Tile Cleaning — Victoria Avenue, Ripponlea

A back yard is the worst position a paved area can have. It is enclosed, it is shaded for most of the day by the house itself, and the air does not move through it the way it does across a front path. What lands there stays damp, and what stays damp grows. The finish is what makes this one different. A polished surface reflects, so it reports everything: a film of residue, a run mark where water dried unevenly, a patch worked harder than the one beside it. None of that would be visible on the matte tile two streets away. It is also slippery in a way matte tile is not. Growth on a gloss surface takes away the little grip the finish had to start with, and a back yard is exactly where somebody walks out in bare feet after rain.

Product on, time to work, and the growth released rather than being driven at. Same principle as any dense tile, and on gloss there is no argument for pressure at all: the finish is the reason the tile was chosen and it is the one thing that cannot be put back. The rinse is where a gloss job is won or lost. Everything that was lifted has to leave the surface rather than dry on it, and the whole area has to come off wet at the same rate, because water left to dry in patches records exactly where it sat. Then the check happens once it is dry, not while it is still shining. A polished surface looks perfect wet no matter what is on it, which is why the walk-around happens at the end rather than at the point everything looks best.

• Full backyard tiled area cleaned, faces and joints
• Growth released with product rather than driven off with pressure
• Whole area rinsed evenly so nothing dried in patches
• Final check made once the surface was dry, not while wet
• Before and after photographs supplied

• Gloss finish intact, with no dulling or worked patches
• No residue film or drying marks left across the surface
• The grip the tile had when it was laid is back
• Two and a half hours on site with one technician