Pressure cleaning in Marsden Park and Box Hill

At the 2021 Census, 97.4 per cent of the 4,175 occupied private dwellings in Marsden Park were separate houses. In Box Hill it was 98.8 per cent of 1,948. Flats and apartments were 0.2 per cent in each. Across New South Wales, separate houses were 65.6 per cent.

That makes a job here very predictable: a detached house, its walls and eaves, its gutters, its driveway and the paving out the back.

Both suburbs are part of the North West Growth Area. The NSW Department of Planning says Marsden Park will have up to 10,300 new homes and Box Hill and Box Hill Industrial up to 9,600. Its growth area page lists both precincts as rezoned, and Marsden Park North as planning underway.

Building around a finished house shows up on it. Dust from the next lot settles on fresh render and in the gutters, and the new driveway collects whatever the trucks track in. On a house that is only a few years old the first wash is usually that, rather than years of growth.

Marsden Park is in Blacktown City and Box Hill is in The Hills Shire, so a street on either side of the line answers to a different council. Blacktown City Council says stormwater is not treated and its pipes carry it straight into local wetlands and creeks. Its catchment map names Marsden Creek, First Ponds Creek, Second Ponds Creek and Caddies Creek among the city's waterways.

The Hills Shire Council is the most direct of any council we read. Its water quality page tells residents to reuse or contain water from pressure cleaning, to minimise water blasting, prevent spray drift and collect solids, and to let concrete slurry dry and sweep it up. It also says water pollution is prohibited under section 120 of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act, and that penalty notices may be issued.

Our method meets the stricter wording on both sides of the boundary. The wash water is contained and taken away.

Asbestos NSW estimates that one home in three built or renovated in New South Wales between 1945 and 1990 contains asbestos. A house in a recently rezoned estate sits well outside that window.

An older house, shed or fence on a remaining rural block does not, and it gets the same look as anywhere else. If a sheet might be fibro we stop and say so.