Why is it called pressure washing.
When talking about exterior cleaning it is most often thought of as pressure washing. This could be because in the past the only way to clean the exterior of houses and buildings was to use a pressure washer or hand wash it. The idea of having water at a high pressure to blow away the dirt and grime made it easy to make something look clean. There are many areas in exterior cleaning where a pressure washer is the best choice. some of these include Cement cleaning, cleaning farm equipment, construction equipment and other very dirty, hard surfaces.
Where not to use a pressure washer.
With the advances in cleaning processes, pressure washing siding and roofs is no longer the right way to clean siding and roofs. Because of the high pressure water stream that is developed by these machines, damage is often caused to the surface. It takes just a split second for a person with a pressure washer to accidentally cause damage to the vinyl siding, or shingles on a roof. Even when used to clean cement, care must be taken not to etch the concrete while pressure washing.
A better option for cleaning.
Just this week we have cleaned the exterior siding on two homes that were pressure washed last year. In both cases the owners were not happy with the cleaning that they received from the pressure washing companies. On one of the homes the black mold that grows on the siding was not cleaned off, and the outside of the gutters still had black streaking left on them. The other home was actually damaged by the operator getting the pressure washing wand to close to the siding. This left a gouge in the vinyl siding. Our system for cleaning is what is referred to as a soft wash cleaning. This means we do not use high pressure to clean, we use detergents to do the cleaning, and then water pressure that is below 100 psi to rinse with. This provides a much better cleaning than just blasting away with a pressure washer.