Pressure Washing in Northville, MI

Most houses need both, and they're different techniques. Soft washing runs at about garden-hose pressure and uses a cleaner to kill algae and lift grime. It's for siding, brick, stone, soffits, screened porches and anything painted. Pressure washing runs high and is for hard surfaces that can take it: concrete driveways, walks, garage aprons and patios. Use the wrong one and vinyl cracks, paint comes off clapboard, and water ends up behind the siding of a house that looked clean for two weeks.

Outside washing here runs April through November. The cleaner needs warmth to work, and nobody wants water sheeting down a wall in a freeze, so the season ends on its own. Spring is the busiest stretch, because everyone wants the winter off the house at once. It's also the right time: salt film, road grit and a winter of algae come off in one visit, and the house stays presentable through the summer. If you're booking window cleaning or gutters anyway, add the wash to the same trip.

Driveways and walks here take a beating that has nothing to do with dirt. Salt, freeze, thaw and plow blades leave a gray film, sometimes a white efflorescence bloom, and on older slabs a surface that has started to flake. We use a flat surface cleaner for an even finish with no wand stripes, and we set the pressure to what the concrete can take. If a slab is already breaking down, we'll tell you that blasting it would make it worse, and we won't do it.

The City of Northville's historic district design guidelines are plain about cleaning. They list washing wood siding with pressure or media blasting as not appropriate, because it damages the wood, and for masonry they ask for the gentlest method that works, ideally a water-based cleanser and a soft brush. That's the reasoning behind soft washing: the cleaner does the work and the rinse stays low.

The guidelines cover decks and patios as well. In the district they belong on the side or back of a house, with wood preferred over composite, so a downtown deck tends to be wood. It gets a lower pressure suited to old wood, which furrs up if it's pushed.

Cedar and pressure-treated decks, fences, porch floors and pergolas all clean up well, and all of them furr up badly at the wrong pressure. We set it to the material and the condition of the wood. We also clean the small things that never make it onto a quote request, like outdoor light fixtures and glass rails. Mention them when you book and they go on the same visit.