A step-by-step guide to washing a Lee County driveway without striping the concrete or blowing the sand out of your pavers - including why the stain is almost always algae, not dirt.
Washing a Fort Myers driveway is a chemistry-and-technique job, not a horsepower job. What greys out concrete and pavers in Lee County is rarely ground-in dirt - it is a living film of algae and mildew fed by Gulf humidity, afternoon storm cycles, and irrigation overspray. Treat that film with the right cleaner and lift it with a flat-surface cleaner at moderate pressure and the driveway comes back evenly. Attack it with a narrow wand at full pressure and you will get a clean driveway with permanent stripes cut into the surface.
This is the step most people skip, and it decides everything that follows. Southwest Florida has three common driveway surfaces and they do not tolerate the same treatment.
If you are not sure whether your concrete is sealed or coated, splash a little water on it. Water that beads and sits is a sealed or coated surface. Water that soaks in and darkens the slab is bare, porous concrete.
A wand puts all of the machine's energy into a narrow line. Move that line unevenly - and everyone does, because you are walking - and you leave a record of exactly where you paused, overlapped, or rushed. That is what driveway striping is: not dirt left behind, but etching where the concrete got more energy than its neighbours.
A flat-surface cleaner spins two or more jets inside a shroud, spreading that same energy over a wide, even path at a fixed height off the slab. The result is a uniform pass with no operator-drawn lines. On a driveway it is also several times faster, and it keeps the spray contained instead of blasting a fan of dirty water across your garage door and lower stucco.
Pavers follow the same chemistry but a very different pressure discipline, because the goal is to clean the paver without excavating the joints.
The three variables that decide whether you clean or damage a surface are pressure, tip angle, and distance - and distance is the one you control moment to moment. Doubling your distance from the surface drops the force on it dramatically, which is why a wand held close will etch concrete that the same machine cannot touch from further back.
Practical guidance: start wide, start far, and close in only if you need to. Test in an inconspicuous spot - behind a gate, at the edge nearest the street - before you commit to the visible middle of the driveway. On pavers and any coated surface, stay conservative throughout; on bare broom-finished concrete you have more latitude but still no reason to use a zero-degree tip.
This is the difference between a driveway that stays clean for a season and one that greys out again within weeks. Southwest Florida gives algae, mildew, and lichen close to ideal conditions: sustained warmth, high humidity, a daily storm cycle through the summer, and irrigation systems that keep concrete damp on a schedule.
Pressure alone removes the visible layer of that growth while leaving the organism in the pores of the slab. It looks like a complete result on the day and comes back quickly, because you pruned it rather than killed it. A cleaner with a hypochlorite base kills it, which is why the dwell step matters more than the pressure step and why professional crews lean on chemistry and use pressure mainly to rinse.
A related tell: if one section of your driveway is consistently darker, look up and look sideways. Shade from a tree or the north side of the house, plus a sprinkler head that clips the slab twice a week, will reliably grow a darker patch than the sun-baked centre.
Lovebugs arrive in Florida twice a year, in roughly late spring and again in early autumn, and their remains are acidic. On paint they are a well-known problem; on a driveway they are mostly a cosmetic mess, but they are worth washing off rather than leaving to bake.
Pollen in spring, leaf drop, and the wet season's constant damp all shape when a wash is worth doing. In practice, washing at the end of the wet season removes a summer's worth of accumulated growth, and washing before the winter season gets a driveway looking its best for the months when people are actually outside on it.
In most of Fort Myers, driveway runoff reaches a storm drain, and storm drains here discharge to the Caloosahatchee and the canal network rather than to a treatment plant. That is a good reason to use the minimum effective amount of cleaner, to keep degreasing to the specific stains that need it, and to sweep up debris before it washes down the apron rather than after.
Two timing mistakes are common here. The first is washing at midday in summer, when a hot slab dries your cleaner before it can dwell, producing a blotchy finish. Early morning or late afternoon gives you the dwell time you need.
The second is sealing too soon. Concrete and pavers hold water for longer than the surface suggests, and Gulf humidity slows drying further. Sealing a slab that is still holding moisture traps it under the sealer, which can produce a cloudy, milky finish that has to be stripped to fix. Give it a proper stretch of dry weather, not just a dry afternoon.
Doing this yourself is entirely reasonable on a straightforward concrete drive, particularly if you can hire or borrow a flat-surface cleaner. It becomes a poor trade when the surface is decorative or coated, when the driveway is large enough that consistency across a long session is hard to maintain, when rust is involved, or when a paver drive needs cleaning, re-sanding, and sealing as one job.
The failure mode worth avoiding is the one that is not reversible: etching, stripes, and a stripped overlay all cost more to correct than the wash saved. If you are unsure about your surface, test in a hidden area first - and if it is a coating you cannot identify, that is the point to get someone to look at it. We cover this work on our Fort Myers driveway cleaning page.
How often should a Fort Myers driveway be washed? Most Lee County driveways need it about once a year, though shaded drives, ones under trees, and ones caught by irrigation often need it more like twice.
Can I use bleach from the supermarket? Household bleach is a dilute form of the same active ingredient and will do something, but it is weak for the job and easy to apply unevenly. A product intended for exterior concrete gives a more consistent result.
Will pressure washing damage my pavers? The pavers themselves usually survive fine. The joint sand does not, so plan to re-sand afterwards - that is a normal part of the job rather than a sign something went wrong.
Why did my driveway turn green again so quickly? Almost always because the growth was rinsed off rather than killed. Without a cleaner that kills the organism in the pores, the film regrows from what is left behind.
Do I need to seal my concrete driveway? It is optional on bare concrete and mainly helps with stain resistance. On pavers, sealing after re-sanding does more useful work because it also stabilises the joints.
Can I just rent a pressure washer and use the wand? You can, and it will clean. The risk is cosmetic and permanent: a wand makes striping very easy on a large flat surface. If you rent, rent the flat-surface attachment as well.
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