How do you clean spray paint off brick?

Northern Powergrid decided to mark their electricity cable run by spray painting yellow arrows across my brick drive (I wasn’t in but spotted it on the doorbell camera).

They dug it up and replaced the bricks with tarmac. Bit annoyed because they didn’t ask and didn’t even ring the doorbell. While I suspect this is probably something for the legal cover on my home insurance, in the short term how the hell do you get this paint off? Pressure washer won’t touch it.

Cellulose Thinners might do it.*
Or Google, ‘graffiti removal spray’

*wear PPE. Unpleasant stuff.

We’ve used graffiti removal spray on the side of our brick garage and the spray paint came off.

Can you flip the bricks over?

Replaced the bricks with tarmac?  Does your drive extend over the service strip i.e outside your boundary?

If it’s your land, you should make a complaint as they didn’t have your permission.

PS They should be using temporary paint, I only use permanent if I’m marking something that’s in the middle of a busy road and it needs to last a few weeks!  Temporary still lasts pretty well if it’s not heavily trafficked.

Surely they can’t just come onto your property and make a mess then fail to make good afterwards.? They probably have emergency access rights but still. Do they perhaps intend to come back later and put it back to how it was? 

Brick acid, but test on a small area as it’ll make everything very clean and the clean bit may look worse than the paint

https://www.wickes.co.uk/Sika-Brick-and-Patio-Acid-Based-Cleaner—5L/p/133793

But I’d be getting Northern Powergrid back to put the drive back how they found it.

Does your drive extend over the service strip i.e outside your boundary?

It’s part brick, part tarmac, but the whole lot is mine. I don’t dispute their right of access but the cheeky sods didn’t even ring the doorbell to see if anyone was home.

I assume it’s NP because the cable does run under where they dug and the paint is yellow, but no indication of what work was done. Power didn’t go off.

I’d just be making it NP’s problem to sort, seems a bit pointless buying some niche chemical to deal with a problem you’ll probably never have again and that someone else should be on the hook to rectify this time.

Brick acid,

the paint will act as a resist and when the paint is finally removed/ wears off by other means you’ll be left with a nice etching of the arrows on your drive instead

It’s NP’s / their contractors job to put it right. If you attempt it yourself and make it worse it’s not their responsibility to put that mistake right. Even your power washer could leave permanent marks. So they are absolutely your first port of call, you’re letting them off the hook if you try and DIY it.

Ok, the plot thickens. Turns out NP marked their cable run but the contractor was working for a fibre company, who have been told that it’s council-owned property.

In some respects this is no bad thing and accounts for the crap work, especially since there’s no way they’d have run it down a private road if they’d known.

So as long as they bring my bricks back it’s actually a bit of a result. Wouldn’t have killed them to ask first though. 🤔

@Flaperon – I assume you are in contact with us (NPg) directly already, but if not PM me. We may be a bit busy for a bit depending on this storm, but do let me know where you’re up to with us. 

Flaperon
Full Member

Ok, the plot thickens. Turns out NP marked their cable run but the contractor was working for a fibre company, who have been told that it’s council-owned property.

In some respects this is no bad thing and accounts for the crap work, especially since there’s no way they’d have run it down a private road if they’d known.

So as long as they bring my bricks back it’s actually a bit of a result. Wouldn’t have killed them to ask first though. 🤔

Lol, why do they do that for publicly owned property anyway though?

In my town centre the local council re-did all the crossings in nice raised brick sections. Looked really nice.
Few months later some contractors come along and dug up something in the middle of it and filled it in with tarmac instead of putting the bricks back. Looks shit now.

Few months later some contractors come along and dug up something in the middle of it and filled it in with tarmac instead of putting the bricks back. Looks shit now.

Cheapest of 3 quotes?
Sufficient backhanders to get the contracts no matter how crap the work is?
Only contractor locally big enough to quote?
“We’ve got another job scheduled there in a couple of months, we’ll fix it then. No point doing it twice” (Second job either never existed, or was cancelled, final repairs never get done.)
Or just a complete and utter lack of enforcement or follow up.

There’s a badly filled trench outside my last house in the UK, they dug it up and filled it badly while i lived there. It was still there when i visited friends there, ~10 years later. Despite me and at least half a dozen of my neighbours complaining (it was right across the drives of all the houses opposite).

Part tarmac and part brick? Are you sure it’s not a service strip and you have right of access over it?  Often the front garden will cover the service strip. If it’s private you should have wayleaves for any service on your land, otherwise they don’t have right of access

why do they do that

Because they don’t give a ****.

There’s some new paving gone in near where I live. They’ve carried the design across an access hatch, except whoever last used the hatch has replaced the cover back-to-front so none of the pattern lines up any more. It’s probably one for the Disproportionately Cross file, but it annoys the absolute piss out of me every time I walk past. Someone has done that, surely seen it, and thought “bugger it, I’m not lifting that up again, I’m going for a sausage butty.”