Surface cleaner vs. wand: why your driveway needs the round thing

If you've seen me on a driveway, you've seen me pushing what looks like a floor buffer. That's a surface cleaner — two spinning jets under a shroud — and it's what separates a pro driveway wash from a wand job.

A pressure-washer wand leaves stripes. Even a perfect operator moving in perfect overlapping passes will leave subtle bands where each stroke starts and ends. On a dirty driveway, you can see them from the street.

• Two jets rotating at 500+ RPM under the shroud
• Even, consistent pressure on every square inch
• No streaks, no bands, no operator variation
• 4–5x faster than wanding

A driveway done with a proper surface cleaner is uniformly clean, edge to edge. No streaks. That's the difference between "looks better" and "looks new."

• Edges (curbs, walls, garage aprons)
• Cracks and joints
• Uneven surfaces where the shroud can't sit flat
• Small spots

I use both on every driveway job — surface cleaner for the field, wand for the edges.

"Do you use a surface cleaner or just a wand?" If it's just a wand, expect stripes.