pets off the treated surfaces. Mild pool-like smell for an hour or two. |
| 6. Driveway, path and porch | 45 to 90 minutes for 40 to 80 sqm | Rotary surface cleaner passes for an even finish, then hand detailing on edges, joins and up against the house. | Nothing. This is the loud stage. |
| 7. House soft wash | 1.5 to 3 hours single-storey | Top down: walls, eaves, gutter faces, downpipes, window frames and the outside of the fly screens, at under 500 psi. | Windows and doors closed and latched on that elevation, including the laundry window. |
| 8. Roof and treatment | 45 minutes setup plus 2 to 4 hours | Anchor and harness set up first, soft wash from the ridge down, then the moss and lichen biocide applied and left on. | Move cars clear of the gutter line and bring the washing in. |
| 9. Solar panels | 30 to 60 minutes | Deionised water and a soft brush, no detergent, no abrasives, nothing that leaves a residue to bake on. | Nothing. Output dips while we shade the array and recovers straight after. |
| 10. Final rinse and tidy | 20 to 40 minutes | Everything rinsed down to the kerb, garden beds flushed, drain socks lifted, hoses coiled, debris bagged. | Nothing. |
| 11. Walk-through and invoice | 10 to 15 minutes | After photos, a walk around the job together, then an itemised invoice with the ABN emailed to you. | Look at it properly while we are still on site. Say something if anything is not right. |
Timings for a single-storey Pakenham home in 2026. Double-storey adds roughly 40 to 70 per cent to the wall and roof stages. Prices for each stage are on our pricing page.
What actually stalls the day
Almost every job that runs long runs long for one of these reasons, and all of them are avoidable with a text the night before.
- A tap that will not deliver. We need roughly 15 litres a minute at the outdoor tap. Test it yourself: fill a 9 litre bucket and time it. Under 36 seconds is fine. Slower than that and we run off our own tank, which is a real cost and needs to be known before the day, not on it. Newer estates around Pakenham East can drop noticeably during the 7am to 9am peak.
- Cars still on the driveway. The single most common delay. We will not move your car, and we will not clean around it and leave a shadow.
- A locked side gate. If the crew cannot get a hose to the back of the house, half the scope is undone. Leave it unlocked or leave a code.
- A dog in the yard. We do not open gates on a dog. If the dog is outside, the back of the house does not get done.
- A neighbour parked across your crossover. Common in the townhouse streets through Officer. A note the day before usually solves it.
- Damage found on arrival. Cracked tiles, perished window seals, flaking paint, a rusted gutter. We stop and talk to you rather than washing water into a fault. That conversation costs ten minutes and can save a ceiling.
- Weather turning mid-job. Rain inside the dwell window means the detergent gets diluted before it works, so we either wait or we come back.
Access, parking, power and water
Parking. We need a ute and a trailer within about 30 metres of the work, which is normally the kerb outside or the top of your driveway. On the narrower streets in Pakenham Upper and the older Nar Nar Goon roads with no kerb, tell us in advance and we will bring the smaller rig.
Water. A standard garden tap is all we need, and we bring 30 metres of hose. If you are on tank water, on a bore, or your outdoor tap runs off a pump, say so at the quote stage. Tank water is usually fine for a driveway and not ideal for a final rinse on dark render because of the mineral content. Under Victoria’s permanent water saving rules a high pressure cleaning device is the compliant way to clean a hard surface, which is exactly what a surface cleaner is. There is more detail on that in our EPA rules and water restrictions guide.
Power. Petrol units need no power at all. Some soft wash and deionised water setups run a small pump off a standard 10 amp outdoor power point. If there is no external outlet, tell us and we will bring a generator rather than running a lead through your laundry window.
Access inside. Almost never needed. The exceptions are if a tap or an isolation valve is only reachable from inside, or if a monitored alarm sensor covers the alfresco.
Noise, dust and smell
A petrol pressure unit at close range is comparable to a lawnmower, and it runs in bursts rather than for hours straight. On a typical job the genuinely loud part is the 45 to 90 minutes of surface cleaning. Under the Victorian residential noise rules we do not run equipment before 7am Monday to Friday, and not before 9am on weekends and public holidays. If you have a shift worker or a baby in the house, tell us and we will sequence the loud work later in the morning.
There is no dust to speak of, because everything is wet from the first minute. There is overspray, which is why the windows go shut and the car comes off the drive.
Soft wash detergent contains sodium hypochlorite, so there is a mild swimming pool smell for an hour or two while it does its work. It does not linger indoors if the windows are closed on that side, and it is gone by the time the surface has dried. We use biodegradable surfactants and we pre-wet garden beds so the run-off is diluted before it reaches anything living. If you have anything genuinely precious in a bed against the wall, point it out and we will cover it.
