Ceramic coating in Medway

Why it matters here

Salt from two directions, and chalk on top

Medway's paint has a harder life than London's. Over half the borough is rural, and the North Kent Marshes wrap the peninsula and the river, so the air that settles on a car in Hoo, Strood or Lower Rainham carries a fine salt film that dulls a clear coat and smears glass. Then the gritters start: Medway Council's season runs from mid October to mid April, with 4,000 tonnes of salt and eight salting vehicles treating major roads and bus routes first, and the spray from the A2, the A289 and the Medway Tunnel ends up on every car that commutes. Between the two, the towns climb the chalk of the North Downs, and a dry week leaves a white dust on bonnets that scratches if it is wiped off dry.

A ceramic coating answers all three. It is applied after a full correction, so the swirls and the etching from last year's droppings are polished out first, and it cures to a surface that salt, dust and sap cannot grip. The next wash rinses them off. Water beads and runs, the paint keeps its depth, and the gloss that a Saturday polish gives for a week lasts two years.

Done on the drive

The whole job happens where the car lives. Your washer brings water and power, works through the correction and the coating in a half day booking, and needs only room to walk around the car and a dry spell for the cure. A drive in Rainham or Walderslade is ideal; an allocated bay at St Mary's Island works if the washer can reach it; a kerbside space on a quiet Rochester street is fine on a dry day.

When to book it

Before the salt, or straight after it

The best time for a coating in Medway is the fortnight before the gritters start, so the paint goes into winter protected, or the first dry spell after they stop in April, when the correction takes off a winter of salt and the coating starts the summer clean. October is still a good month: a dry day, a window from 10am, and the car is coated by mid afternoon. Avoid booking for a day of heavy rain, because the coating needs a few hours to cure before it meets water.

New cars from the dealers along the A2 and in Strood are the obvious candidates, coated before the first winter. Lease cars are the other: a coated car goes back at the end of its term with its paint as it left the showroom, which is cheaper than the inspection charges for the alternative. For an older car with a decade of swirls, the Exterior Detail, with its decontamination, clay and wax, is the honest first step; the coating follows if the paint is worth it.

Which Medway cars get coated

Medway has 1.35 cars a household and a third of homes owner occupied with two or more, and the cars that get coated here are the ones that face the weather: the SUV parked on an open drive in Hempstead, the saloon that commutes the M2 to the Dartford Crossing, the new car on the peninsula at Hoo or Cliffe with nothing between it and the estuary, and the flat owner's car at Chatham Maritime, which lives under gull droppings and river air. The borough's Local Plan asks for 26,176 new homes by 2041, so there will be more new cars on more new drives, and more site dust while they are built.

• A car under three years old: coat it now, before the first winter salt, and every wash afterwards is quicker.
• A car facing the river at Hoo, Cliffe, Lower Rainham or St Mary's Island: the coating is the only thing that stops salt air gripping.
• A commuter car on the M2: motorway film rinses off a coated car instead of bonding to it.
• An older car with swirls: Exterior Detail first, coating after, if the paint deserves it.
• A lease car: coated at the start, returned without a paint charge at the end.

More on this: what a ceramic coating actually does and exterior detailing in Medway.