A lot of siding we wash is oxidized. Soft washing normally doesn’t disturb the oxidation. If someone wants the oxidation removed it does require scrubbing. When oxidation is present you just have to let the customers know that you are just cleaning the dirt and algae. Removing oxidation is a whole different process. Most can care less about it. They just want the green and black stains removed.
As @Sasquatch mentioned that “dirt” could actually be fallout. Fallout is usually noticeable right under the eaves on lighter colored houses. The pollutants in the air kind of hover up under there and the siding is protected from the rain rinsing it away on occasion. Fallout usually takes degreaser and some scrubbing. That’s definitely something you want to keep an eye out for when bidding jobs. I see it a lot on white and light blue houses.
Road grime is kind of similar. It usually requires scrubbing too. Sometimes a degreaser and sometimes even Oxalic due to the metals in dirt.
I think you made the right call walking away. With you just getting into houses there’s no need to take on a job like that. House washing is a piece of cake but a job like that will make you hate it. Most would walk away from a house that needs brushed anyways so you did good. I don’t mind doing smaller ones like that but they’re going to pay for it and it would definitely be more than $450.
Should have done it George. I would price that house based on pic, which I usually do, at $219. I would have told the potential customer that it’s oxidized and that soft washing, we don’t remove. If they want me to remove, it’d almost be cheaper for them to put new siding on it, though a little one story like that wouldn’t be too bad. But 99.9% of people don’t, same with fallout except maybe if a small section say by the front door that’s segregated.
You do need to be careful of little ranches like that though. Realize most your time on a house is getting the gutters and soffitt clean, so a 1500 ft ranch can take you 30% more time than a 2000 ft 2 story box. When you have decent equipment like you do, could care less about the height unless something really stupid.
Also, remember 2/3 of your time is spent rinsing, so you can’t soap further ahead than what you can come back and rinse say within 10-15min. House like that, you’re probably going to wash 2 sides at a time because of rinse time and if really dirty maybe only one at a time, but that’s still less than 10-15min/ side.
Don’t get hung up on plants. No hw mix is going to hurt an established bush or plant. If they have fresh planted or existing blooming plants they need to to be taken care of. Won’t necessarily kill the plants, but will turn blooms brown along the edges. Usually you can do all your pre-wetting as you go simply while waiting on your water to change over to soap. And then just lightly rinse them along a side after you’re through rinsing the house, which gets most off the plants anyway. Seriously, the total time spent pre or after rinsing in a hour long HW is maybe 90 seconds., if that long. Certain plants, like flowers or ferns you do need to be a little more careful with. I get the homeowner to take ferns in or if planted will wet a tad more, like 3 seconds and make sure I rinse them before the house.
But the only way to learn is to do some. You learn something on every job. You need to drive down here and work a day or 2 with me or someone like Brian. I shot a detailed video on doing a really dirty house, just got to do the voice over since it was too noisy on the video. I’ll try to get up sometime soon.
