Greetings everyone! Hello, My name is Geoffrey Nooney and I am starting a part time exterior cleaning service, focusing on cleaning houses (RED tip only!) and residential flat work at first. I live in the Pressure Washing Capital of the world or as some call it, the Retirement state. I mean I live in Florida, in a smallish town on the outskirts of Jacksonville. P.S. The red tip thing was a joke!
I must say I feel I know some of your personalities a little bit (I could tag a few people but, I don’t know them that well!) and I am glad I am not the only one who has a weird sense of humor. I’ve spent some time on here reading before I made an account. This really is a GREAT place and I am ever thankful for all the wisdom you guys have shared here for free. Maybe one day, I will be able to spread the gospel. I wish something like this existed in my line of work. I grew up in a family owned car stereo shop. I graduated college, and worked the corporate grind for many years. I decided that wasn’t where I wanted to be in life and stopped that about six years ago. Since then, I went back to my car stereo shop roots and mostly do mobile GPS installations for fleets. Work has slowed down dramatically since the Plandemic-19 outbreak and I am looking to diversify my revenue stream a bit. I do also have some pressure washing “experience”.
For several years, I was also into house flipping with my brother who is a real estate broker. It was like the blind leading the blind. I did most of the rehab on the houses minus a few things. I’ve always been pretty handy. I was maybe involved in about 15 to 20 houses or so? Outside of just DIY pressure washing at home, I had no experience past that. Now the area I live in, is country to say the least. Maybe more redneck. But that is a discussion for another time. So my brother, after watching a pressure washing guy he hired/kinda knew, decided we were gonna start doing it ourselves. He went and bought a Generac 4k/4gpm (direct drive). The thing was a mule to get started. I literally thought the thing was gonna break my arm. Even holding the trigger down only made it somewhat bearable. Furthermore, The idea was we are going to get pump up sprayers and just blast pool chlorine and then use pressure to get rid of the dirt. Hey what did I know? The only experience I really had was doing my driveway. And this is how he saw the pressure washing guy do it! So it must be the way to do it! Well, it did work, and several houses (mostly vinyl siding) got cleaned that way. We didn’t really cause any damage but we did waste a lot of time and straight 12.5% without a respirator sucks! Back then, I felt there was a better way. But I didn’t care nor want to do the research. I was getting paid by the hour.
Since then, which I didn’t realize at the time, it planted a seed for the love of pressure washing. I would volunteer my time to clean friends’ and families’ driveways / decks. I didn’t ask for anything, besides them just to cover my costs in doing it. There is that satisfaction I get when cleaning stuff. Blasting away years of grime in just seconds, is well kind of magical in my eyes. I’ve toyed with the idea in my head for a while starting this small service company, but a buddy of mine took that chance away from me several years ago when I was ready to start researching/investing in a pressure washing setup. He convinced me to go into lawn care with him, instead. Yeah, big mistake! The partnership revolved around me probably doing 90% of the work. He had this far-fetched idea that he was going to be a millionaire from cutting grass (which you can be). But he was banking this on the fact that his neighbor (well ex neighbor) became a millionaire from cutting golf courses.
Anyways, after he learned the amount of work that went into this (which he wasn’t doing much unless by work means talking on the phone with his new girlfriend), he decided there wasn’t money in lawn care. So I got dumped and through the breakup I inherited about 30 biweekly clients. At the time, I didn’t really have the time because my GPS work was booming and taking me out of town at various times. I didn’t really wanna hire someone to help me continuing to service those yards. So, I helped someone I knew grow his business and gave him most of my customers. There are still a couple elderly people that I cut their yard for. It’s mostly on Sundays and I spend more time talking with them than I do actually cutting their yard.
Whew! That was a lot. If you made it this far, I kind of feel sorry for you but thanks for reading! A quick note on my in the works setup, as my business is in prelaunch currently. I know Florida is technically a 24/7/365 day pressure washing area. I know the winter season (hah who am I kidding, we don’t have winter here!) will probably slow down a bit. I actually think this is a perfect time of year for me to enter the market, as it will give me a soft start into the market. I can (hopefully) develop good habits and flow. This is my “learning” phase of figuring everything out (which I know, You will never truly figure everything out). Then when the prime season starts next year, hopefully I will be ready. I have a 4x8 trailer. Welded custom hose racks on the passenger side for my Hannay Reels, holding 200 feet of that Zilla Green and 200 feet of pressure hose. In the truck topper I have extra garden, pressure hoses, spare fittings, backup gun, nozzles, DS injectors, etc. I have a GX390 with a TS1811 at roughly 1290 RPM (4gpm @ 3500PSI). A 16" Whirl-A-Way surface cleaner. In the works at the moment are two 55 gallon tanks and custom welded brackets for the tanks. Once I get those done, I will be ready to start living the dream.
In the future, I want to add a custom ladder rack (For signage on the sides as well as holding ladders, and a mount for the surface cleaner). A second pressure washer and a 12 volt softwash system. The back of the trailer will be open, and not have a gate. I think it would be the perfect spot for two stacked light aluminum truck boxes that I can use as extra storage. All of these plans sound great but I have to do some more calculations as I do not wanna overload the trailer. I have a larger trailer but I do not want to dedicate it to pressure washing, as I need it for my mower/lawn equipment. The back of the truck is always an option too.
Looking forward being a part of this community. Cheers!
