Hello, i’m new here and new to the industry. I would like to know if it is standard to include gutter whitening, fascia, and soffit cleaning in a house wash. I have always assumed that a house wash was siding and/or masonry cleaning, and whatever else comes off with the same mixture. I have read several things that suggest that people offer fascia/soffit cleaning as a separate service or don’t offer it at all, but I have also read on some larger companies websites that they include all of that in a standard “house wash”.
I could understand larger companies including it, because they have employees for that… but I cannot tell for sure if this is a universal practice, or if it varies by company. I certainly hope it isn’t universal, because from my experience, trying to clean that black mold(not tiger stripes) off of most fascia is an outrageous amount of work compared to cleaning siding. 95% of the time I end up having to brush it, and it does not brush of easy at all. I end up spending more that twice the amount of time brushing fascia/soffit/gutters as it takes me to clean siding with 10 times the amount of back break.
What also does not make sense to me is, in my area $200 seems to be the average rate for a house wash, while in other areas I have heard $300-$350. Including fascia cleaning would sound slightly more appealing to me if the average price was closer to $350, but in this area it is not. My last resort for getting an answer to this is to have someone call the local big guys to ask about this, and even if the answer is “yes, we do include fascia”, I am still reluctant to include it because I will never get anything done.
Yes, it is included by everyone I know. Not the gutter whitening but the cleaning. Who would want their house washed and not have their fascia and soffit cleaned? That’s often the dirtiest part. You need to stick around and do a lot of reading. It’s really rare to have to brush any of those, so that tells me your mix is way off. Plenty of youtube videos on house washing.
Introduce yourself and tell us what part of country you’re in and what equipment you have, and what’s your process will help us help you.
I’m with Racer above. Most I’ve heard of include it in their price. It doesn’t take long to clean them though. Most gutters clean up good enough with a regular house wash to keep most customers happy. Every now and then you might get a small area on a gutter or soffit that’s stubborn but a quick hit with a pump up usually does it. I’ve heard of a few who include gutter whitening but their house wash price reflects that. I can’t imagine not including fascia, soffit, and the face of the gutters in a house wash. They probably wouldn’t call you back to wash it again.
Thanks for the replies. I am in northern Virginia, I have a 4 gpm machine, and I use 50/50 sh with a cup of high alkaline cleaner. Works great on siding, and some of the green mold on the gutters and fascia.
When I hit the gutters, some of the loose stuff comes off of course, and sometimes a little bit more because of the bleach. The problem is really dark stuff that looks like its baked in or stained really bad onto the gutters and fascia. Some of it refuses to come off even with a brush, and a lot of people around here have their entire gutter system and fascia stained like that. On the fascia there is sometimes really light grey, splotchy staining that I can only get with a brush. One thing I have noticed is that the gutter whitening chemical I get from a local retailer works a lot better on the aluminum of the gutters for this problem, but I assume I shouldn’t need to be using that if everyone else is getting it to come off with their house wash mix.
Your mix is too weak. A lot of us have 4gpm as either primary or backup machines. Your 4 is probably pulling about 9 or 10 - 1. You can test it in about 2 min.Depending on how strong your bleach is, you’re probably only getting .5% to the house. That’s probably ok if siding not very dirty or you let dwell a long time, but nowhere near strong enough for what you’re talking about.
When I run my 4 I’m usually about 70% SH and rest water with surfactant. If real dirty go straight SH with a little soap. Let dwell 5-7 min and if really dirty may need to spray it again after a few min. Go try that and get back to us. I promise you’ll be happier. Also, how strong is your SH that you’re using? Where are you getting? ie how fresh is it?
But try 70-80% Sh on your regular HW mix if you don’t want to shoot whole house with the stronger but keep a bucket or gal jug of the straight SH to use on the problem areas. Experiment. We have some members here in VA and trust me they’re not doing all the scrubbing you say you’re having to do.
Also, you may want to find better clients. If most your customers have that, then that means they’re not having their homes cleaned regularly. You want to find customers who get their homes cleaned every year or 2, then they won’t be so bad. We all get those customers who haven’t had their homes cleaned in 10 years and that’s when you break out the straight SH with the 4 or xjet but you don’t want that to be the norm for all your customers.
If it’s organic such as algae, mildew or mold you need a strong enough mix to kill it. If it doesn’t turn brown you aren’t killing which means your mix is too weak as Racer mentioned above. Once brown it nornally rinses right off. Keep in mind everything black isn’t always organic. Although, it normally is in a house wash. If it doesn’t turn brown with a strong sh mix then you need to move on to a different type of chem. If it’s oil based you’d use a degreaser. Rust you use acid. I kind of went off topic a little because most of the time the black on siding, soffit, and gutters is going to be organic. You’ll run into stains elsewhere to where you’ll have to use that logic to figure out what the stain is. I mentioned in my post above that every now and then I might have to pull out a pump up for a few spots on the face of gutters with like a 2% mix because my house wash mix might not always kill and turn everything brown. It’s not often I do this because I use a pretty strong mix so my dwell time isn’t that long. I only do the pump up for spot treatment though because it’s quick.
@marinegrunt Thanks for the info. Some of the really light grey stuff on fascia that I mentioned seems to me like it could be similar to the gutter stripes, rather than organic. I will definitely try using some of the other chemicals I have on it.
@12_B I have actually never had too much trouble with tiger stripes. The chemical I get around here for gutter brightening has worked really well so far. Thanks for the info and the reply.
@Racer I will definitely try and up my mix as you suggest. I have just been hesitant to so far because I am deathly afraid of ruining someone’s property. This has made me feel a whole lot better about experimenting with the mix. As soon as we get another house with this really bad stuff on the fascia I will report back.
The SH we get is sold as 12.5%, but I have not tested it myself. We get it from Pressure Works Also I am downstreaming.
I’d be more concerned with ruining property by using the gutter brightening chems than using a stronger mix. There can be a fine line of removing the tiger stripes and removing the paint down to bare metal. It just really depends on how bad the paint is oxidized. I would guess the grey you’re seeing probably is bare metal so I wouldn’t use any other chems or go scrubbing too hard. There really shouldn’t be any other stain on the gutters besides organic stains or the tiger stripes that you mentioned.
As far as a stronger house wash mix you’re not going to be able to down stream a strong enough mix to really hurt anything if you’re washing vinyl siding. Just don’t let it dry on the house and rinse well. You could spray 12.5% sh straight on vinyl and it won’t hurt it. You have to be more careful with aluminum siding or wood. Most here won’t even wash aluminum or certain colors of wood.
I was just making a funny about a hot HW mix to Grunt to wash that truck, I meat to respond to Grunt on the fleet thread. I don’t wanna ruin this guys thread with trucks lol, carry on. Sorry fellas.
