Power Washing and House Washing in Westchester County, NY

Pressure is a tool, and on most of a house it is the wrong one. Soft washing runs the machine at low pressure and lets a cleaning solution do the work. It kills the algae and mildew staining the surface instead of stripping the top layer of the surface off with it. The wall comes clean and it stays clean longer, because the growth is dead rather than scraped.

High pressure does have a place. Concrete, brick, block and stone can take it. A driveway carrying years of tire film needs mechanical force to come clean, and a surface cleaner attachment gives an even result instead of the wand stripes you see on jobs done in a hurry.

The line between the two is not a preference. Water driven at siding does not stop at the siding. Vinyl laps are built to shed rain running down a wall, not a stream pushed up underneath them, and once water is behind the wall it sits in the sheathing where nothing dries it out. Painted wood and trim lose their coating at a pressure concrete would not notice. An older deck is the worst case: the soft summer grain between the hard growth rings erodes first, so you end up with furry, splintered boards that look worse in a month than they did dirty. Once wood is opened up that way the fix is sanding, and sometimes the fix is replacement.

The property gets walked before anything is turned on. What the surface is made of, how old it is, and what is actually growing on it decides the pressure, the tip and the solution.

We install pavers, so we are the ones who see what a careless wash does to them. Polymeric sand in the joints is what locks the field together. A narrow tip held close scours it straight out. The open joint that is left takes weed seed, lets the bedding sand migrate, and starts the edges of the field moving within a season or two. That is a repair, and it is bigger than the wash was.

Soft stone has its own problem. Bluestone and older brick etch, and once the face is opened up it holds dirt faster than it did before, so a patio that looked bright the day it was washed goes dull again quickly.

The answer is a wider fan, more distance off the surface, and a cleaner doing the work chemically. If joints do come up open, from the wash or from years of weather, we re-sand them. Paver work is our own trade, so it does not turn into somebody else's problem.

Exterior cleaning fits with gutter work and seasonal clean-ups because the crew is already on the property with ladders up and hoses out. Clearing the gutters and then washing the face of them in one visit is a single setup instead of two.

Sequence matters. We wash before the beds are mulched, not after, so nothing runs into fresh mulch. The house comes before the walkways so the walkways are not rinsed twice. Plantings get soaked with plain water first and rinsed again after. On properties where we already handle the lawn or the plow route, the wash is scheduled into the rest of the year's work.