Power Washing in Arlington, VA

Almost every 1950s brick cape in the county came with wrought iron: porch supports, stair railings, basement window grilles, a gate. Those are the reason the concrete steps and the brick below them are streaked orange.

Two things worth knowing. Rust staining is chemical, so pressure will not move it. It takes a rust remover suited to the surface underneath, and on brick that is a careful, tested application rather than a broad one. Second, water driven into the joints and the hollow bottom of an iron post has nowhere to drain and it speeds up what is already happening inside. We keep the tip off the welds and base plates, wash down rather than up, and dry what we can reach.

If the rail is flaking scale rather than just stained, say so when you call, because that is a preparation and coating conversation instead.

Arlington lots slope, and the way builders handled that was with walls and stairs. Most properties we wash here have a retaining wall of stone, block or cast concrete, a flight of steps from the public sidewalk, and a short front walk.

• Shaded walls. A north-facing retaining wall under a street tree holds moss and algae in the texture. Chemistry and dwell time, then a low-pressure rinse.
• Caps and joints. Loose cap stones and open joints come apart under pressure. We find those first and work around them.
• Weep holes. A wall with water behind it drains somewhere. Blocking or blasting those holes is how a wall starts to lean.
• Steps. Treads get a surface cleaner or a brush, not a wand held at the nose of the step, which erodes the edge you stand on.

A wall that is already bulging or cracked through is a masonry job. Cleaning it makes the problem easier to photograph, nothing more.

Two different kinds of dirty turn up on Arlington houses and they want different treatment, so the first thing we do is work out which one you have. The test is which walls are affected.

Growth follows shade. If the film is green or black, sits on the north and east elevations and is worst behind a shrub, it is alive, and chemistry with dwell time is the answer. Film that is flat and evenly gray, on the elevation facing Columbia Pike or Glebe Road or the blocks backing onto 395, is brake and tire dust with soot in it. That one is greasy rather than biological, so it wants a detergent with real surfactant and a top-down rinse, and it does not respond to a mildew cleaner at all. Plenty of houses here have both, on different sides, and we mix for each wall rather than for the house.

A large share of Arlington households are in garden apartments, converted condominium units, townhouse rows and mid-rise buildings, and in most of them the exterior envelope is not yours to clean. Ask the management office before you book anything, and get it in writing if the building is particular.

What is normally yours is the private side: a balcony slab, a patio, a fenced entry court, a private walk, a storage door. Balconies have one trap in them. Water you put on a slab leaves through a scupper or over the edge, which means it lands on the railing, the furniture and the planters of the home underneath. We wash those with a controlled volume and a wet vacuum or squeegee rather than flooding the slab, and we tell the neighbor below we are there. We can send a certificate of insurance to the management company.

Some of this is about restraint, so here is what we avoid and what cleaning will not change.

• Never up under lap siding. Wood, vinyl or fiber cement, a wand angled upward drives water behind the course, and behind the course it has nowhere to go. The whole wall gets washed level or downward.
• Old double-hung sash. The pre-war blocks are full of original windows with worn putty and loose stops. Water pushed at a sash ends up on plaster inside. We wash those gently and check the sill afterward.
• Shared fences. Washing one side of a board fence makes the other side look worse. Ask your neighbor before we start and we will do both.
• Chalky vinyl and faded paint. Both rinse cleaner and still look tired, because the finish is spent rather than dirty.

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