Have a chance to bid on a commercial job but dont know what to charge?

Can you send to me as well? jodie@washhllc.com

Also, what PW and chemicals do you use on your commercial accounts?

Also, how long would it take for you to pw a 11k sq ft of commercial concrete?

And @washh_girl It’s all here. Squid's Flat Rate Card

It depends. Is the 11k sq, feet broken up in sections, or is it basically a big rectangle that I can access without moving the truck?

Typically, we don’t do a lot of large concrete jobs, especially during the height of the season when there’s more money to be made in residential or commercial EIFS.

I guess a better answer for you would be I don’t really know since I don’t know if it’s oily and greasy, just dirty, how it’s laid out, etc. Do we need to run 3 machines or more to make it cost effective?

Again without seeing it, I don’t have a good answer.

Thank you SO much for your response!

We have 100 ft of hose which should allow us to keep the truck in one spot without moving it but i’m not sure if this affects results in any way. Opinion?

It’s the walkways that surround the building on 3 sides (see attached pics).

What pw unit you you have - psi & gpm’s and what chemicals should we use for this?

We have a 7 gpm, 5.5 gpm, and 4 gpm machine. The 4 gpm machine can go in the garbage as far as I’m concerned. That being said, those only get used for residential concrete anyway. You don’t need much more than 2500 psi to clean concrete well. Hot water is a necessity for commercial concrete and the higher gpm the faster you’ll clean it.

For commercial concrete, when we do take it, we have the option to rent 2 large 8 gpm hot water machines from the local Landa dealer. If we were running the 2 large landa machines with surface cleaners this area would take a full overnight because we wouldn’t want to deal with foot or vehicle traffic with 2 people.

We’d use EBC for the detergent and you’re definitely going to need a lot more than 100’ of hose.

If I didn’t want to take all of it on, I’d call my buddy Josh at Southern Clean, another pressure washing contractor in my area, to see if he wanted to split it or do all of it. Subcontracting is a beautiful thing. Might not be a bad idea to find a Josh, if this is your first go at something like this if for no other reason you’ll learn exactly how to do it next time.

I saw you responded via email, but I made an edit to my response and I’m not sure if those make it through email. If you can check it out in the forum.

You’re going to need a lot more than 100 ft of hose. Plus if you had heat would help. Pedestrian traffic going to be a pain. Also what permits will you need, where are you going to pull water from. Squidsc right, going to have to do at nite or early Sunday am. What size machine do you have?

I live in Central Florida… I charge 0.10¢ a sqft for cold water and 0.15¢ for hot water. Most of my customers prefer the hot water (it melts the gum off).

It depends on the location your working in. I live in Canada and my house washes start @ 0.18¢ per sq ft. If the house is very dirty, tough to move around etc then the cost goes up.

At the end of the day, a guy has expenses with business, plus needs to feed his family.

This right here, is why I wont charge an hourly rate. I don’t want to feel rushed just because hypothetically, the customer may think the job will only take 2 hours, when in reality its a 4 hour job. This could lead to bad reviews, loss/no repeat customers. Just my 2 cents

Canadian or American?

Also, Juan isn’t around anymore.

“you” can “charge” by the hour and by the sqft at the same time, in the same way “you” can measure distance in meters and feet, at the same time.

When most people reply that they charge by the hour, they are simply using a shortcut to explain their pricing calculation, when in reality they are charging each job by “the job” - they are taking into account labor time, market rates, travel time, extra incurred expenses for the particular job etc, to come up with a final number.

This final number can be represented as hourly rate or sqft rate, and is not necessary the same way it is communicated to the customer - you can charge $x/hr and quote/invoice the customer by $y/sqft.

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0.18¢ per sq ft Canadian funds

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