Common House Washing Methods

Most power washing contractors believe that the best way to perform house washing is by using an X-Jet, this tool can cut your cleaning time by 50% or more! if you don’t have one then use a power washer that has a chemical injector built into the machine.  Using a chemical injector for cleaning will allow you to pull the soap from the container, mixing it in the machine with water and spray it onto the house using low pressure starting from the bottom up.

No matter what method you use for power washing houses, always allow the chemical to dwell on the siding, then using low pressure, rinse the product from the siding. Make sure when your rinsing the product off the siding that you start at one end of the siding all the way to the end. Do not stop or vary your distance from the siding, or it will cause the surface to be cleaned unevenly.

Common mistakes during house washing made by homeowners and new contractors are:

Make sure when using a power washer that you don’t shoot water or chemicals up under the siding, this can cause significant mold problems behind your siding.

Trying to remove the powdery coating called oxidation on aluminum siding when washing a house. Removing this coating can cause discoloration and in some cases cause the siding to look like a completely different color.

Using too much pressure when performing cleaning can also force water up behind the siding where it will cause mildew behind the siding or in some cases, blow the siding off the house!

Washing houses from the top down or letting chemicals dry on the house, which may leave streaks on the siding.

Using a ladder when cleaning to clean the upper areas can result in serious injuries and death from slipping off the ladder.

These are the types of mishaps that many people have when performing house washing of their home. If you decide to use a power washer on your home, here are some general guidelines to use.

Make sure the machine your using puts out a minimum of 4 gallons of water per minute and less than 1000 PSI.

Most homeowners and start up power washing companies will buy a machine from a hardware store that puts out 1,000 PSI but only uses 2 gallons per minute of water. While this machine may work, it will triple the amount of time to do the job properly.

Be careful if your making your own chemicals. For example, mixing bleach and ammonia can create a poisonous gas.

Other house washing problems

If you have dealt with other problems on house washing jobs, or other power washing jobs, share your problem or experience here so we can help you find a solution to the problem.