Cost to Clean & Seal a Block Paved Driveway in the UK

Sealing block paved driveways has lots of benefits but most people who have driveways don’t consider sealing because it seems to cost a lot of money to seal a decent-sized driveway after every 2 to 3 years.

Just to seal a driveway, it can cost between £2 and £4 per sq. m. depending on whom you’d choose for the job which doesn’t include the cost of sealer or cleaning and re-sanding the driveway.

Sometimes, the cost of sealing is calculated depending on the time it takes for sealing and charged accordingly. To seal a medium-sized driveway, it can take between 4-6 hours including the time for the first coat to dry and complete the second coat on top of it.

Average Cost to Seal with Materials

The average cost to seal a driveway including the cost of sealer is £10/m2. The can be more or less depending on who’s going to seal your driveway and what sealer you’re going to use.

High-quality sealer isn’t cheap because that’s what truly going to protect your block paving for a couple of years to come. It’ll be always recommended to use a superior quality sealer if you ever consider sealing.

For an average size block paved driveway like 100m2, it can cost around £500 in all to seal it with a high-quality sealer. It includes the cost of the sealer (50 liters) as well as the labour to carry out sealing. The cost is on the higher side because I’ve considered a high-quality sealer that actually has the potential to protect your block paving.

You can also get quotes online for driveway sealing where you can get exact prices depending on how big is the job.

Costs Involved Before Sealing Block Paving

There is a cost involved before sealing a driveway which sometimes can be literally as much as the cost of sealing. The driveway or block paving needs to be absolutely clean and sanded (filling kiln-dried sand into the joints) before sealing and if you hire someone to do it for you, it can be a few hundred pounds to get it done.

Sanding is a must and it’s done right after the driveway has been laid but sealing is optional (mostly because it involves a lot of cost) so if your driveway has just been laid down, probably it’s just sanded and cleaned or doesn’t need intense cleaning by pressure washing. You may just need to sweep away the dust or any other things like leaves and top-up some sand in a few spots.

However, if it has been down there for quite some time without sealing and now you changed your mind about sealing, you might have a need to pressure wash and re-sand your driveway.

The cost to hire someone to pressure wash your block paving can be as low as £2/m2 and some companies even charge up to £5/m2 which is a bit high. However, the price/m2 can drop if you have a bigger-sized driveway and sometimes you can also get re-sanding done with cleaning at £5/m2.

Hence, as we have an example of a 100m2 block paved driveway earlier, it can cost £400-£500 to thoroughly clean by pressure washing and re-sand.

Conclusions

Look, sealing block paving carries a cost with it and you need to keep sealing it on every 2-3 year basis to receive the actual benefit from it. Let’s just take a look at all the benefits that you get by sealing block paving.

• Minimizes the degradation of pavers by UV rays, foot & vehicle traffic, different weather conditions, and normal wear and tear.
• Prevents pavers from intense stains as the sealer doesn’t allow pavers to deeply soak in the staining substance.
• Stops kiln-dried sand in joints from washing out.
• Prevents (not stops) weed growth.
• If the pavers are old and faded, sealers enhance their colour.
• Sealer makes the paving easier for maintenance overall.

In case if you think that it’s still expensive after seeing all these benefits for you to seal your driveway, I just wrote a step by step guide on how to seal block paving yourself which also has step by step instructions on how to clean as well as re-sand block paving before sealing.

Even if you do re-sanding yourself, you can save the money to invest in a high-quality sealer which is recommended all the time throughout this post.

When you decide to DIY, you’ll definitely save a lot of money but you’ll have to spend some part of it on some tools and equipment required in the process. Cleaning can be done by hiring a pressure washer. Make sure the pressure washer is powerful enough (200 bars) to cut through weeds and thoroughly clean the block paving.

For re-sanding, you need a brush to push the sand into the joints, and for sealing, you need a roller and brush for the edges.