To think that there is no need to pressure wash the great outdoors to within an inch of its life?

[bigbluebus]

The house behind us owns a pressure washer. They wash the cars with it and last year cleaned the patio and path with it. Today they seem to have hired a man with an industrial strength pressure washer who has been cleaning the drive/path/patio for at least 5 hours now with the resultant noise. It's 30° here and people have their windows open - some are still WFH. Their neighbour opposite them also owns a noisy pressure washer and uses it frequently. They are 2 rows of houses away with a street in between and the noise can be heard inside my house when they use it.
I usually wash my car with a bucket and sponge and an ordinary hose pipe or drive it up the road where a team of chaps will clean it for a fiver. My patio has not been pressure washed in the 29 years I've lived here and it is absolutely fine - it looks like an outdoor surface!
So AIBU to think that this obsession with pressure washing the outdoors is totally unnecessary and unacceptable from a) a noise perspective and b) it is environmentally bad due to chemicals, electricity usage and a waste of water? (All these houses are on water meters)

We have round balls of moss on our side return path. I just leave it where it is, moss is good for air quality!

@MurielSpriggs

Who cares? They're pressure washing!

It’s really loud and an annoying kind of noise too.

We do the patio every year. Next door do the rabbit hutch twice a week, plus cars and patio regularly. YANBU. Whatever happened to elbow grease.

We had a neighbourhood collective pressure washing of the path that runs along the front of 7 houses.
One house did theirs, then my immediate neighbour did his, one borrowed the first neighbour's to do hers and between them they did the non pressure wash owners bit so it all looked the same.

I've lived here 25 years and that's the first time we've done it that way.

My FIL is in a nursing home which is surrounded by rather grand houses. During lockdown when I could only have a window visit it was SO hard to hear above the fecking pressure washers, leaf blowers and chainsaws at times. My FIL would be on one side with his head slightly drooping due to his Parkinsons, speaking very softly and I'd be bellowing from the other side.

Have a tidy up and make sure nothing's dangerous but I think it's all got a bit excessive.

We are going to borrow one and do ours soon but it's a once every other year activity. I like how bright they come up plus we have housemartins nesting on the side of our house and the patio gets covered in bird poo. I do stuff brush too but our patio and wrap around paths are enormous.

Not worried about noise though, we live slap bang in the middle of 5 acres and our neighbours are all farms - tractors are far, far more noisy! Also, we don't use any 'chemicals' (unless you count H2O...).

I agree that sounds excessive but I don't think the occasional jetwash is so awful. On the flip side I only wash my car about once a year

Is it every day, all day?
Are they pressure washing into the evening?
Do they use your water and electricity?
Do they stand by your bedside at night and give your bedroom a hose down?
Have they pressure washed your cat/dog/child?

My neighbour started pressure washing his drive on Sunday morning.
He was still doing it when I went out at 1.30, still doing it when I got back at 5.
I looked out the window at 8pm and he was still there. I assume he was taking frequent /prolonged breaks.
His drive is a decent size (you could squeeze 5 cars on it) but it's not Tiananmen Square.

I checked it out this morning as I drove past...
The block pavers are pristine.
The gaps are still full of weeds!

He's definitely using chemicals - I can smell them. And it's 5 hours and counting. He did the front this morning and has been in the back garden which adjoins our this afternoon. Their garden is not that big and their patio is even smaller!

YANBU on the power washing.

But the nice fellas washing yr car for a fiver probably aren’t making minimum wage.

We jetwashed our patio prior to putting the house on the market - it was very satisfying and turned a completely different colour.

We have decking that gets very slippery in winter or after rain - it could probably do with jetwashing to be honest, but we tend to use soapy water and a broom instead of hiring a jet washer.

I LOVE my Karcher!!

I hoovered the patio just outside the back door the other day too!
The door was open when I was hoovering so I just sucked up some small leaves. So much quicker than faffing around with a dust pan and brush.

@tarapinn

I LOVE my Karcher!!

I hoovered the patio just outside the back door the other day too!
The door was open when I was hoovering so I just sucked up some small leaves. So much quicker than faffing around with a dust pan and brush.

God forbid you might have a few small leaves on the patio!

I hear you OP we live near lots of retired couples who seem to have plenty of time/spare cash and spend all bloody day pressure washing, cleaning and using fecking leaf blowers. It's like they're trying to sterilise the outdoors - also too much time on their hands and bloody noisy/bad environmentally.see also hatred of 'weeds'.

We pressure wash our patio once/twice a year depending on the weather. It gets a bit slippy otherwise. It doesn't use any chemicals and it attaches to the water butt.

Your neighbours are at one end of the scale and the "I scrub the patio with a broom while whistling songs from the war" are at the other end. Most people reside somewhere in the middle.

It is amazing the difference a good power wash makes. We have an old drive down the bottom of the garden that’s unused and hadn’t been cleaned for probably at least seventy years, it was a right mess. We got water put in down there and I gave it a power wash, I couldn’t believe what it revealed, someone had clearly spent a lot of time and money on it and it had been hidden under years of filth.

When we bought this house, the elderly owners had never power washed the front Patio for the thirty years they had been here, it was totally black. When I did it I was astounded then too, it was different stones in shades of grey, cream and red. Again You’d never have know what was under all that filth and it looked lovely.

My neighbours (well, a few houses down) are obsessed with their strimmer. They're out for hours every few days with it, I mean WTF can be left to strim?! Our gardens are about 12ft x 8ft

There's a retired lady who lives around the corner. We've nicknamed her Mrs Tidy as she is always sweeping the road outside her house. But she does it with a brush so it doesn't disturb anyone. She also does litter picking in the street which is great for the village. I far prefer those sorts of tidy people than the ones who clean things with industrial noise machines.

Comedycook. I know!
I just couldn't help myself. I only hoovered a few metres out though. Not the whole thing 🤣

@FreeBritnee

The amount of noisy equipment people use now is a fucking pain. So YANBU.

True. This also sounds like it's a massive waste of water too.

Always use a pressure washer on the cars but then I’m into car detailing. The guys who do it for a fiver use lots of unpleasant chemicals which will damage rubber and plastic parts amongst other things and will gradually fuck your paintwork right up with swirl marks.

We sit out there a lot and don’t like sitting looking at a minging patio

What makes a patio minging? It's not as if people eat off them or walk on them in bare feet., and life is really too short to start worrying about the cleanliness of something that is outdoors and open to the elements. I hate them when they look brand new, they need to be properly weathered. If the garden isn't minging, I can't see that it does the patio any harm to have a bit of dirt from the garden trodden in.

Apologies, this is me. Our path is sloping and north facing so gets very slippery over the winter with the green lurgy so it's partly a safety measure so my elderly dad doesn't slip on it. But it's very therapeutic I have to confess. We have a big patio/tennis court and it can take ages so the noise makes me feel quite guilty. Although it's often quite noisy round us with gardeners using power tools and building work.

It's not as if people eat off them or walk on them in bare feet

Of course people walk on them in bare feet! Do you really put your shoes on every time you take a drink outside?

Of course people walk on them in bare feet! Do you really put your shoes on every time you take a drink outside?

Yes, because the patio surface isn't that comfortable - especially when it's hot. Generally it's just something like a pair of flip-flops.

Wow they sound like insanely boring people. 5 hours spent cleaning with a power washer, and it's not even their job? I'd be ruling them out for having dinner parties or bbqs with them, would be so dull. A lovely sunny day and that's how they spent it.