Step 1 of Home Makeover – Get a House Wash
If only we had a $ for every time we heard a customer say “wow what a difference”!
Or in the words of Suzy: “I’d never heard of housewashing until Simon suggested it. So glad he did though. Our Queenslander went from almost grey to sparkling white again in a matter of 3 hours! The price was much more reasonable than a full house paint so it’s definitely worth considering if on a budget and in need of an effective refresh”.
During our initial inspection of a property we can very quickly determine (as we did in the case of Suzy’s home) if a house wash would be beneficial to our client as they begin their process of getting their property ready for sale or renovation.
This reasonably priced initial activity really is the starting point in any home makeover project, be it for the run up to a sale or a renovation project. In our experience these are carried out mostly for pre-sale makeovers to remove the dreariness of dirt and grime which have accumulated on the surface of your home.
The approach taken can effectively get rid of mildew, dirt, and mould which are the results from building up over a long period of time without any cleaning intervention.
So how do you do this and what does it involve?
There’s generally a couple of approaches to house washing, high pressure washing and low pressure washing known as soft washing. Interestingly the latter being done using high pressure capable equipment by professional service providers for reasons explained later.
You could DIY it, however this generally involves high pressure washers of the DIY type and revolves around blasting off the dirt, but not really treating it, also risking some localized damage to exterior paint as well as water getting into all the places you perhaps didn’t want it to. Not only that there it can be a risky business if doing roofs.
This still can be the case for lower pressure soft washing systems used by professionals, but as they do it a lot more and know which type of windows are good or bad fitting and paintwork that looks a bit suspect they tend to be rather more proficient in the activity.
Finally when you consider you could have your whole home, drive, pavers, pool tiles, decks etc washed for under $1000 (median price from experience of many house washes) then is it something you really want to spend several days doing with substandard equipment?
A little history behind Soft Washing
The following is an extract from : http://www.ecleanmag.com/the-concepts-behind-soft-washing/#ufh an Article by: by AC Lockyer, SoftWash Systems
Twenty years ago, bleach and water was combined with surfactants, algaecides and residual inhibitors into the first soft washing solution. It was sprayed directly from an agricultural style tank sprayer to remove mildew, bacteria and other organic stains from building roofs and exteriors.
Soft washing revolutionized the roof and exterior cleaning industry by allowing more carefully metered chemical solutions to be applied to building surfaces for the benefit of cleaning that surface chemically without pressure. Because of that, in the last two decades, soft washing has become the most important change to the mobile exterior cleaning industry, since the downstream injector.
So how do you truly define soft washing?
There is quite a lot of controversy surrounding what constitutes soft washing technique and equipment. Soft washing is actually much more closely associated to pest control than to the pressure washing industry.
Soft washing technique is based strongly in the spray-and-kill-it approach. The application of a chemical to kill an alien invader. The inoculation for the virus. The cure for the disease. Soft washing is and will always be the application of a chemical to a surface where the chemical does all of the killing and cleaning of the microbe. Soft washing chemicals need only be applied to clean. No pressure is needed for the cleaning, only for the application. Any where the chemical can reach will be cleaned by the chemical. The chemical is not selective. It cleans whatever it comes in contact with.
Many soft wash solutions contain some sodium hypochlorite (bleach), that bleach alone will not obtain a 100 percent kill ratio against rooftop microbes which cause staining. In a true soft washing application, bleach is only used to achieve two things: to aid the soft-washing pro in determining what surfaces have been treated thoroughly, and to create an instant clean effect. In actuality, most of the algae, mold, mildew and bacteria is left behind on the surface and is now just bleached clear. Rain and other weathering elements will remove the dying microbes later.
Soft washing became a quick and effective way to treat and clean away any organic-based stain from a building’s surface, especially where pressure washing would damage roofs, paint, wood, or other delicate surfaces. The list of building infestations and stains began to grow. Mold, mildew, algae, fungus, bacteria, viruses, germs, mosses, lichens, insects, organic soiling and more were easily removed with the soft washing technology.
Soft Washing Equipment
In the same way you cannot treat simply half of a home to cure a roach problem, you cannot treat just half a roof or half a wall to achieve any kind of lasting result against these microbial invaders. Soft wash solutions go deeper than just the surface of the building material and/or roof; it seeps into every crevice and pore. That’s why it can last up to four to six times longer than pressure washing.
The simplest soft washing rig consists of just a few parts: the tank, the pump, the hose and finally the spray gun.
EDITOR NOTE: This system is also usually complimented by high pressure systems for other washing aspects such as driveways, pavers and other external areas that need higher pressure dirt movement as opposed to chemical treatment.
There are more sophisticated configurations available, allowing for more options and wider mixes of differing soft wash solutions, but the typical tank sprayer will work nicely. You know you are soft washing when your spraying system has everything to do with delivery of the soft washing chemicals and nothing to do with the cleaning of the surface itself. Soft wash systems merely deliver a potent mix of chemicals that treat the building exterior surface and the chemical does all of the cleaning, removing the organic based stain.
Biodegradable chemicals are available making soft washing even more environmentally responsible. Soft washing, because of its long-lasting clean, allows a surface to stay clean with less frequent visits from the cleaning company, further reinforcing less visits, meaning less water and less chemicals. In soft washing, less is definitely more when it comes to being good stewards of our environment.
Soft washing is becoming a preferred way to perform maintenance cleanings while implementing good environmental stewardship guidelines.
It goes without saying that your home is one of your most prized and valuable possessions, so you have to take care of it, maintain it and improve it. One way of prolonging its life and aesthetics is by hiring the services of a trusted house washing company.
At Ellis & Co Property Services we have a couple of teams we use, believe me we have tried the DIY approach and it really isn’t worth it.
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