Driveway cleaning cost calculator

A driveway is the easiest exterior job to price and the easiest to underquote. The area is simple — length times width, plus the apron and the walk if they are in scope. What moves the number is what is on the concrete: three years of airborne algae rinses off, a decade of tyre polymer and a transmission leak do not.

Concrete flatwork estimate

Driveway areasq ftCondition

Access

Estimated price range

$180 - $360

3000-3500 PSI · 25 deg green / surface cleaner · 18-23 min on site

Detergent: Degreaser pre-treat, SH post-treat. This is a planning band, not a survey figure: measure the site and price your own labour.

Photograph-style surface cleaner working a driveway apron, mossy stained concrete on one side of the cleaned edge and bare wet clean concrete on the other — A sloping driveway apron, half of it taken down to bare concrete at the kerb.

PSI & nozzle quick reference

0 degRed: Spot jet. Etches most surfaces.4000 PSI
15 degYellow: Stripping bare concrete.4000 PSI
25 degGreen: General concrete and walkways.3500 PSI
40 degWhite: Siding, wood, vehicles.1500 PSI
~65 degBlack: Detergent draw, low pressure.500 PSI

Measure it properly first

Walk it with a wheel, not an eye. A two-car driveway most people call “about a thousand feet” is usually 16–20 ft wide by 40–60 ft long, which is 640–1,200 sq ft before the apron. The apron — the flare where the drive meets the street — is where the worst staining lives and it is routinely left out of the measurement and then cleaned anyway.

Piece	Typical sq ft	Usually in scope?
Single-car drive, 12 x 45 ft	540	Yes
Two-car drive, 18 x 50 ft	900	Yes
Street apron flare	60–140	Measure it — usually cleaned
Front walk, 3 x 30 ft	90	Ask
Garage apron slab	100–200	Ask

The pass count is the labour

A 20-inch surface cleaner on 4 GPM covers roughly a foot per second at a walking pace that actually cleans. Overlap each pass by about a quarter of the disc or you will leave a striped slab that reads as a bad job from the kerb. A second pass over the traffic lane is normal on a heavy drive and is why the condition multiplier exists.

Pre-treat oil and tyre marks with a degreaser and let it dwell before the disc touches them.
Surface-clean in one direction, then edge the perimeter and expansion joints with a 25-degree tip.
Post-treat with a dilute hypochlorite rinse to kill what is left of the algae, or it is back within a season.

Old, soft or stamped concrete

Concrete under about a year old, decorative stamped work and anything already spalling will lose surface at pressures a sound slab shrugs off. Test in the corner by the garage where nobody looks, and drop to a wider tip if aggregate shows.

Worked example

900 sq ft two-car drive plus a 120 sq ft apron is 1,020 sq ft. Heavy condition (algae in the shade, one oil patch), easy access. At $0.20–$0.40 times 1.25 the band lands near $255–$510, and the time line reads about 26–32 minutes of machine work — call it ninety minutes on site with setup, pre-treat dwell and the post-treat.

Driveway cleaning cost calculator

Measure it properly first

The pass count is the labour

Worked example

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