Render softwashing across Salford
Salford sits low in the Irwell valley with a lot of shaded, tree-lined older streets, so north-facing roofs and back-of-terrace paving here hold damp and turn green faster than the more open, elevated parts of Greater Manchester. Traffic grime carried off the M60 and A6 corridors also works its way into porous stone and older render, which is why a careful soft wash tends to outlast a quick pressure clean by months.
Salford packs an unusually wide age range of housing into a small footprint, from the tightly-terraced streets of Ordsall, Weaste and Seedley through to the inter-war semis of Swinton and Pendlebury and the glass-and-render blocks lining the Quays. The older terraces still carry shallow-pitched slate roofs and original flagged or concrete yards, while the newer estates lean almost entirely on block-paved drives and rendered elevations. With that spread on almost every street, we read the surface before we pick the method rather than treating a whole road the same way.
