House Washing in Monroe Township, NJ
What Comes Off, and What Will Not | Soft Washed Under 100 PSI | Free Estimates
On most walls the bulk of what you are looking at is alive, and a wash deals with it. Where the material underneath has simply worn out, that is a different matter, and it is the part that is easy to leave until the day of the job.
A photo of the shadiest wall and one of the wall that gets the afternoon.
Sorting one from the other is the conversation worth having before a crew turns up.
Call or text (732) 718-6268.
Two Different Things, One Wall
Chalk Is the Siding Letting Go of Its Own Color
Sun breaks down the surface of vinyl over the years, and as it does it lets go of the pigment in it. That loose pigment is the chalk. It is not something that landed on the wall and it is not dirt, so it does not behave like dirt.
A soft wash takes the growth, the dirt, and the loose powder sitting on top. What it cannot do is put the color back, because the color is not sitting on the surface waiting to be uncovered. It has gone out of the material. A wall that has chalked will come up cleaner and more even, and it will still read faded.
Worth knowing before you book
Which Wall Is Which
Where the Growth Goes, Where the Fading Goes, and How to Tell Which You Have
The shaded walls carry the green and the black, and they look terrible. They are also the most satisfying walls on the job, because almost all of it comes off.
Fading wants sun, so it is the south and west walls that chalk first, along with any elevation with nothing standing between it and open sky. How dark the siding was to begin with and how old the panel is both push it along too, which is why two walls with the same exposure can be at different points on it. Those walls often look better than the shaded ones before we start and change least after we finish.
There is a test you can run before anyone comes out, and it takes a minute. On a dry wall that has not been rained on for a couple of weeks, rub a dry dark cloth firmly across the siding. An old navy or black shirt is ideal, because what you are looking for is pale and a white rag hides it. Powder on the cloth, whether that is white, cream, or a washed-out version of the siding's own color, is the panel letting go of its pigment. The test only reads one way: powder tells you something, and a clean cloth rules nothing out, because the loose layer washes off and takes weeks to build back, so a recent rain can leave a chalking wall reading clean. Growth you find by looking rather than by rubbing. It is the green and black on the shaded walls.
The Third Thing on a Monroe Wall
Near the Turnpike, Some of What Is on the Wall Is Traffic
The New Jersey Turnpike crosses this township, with Exit 8A on the western side, and Route 33 runs through as well. Where a wall faces one of those, there is a third thing on it, and it is neither the growth nor the chalking.
Traffic film is oily. It arrives steadily, it does not rinse, and whatever lands on it stays. Most of it comes off, and getting it off takes something added to the mix, because an oily film needs a surfactant to lift it and the part that kills algae will not do that on its own. It also comes back faster than growth does. A soft wash on a sheltered wall holds two to three years; a wall along a road that carries real traffic is on a shorter clock than that. Winter puts road salt on top of it, which is a separate and water-soluble deposit, so that wall usually comes into spring carrying both.
A house set well back from the through roads usually has much less of it, which is why we ask. Tell us whether the wall you care about faces a road that carries real traffic, because it changes what we put on it and how soon you will want us back.
Reviews
Two Customers, in Their Words
From a Google review (Erin Dering, 2023): The house and the pool area.
“We Had Angelo and his guys power wash our house and pool area this past weekend, everything looks great!!”
Erin Dering, Google review
Read this review on Google →From a Google review (Art Rosenbaum, 2022): A pleasure to work with.
“It was a pleasure working with Angelo. He is responsive, professional and did a good job. I would recommend him to anyone.”
Art Rosenbaum, Google review
Read this review on Google →Get a Free Estimate
What to Send Us
Run the cloth test first. Then send the two photos with three things: which wall you tried, whether anything came off the cloth, and whether that wall faces a road. With those you get told what to expect from the wash before anybody books anything.
Serving Monroe Township, NJ 08831. Residential washing runs March through November.