Dark, dirty blotches of mold on the roof
Cobwebs and old wasp nests under the eaves
Green patches of some unknown origin spreading along the base of the house
You pull the car into the garage
and close the door. Now you won't have to look at your house's deteriorating
condition. Once inside, you plop down on the couch to take a load off your feet
and look outside. The windows are dusty, streaked, and birds have made a mess on
them. You get up and close the drapes so you don't have to see it. Then you
begin to torment yourself with the prospect of having your roof replaced,
getting a painting estimate, and the Saturday you are about to lose to cleaning
your windows...I want to start by saying that power washing is a separate service offered by Marsh Window Cleaning, and not an actual method for cleaning windows. Power washing is a method for the removal of dirt, mildew, pollen, cobwebs, and old, flaking paint from your house. It is also a method of cleaning concrete driveways, patios, pool lanai and screen enclosures. The tool used for these purposes is a pressure cleaner with an output of at least 1500 psi, or pounds per square inch.
Before that last piece of information causes you to faint at the idea of subjecting your home to that kind of a beating, let me explain something. There are ways to mitigate that pressure and allow us to do the job in a harmless manner. The first way is by standing some distance from the object one is cleaning. Every inch that comes between the nozzle and the surface being cleaned reduces the pressure that it will actually experience. Another way is to use various tips on the nozzle that either diffuse the jet of water into a wider pattern, or increase the water flow, thus reducing the pressure. So why have all that pressure available? Because you sometimes need it, as in the case of cleaning a concrete drive.
I believe that the best use of a pressure cleaner, when you are cleaning a house, is to use it as a delivery system for bleach. It's a fast, consistent method of getting chemicals to do the dirty work, while avoiding that "brush stroke" look that you get when you just rely on the pressure to do the cleaning. The bleach does a more even job, and loosens the glue that binds cobwebs to your house.
Is it bad for the house? It all depends on who you talk to. Power washing is something you SHOULD be able to do to your house. The alternative is hand-washing the entire surface with a sponge and scrub brush. And washing your house is inevitable if you ever plan on painting it again. Therefore, the surface of your house should be maintainable. Beware of anyone who tells you that the paint job he just did for you cannot be power washed. You certainly SHOULD be able to perform routine maintenance on your house after it has been painted. Even if your house has been stained instead of painted, it is still a cleanable surface, although caution must be exercised.
A word about outdoor light fixtures, outdoor speakers, and keypads: if they cannot bear getting wet, they don't belong outside. After all, here in Florida we frequently are experiencing 100% humidity. That is why we have mildew in such abundance. In regard to chlorine, we have no reason to use it directly on speakers and light fixtures, and we rinse off any incidental exposure. Also, keep in mind that chlorine is a gas, and that the liquid form that we use is only 10% chlorine, and that begins to dissipate after it is exposed to the air. That is one of the reasons why you have to keep adding it to your pool. Chlorine has no long-term corrosive effect with a short-term exposure. The chlorine has a corrosive effect on my machine and the hoses only because it is exposed to it almost daily .
I bring all of this up because the manufacturers of poorly made products are quick to claim that you must have had your house pressure washed in the past year if the thin veneer of brass on their fixtures can no longer hide the rust that is growing underneath. They know it is a good bet that you might have had your house cleaned if you live in Florida, so they take a chance. However, I have seen rusting brass fixtures on houses that have never been power washed. I have seen rusty, shorted-out speakers by the pool deck that have also never been power washed.
Perhaps the biggest controversy involving power washing is that which exists between those of us who clean houses and the manufacturers of insulated windows. Some manufacturers go as far as placing a sticker on their windows that say, DO NOT PRESSURE WASH. This is supposed to insulate them from the liability of replacing glass that gets fogged up between the panes. It has also lead many home owners to believe that they cannot have their house power washed if they have these windows. As a person who has been cleaning windows for twenty years, and has seen thousands of these windows in hundreds of homes BEFORE I ever started doing power washing, I would like to add my testimony.
I believe that insulated glass, in its present form, is a fundamentally flawed idea. For those who don't know it, an insulated window is made of two pieces of glass with an air space separating them. This dead air space, filled with inert nitrogen gas, is supposed to reduce outside noise and lower temperature loss through the widow. It does do an excellent job of noise reduction, but it does a negligible job of saving energy.
The dead air space is protected by a rubber, silicon or petroleum based seal that keeps the totally dry, dead air in and the moist air out; for a while. The basic problem with this concept is that these windows get alternately hot and cold 365 times a year, especially if the windows get a lot of sun exposure. That means the seals expand and contract until the inevitable breach occurs. It may take 15 years, or 15 days, but it's coming. When it does, the air inside the window will expand and escape out the breach in the seal.
When the window cools, the air inside contracts and sucks in the highly humid air we have here in Florida. Thus begins the fogging effect that we begin to notice as that air gets hot and the moisture turns to steam in between the panes. It usually starts as just a small amount, but it grows and grows until the window is actually dripping wet inside when it cools. I have seen this happen for 20 years, even to windows that have never been power washed.
The fact is that I am very careful around people's windows for a more common sense reason: I don't want to get bleach or water inside your house. Some windows are badly fitted, or have no weather-stripping, or have other structural defects that allow water to come in, even during a hard rain. I exercise care by using a wide tip for rinsing, and I also do it at a distance. When I still have to get close, I let an employee do the washing while I hold a towel and wait for the leak. This is usually the case only in older homes
There are risks to power washing, but most of those were already taken during the construction of the house. I suggest you cover things you are not sure of, move potted plants away from the house, take wreaths and other decorations inside, and put some plastic over the koi pond. As far as your other plants and shrubs are concerned, I soap them down first with a mixture of dish soap and water to create a barrier between the plant surface and the chlorine, and I rinse them off afterward. That is sufficient for the vast majority of plants. I rely on your judgment to preserve those more exotic plants which I cannot even pronounce.
Contract Cleaners' Bulletin Board Where I go for answers from time to time...