Pressure Washing in Tampa Bay

Almost everything we do happens inside. Pressure washing is the one exception, and we keep it to two jobs: the outside of the house and the driveway. Those are the two surfaces everybody sees on the way in, and the two that show Florida weather first.

Most houses are not the color the owner thinks they are. Dirt, algae and road film go on so gradually that nobody notices, and then one wall gets washed and the difference is hard to look away from. We wash homes around Tampa Bay back to the color they were painted, and driveways back to one even shade of concrete.

Pressure is not the whole job

The instinct is to turn the pressure up until the dirt leaves. That is how people end up with lines etched into vinyl, wood fuzzed up, stucco chipped and water driven behind the siding.

The right approach is matching method to material. The house gets soft washed: low pressure and a cleaning solution that does the work chemically, then a rinse from the top down. The driveway is concrete and can take real pressure, so it gets a surface cleaner instead of a wand.

If a surface is already failing, we tell you before we wash it rather than after a chunk of it comes off.

The outside of the house

• Siding and walls. Vinyl, painted wood, fiber cement, stucco and block. Soft washed and rinsed from the top down.
• Soffits and fascia. Where the black mildew and the spider webs collect under the roof line.
• Front entry, porch and columns. The areas people stand next to and look at closely while they wait for the door.
• Window frames and sills. The algae streaks that run down from them get washed off with the wall.

The driveway

Cleaning concrete with a straight wand is what produces the striped driveways you see everywhere. The spray cuts a narrow arc, the overlap is never quite even, and the result is a permanent record of how somebody walked.

A surface cleaner is a rotating head inside a housing that covers a wide, consistent path at a fixed distance. Every square foot gets the same treatment, so you end up with one clean slab instead of zebra stripes. Edges and the expansion joints get detailed by hand afterwards, and the front walk gets the same treatment as the driveway it connects to.

Usually comes up

• General dirt, road film and tire grime.
• Algae, mildew and the black spotting on shaded concrete.
• Leaf and berry staining from overhanging trees.

May lighten rather than disappear

• Set-in motor oil, which needs a degreaser and dwell time.
• Rust from irrigation water, which is a different chemistry and is quoted separately.
• Deep staining in older, heavily porous concrete.

We look at the stains before quoting and tell you which list yours are on.

Protecting everything that is not being washed

The difference between a good wash and an expensive one is the prep. Cleaning solution that gets into a flower bed will kill it, and water driven into the wrong place ends up inside the wall.

• Plants and beds pre-wet and rinsed after, so nothing sits on the foliage.
• Exterior outlets, fixtures and anything electrical covered before we start.
• Windows and doors checked for seal, and we do not drive water up under lap siding.
• Cars moved off the driveway and anything loose moved off the work area.

How often, and what it costs

In this climate most houses want a wash every one to two years, and the shaded side usually needs it before the sunny side does. If you can see green or black on the walls, it is past due. Driveways look right on a yearly wash. Two common triggers: before listing a house, and before painting, because paint will not bond to a dirty wall.

Pricing is per property after we see it or see photos. Wall area, number of stories, how much growth there is and the size of the driveway all factor in. Doing the house and the driveway in one visit is one setup instead of two, and it prices better than booking them separately. Wash the house first, so the dirty rinse water does not run down onto clean concrete.

Common questions