Pets, kids and working from home
Dogs inside for the duration and for an hour after the final rinse. Cats sort themselves out but will not come home until the noise stops. Keep kids off treated surfaces until everything has been rinsed, which on the driveway is the very end of that stage. Water bowls, chew toys and anything the dog will pick up should come inside before we start.
If you work from home, plan for 20 to 40 minutes of loud work on your side of the house. Tell us where your desk is and when your calls are, and we will start on the far elevation. Nobody has ever had to leave the house for a wash, but plenty of people have moved a 10am video call by half an hour and been glad they did.
What has to be moved before we arrive
The full list is in the printable checklist below, but the short version is anything light, anything electrical and anything you would be upset to see wet: cars off the driveway and out of the gutter line if the roof is being done, wheelie bins, pot plants, doormats, outdoor furniture and cushions, kids toys and trampolines, the barbecue, a retractable clothes line, hose reels, an EV charging cable, and any loose or perished flyscreens on the wall being washed. Garden ornaments and solar path lights are the two things people forget every single time.
Want to know exactly what your day would look like?
Tell us the property and we will send back a stage by stage plan with a fixed price and a realistic finish time.
Prepare for the crew: your day-before checklist
Twenty five things worth doing before we pull up. Your ticks are saved in this browser, and the print button gives you a clean copy for the fridge.
Before the day
The night before
The morning of
While we are on site
Red flags: stop the job if you see these
Weather delays and how we handle them
Pakenham sits in the 750 to 900 millimetre a year rainfall band and the shoulder seasons are unpredictable, so weather moves bookings here more often than it would in the north of the state. Our rules are simple and we apply them the same way every time.
- Driveways go ahead in light rain. The surface is getting soaked anyway. Heavy rain stops it because we cannot control where the run-off goes.
- Soft washing stops if rain is likely within 2 to 4 hours. The detergent needs dwell time on the surface. Rain washes it off before it has killed anything and you get a rinse you paid a soft wash price for.
- Roof work stops for wet tiles, for wind above about 30 kilometres per hour, and for anything forecast to arrive while we are up there. This is a safety call, not a quality one, and it is not negotiable.
- Sealing needs three to five dry days after the clean. If you have booked a seal, expect the two visits to be a week or more apart. See choosing a driveway sealer for why that gap matters.
- Rescheduling is free. We move the booking to the next suitable slot, usually within a week, and there is no call-out charge for a weather move we initiate.
What a clean site looks like when we leave
You should be able to walk out and see no evidence that anyone was there except a cleaner house. Specifically: the driveway rinsed all the way to the kerb with no tide line where the surface cleaner stopped, no detergent film drying on render or glass, no white residue on dark brick, garden beds flushed with clean water, drain socks and bunding lifted and taken away, hoses coiled and off your lawn, gutter and roof debris bagged and in our trailer, taps turned off, gates closed the way we found them, and no tools, tape or plastic left behind. The before and after photos land on your phone before we drive off.
If we broke something, you will hear it from us before you find it. That is what the insurance is for, and our warranty and consumer rights page sets out exactly how a claim works if you ever need it.
Where the waste actually goes
Pakenham drains to Toomuc Creek and Deep Creek and on to Western Port, so this is not a detail we skate over. On a normal residential driveway the rinse water is biodegradable detergent, soil, leaf matter and mould, and it is screened and directed to garden beds or, where that is not practical, to the stormwater in line with Cardinia Shire local laws. On an oily driveway, a commercial hardstand or a bin store, that is not acceptable: we bund the drain, vacuum the water and dispose of it through a licensed liquid waste facility, and we can show you the docket. Moss, lichen, gutter sludge and roof debris are bagged and removed rather than left in your green bin unless you ask for it. Nothing goes into your kerbside bin without your say so.
Day of the job questions
How long does a pressure washing job take in Pakenham?
Do I need to be home on the day?
How much water does a house and driveway wash use?
How loud is it and what time can you start?
What happens if it rains on the day?
What happens to the dirty water and the waste?
If you are still weighing up whether to hire anyone at all, our DIY versus professional guide is the honest version, and the budget exterior cleaning tiers show what each level of spend actually buys on the day.
Book a day and we will send you the running order
Send your details and we will come back within 1 business day with a fixed price, a start time and the stage by stage plan for your property.
One visit, one set-up, and your afternoon back
Serving Pakenham, Officer, Pakenham Upper and the wider Cardinia Shire.