Power Washing in Alexandria, VA

The walled rear courtyard is the wash we are asked for most in Old Town, and the one homeowners most often damage themselves.

• Dry-laid brick pavers. There is sand in those joints and nothing else. Pressure enough to strip moss strips sand too, and then the pavers rock underfoot. We clean with chemistry at low pressure and say honestly whether it needs re-sanding after.
• Flagstone and bluestone. Thin stone on a mortar bed lifts where the bed has already failed. A wash finds those spots rather than causing them, and we note them instead of working them loose.
• Areaways. A drain in a front areaway or a basement window in a light well is usually half full of leaves. Water driven at it on a party-wall house comes out in a basement that may not be yours.
• Walled shade. Three brick walls and no moving air means the courtyard never dries. Moss on worn brick treads is a footing hazard before it is an appearance problem.

Somebody calls every spring about a white powdery haze on a garden wall or the lower courses of a brick house. That is efflorescence, mineral salt carried out of the masonry by moisture moving through it, and it is the one item here that washing does not solve. Rinse it and it returns in weeks, because the water that brought it is still moving.

The useful conversation is where that water comes from. On Alexandria walls it is usually a planting bed built up against the brick, a downspout discharging at the base, open joints in a capping course, or a hard cement repointing job that now forces moisture out through the brick instead of the joint. We will brush and treat it so it looks right, and we will tell you it is a water problem in a cosmetic disguise.

North of the Parkway the lots open up and the work changes. These blocks have alleys behind them, two-strip concrete driveways, detached garages and a public sidewalk square in front of every house. The walks take the worst of it. Commonwealth and the streets off it are lined with mature trees, and the litter stains concrete dark brown. People read that as dirt when it is tannin, and tannin lifts with the right cleaner rather than with more pressure.

Flatwork gets a surface cleaner, not a bare wand, because no hand holds an even arc across a sidewalk square. We also stay off your neighbor's square unless they have said yes, since half a clean stretch looks worse than none.

An Alexandria mailing address past the city line is a different wash. Kingstowne, Rose Hill, Franconia, Groveton and Belle View are postwar and later: full-width driveways, garage aprons, concrete patios, vinyl siding and stoops. That is where real pressure belongs, and even there it is a surface cleaner on the flatwork.

Garage floors are worth booking as their own job: degreaser, dwell time, agitation, then rinse, with the apron done in the same visit so there is no clean line at the door. Oil that has sat in bare concrete for ten years lightens and rarely vanishes. If your townhouse association has written to you about mildewed siding or a green fence, send the letter along. It usually names the elevation, and a soft wash that kills the growth on that wall is the difference between a clean house and another letter next summer.

Worth saying before we quote, because these come up every season.

• Faded paint. Washing takes the chalk off and the wall looks better for it, but the color that has gone is gone.
• Silvered wood. Weathered gray shutters, fences and porch rails lighten, then stop. Gray wood is damaged surface fiber, and the tone comes back with a cleaner, a brightener and usually sanding.
• Open mortar joints. If water is entering the wall through a failed joint, cleaning the face of it changes nothing. Pointing comes first.
• Your roof. No pressure washer goes on asphalt shingles. The granules are the roof, and once they are in the gutter the shingle is felt. Streaking is algae and wants a low-pressure soft wash. Plenty of rowhouses carry low-slope membrane roofs instead, and those we look at and usually hand back to a roofer.

Runoff on these blocks has a short trip to the river, so shrubs and beds get soaked with clean water before any solution goes up and rinsed afterward, and cleaner stays out of the street grate.

Fredy Vargas has worked on these houses since 2002 and looks at the property himself before pricing it. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, licensed, bonded and insured. Call 703-869-0593.