Have you ever looked for someone to clean your home’s exterior and they claimed that they could wash your house? But you are just trusting that person that they know what they are doing because they said they have washed many houses before. You make an appointment with the so called “Professional” and all seems well when they show up, start hooking up their equipment and start working. You go back inside to watch your favorite tv show while you are waiting on the power washer to complete his work. He rings the doorbell and says he is all done, you inspect the work and it seems like he did a fair job so you pay him and that’s that, or so you think.
After the house is completely dry you notice lines in your siding and maybe a few spots where the siding got knocked loose. So you are mad that the siding is loose but furious that the lines in the siding are permanent and will not come out. You demand a refund or file against the insurance provider. As you can see, it’s not looking good so far. You have to get your siding replaced which causes you to miss work and deal with more contractors to get your siding replaced and it has just become a nuisance. After its all said and done you regret ever hiring the guy to do the pressure washing for you even if he seemed to be a nice guy. You are still unsure how he caused so much damage with a service as routine as getting your house washed.
Then a few weeks later you notice another one of your neighbors getting their home washed. You are thinking will your neighbor have to go through the same headache as you did? A few hours later you drive back by your neighbors house and it is looking flawless, no lines in the siding, no dirt, no algae….just clean. And you wonder why did my neighbor get different results than me?
The difference is obviously who you hired to perform the work but more distinctively it is the process of washing a house. The guy you hired just went out and bought a pressure washer and started blasting your siding with a high pressure to do the cleaning to where your neighbor hired a guy who knows that the correct way to clean a house, which is the process of soft washing.
Soft washing is the process of cleaning houses using chemicals formulated to kill algae, mold, and mildew by spraying this solution on the house with the pressure washer using lower pressure and more volume. The solution is sprayed on, sits for about ten minutes and rinsed off with just water. The results that you wanted all along could have been achieved just by knowing the difference in low pressure soft washing and high pressure hard washing.
When it comes to hiring a professional pressure washer to wash your house you should always ask if they clean by soft washing. Some surfaces do need the high pressure but this is typically just concrete. If your home is vinyl, Hardiplank, masonite, stucco, and even brick then you should hire a professional who does soft washing!