Ceramic coating across Hertfordshire

Town by town

What each town's trees and roads do to paint

St Albans and Harpenden

The cathedral city's avenues and Harpenden's commons carry limes, planes and horse chestnuts, and the county's highest concentration of new cars parked under them. Lime honeydew is the worst of the lot: it dries clear, bakes in a hot week and etches rings into dark paint that a wash reveals rather than removes. A coating on a new car in Marshalswick or on the Harpenden avenues before its first summer is the difference between paint that lasts the lease and paint that needs correcting at the end of it.

Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield

Founded in 1920 as the second garden city, Welwyn Garden City has more trees per street than anywhere in the county, and a car on Parkway or in the Handside avenues lives in permanent shade and sap. Hatfield adds the A1(M) and the university's long stay car parks. The coating here earns its keep on sap and bird mess; the correction before it takes out the swirls that years of brush washes have left.

Letchworth, Hitchin and Baldock

The first garden city, laid out from 1903, has the same problem with sixty years more growth, and Hitchin's Chiltern lanes add chalk dust that works into the lacquer. Baldock's A1(M) junction adds the iron from brake dust that rusts into orange specks. The correction's decontamination lifts all three; the coating keeps them off for two years.

Hertford, Ware and the Lea

River towns coat for a different reason: the damp. A car by the Lea spends the winter wet, and wet paint with salt on it is where the dulling happens. A coated car beads the water off and the salt with it, which is why September, before the gritters, is the month to book in Hertford and Ware.

Knebworth, Welwyn and the villages

Oaks and lanes. A village car takes sap from the oaks, mud from the lanes and the occasional hedge scratch, and a coated car shrugs off the first two; the third is a correction job. The drives in Knebworth, Datchworth and Codicote are the easiest in the county for a full day's work, and the coating cures better away from a street tree.

Across the county

A dry day, correction first, then two years of easy washing

The coating locks in whatever is under it, so every job starts with the correction: a decontamination wash, the iron remover, a clay to lift the sap and tar, then machine polishing to take out the swirls. On a car under three years old that is a light correction; on one that has had five summers under a lime it is a longer one, and your washer will say so when they see the paint. The coating goes on panel by panel under lights, cures for 24 hours, and needs a dry night, which rules out a space under a tree and makes a drive or a carport the right place.

Hertfordshire's gritting season runs from October to the end of April, so the two windows are September, when the car goes into the salt protected, and April to June, when the gritters have stopped and the honeydew has not started. The clocks went back on 25 October and the day is short, so the washer starts early and the dry forecast matters more than the light. Once it is on, the care is a pH neutral wash every few weeks, no brush washes, and a rinse after a week under a tree rather than a month; the Deluxe Exterior and the Essential Exterior on the booking page are both coating safe.

The coatings we do across Hertfordshire

• A new car on a Harpenden avenue: light correction and the coating before its first summer under the limes.
• A three year old car in Welwyn Garden City being kept after the PCP: full correction for the sap etching, then the coating.
• A dark EV on a Hatfield drive: coating, because black paint shows every honeydew ring.
• A Hertford car that spends the winter wet: coating in September, so the salt beads off.
• A Hitchin car with chalk in the lacquer: Exterior Detail first; coating if the correction brings it back.
• A village car with hedge scratches: correction first, honestly assessed, then the coating.

More on this: ceramic coating in Stevenage and how a ceramic coating works.