Power Washing in Chevy Chase, MD

A stucco over wood frame wall is the surface we are most careful with, and it is everywhere here.

Old stucco is permeable on purpose. It sheds bulk water and lets what gets past it dry back out through the face. Hit that wall with pressure and you do two things at once: you erode the surface, exposing more aggregate and making it hold dirt faster next time, and you push water through hairline cracks into the frame behind, where it has no route out and nobody sees it until the sheathing goes.

Hairline cracking in old stucco is normal. It is not an invitation to force water through it. We wash these walls with solution and dwell, rinse gently from the top down, and stop at any area where the stucco sounds hollow or drummy, because a section that has already lost its bond to the lath behind will come off in your hand.

We also look before we wash. If there is staining in one place and not another, something above it is doing that: a failed flashing, a downspout discharging against the wall, copper runoff tracking down from a gutter. Washing it clean without finding the source means washing it again next year.

The roofs here are commonly slate with copper flashing and copper gutters, and none of that gets washed the way people assume.

We do not pressure wash a slate roof and we will talk you out of hiring anyone who offers to. Slate is brittle, it does not take foot traffic, and water forced up a slate course goes under it rather than off it. Moss and algae on slate are a specialist conversation, not a wash-day add-on.

Copper gutters are worth clearing and worth treating gently. They are soft, a ladder leaned against one will deform it, and once deformed it holds water at the low spot and drips into the fascia. We set ladders on standoffs bearing on the fascia, clear the gutters by hand, and flush rather than blast. While we are there we check the seams and the downspout connections, because a gutter that has been overflowing for two seasons is usually the reason the wall below it is stained in the first place.

This is the part of the job that is genuinely specific to these blocks. On many of these streets the gap between your wall and the neighbor's is a few paces. Wash water and rinse do not stop at a property line, and neither does drift off a side elevation.

What we plan before the hose comes out:

• The neighbor. Cars moved or covered, windows closed, and a knock on the door to say which day we will be at that edge. Drop cloths and tarps go on their side of the line when the work is at the boundary.
• Plantings. Beds get pre-wet and tarped on both sides. Pre-wetting dilutes anything that lands, and it matters more here because the beds are close enough that all of them are downhill of something.
• The storm inlet at the curb. Nothing gets rinsed toward it. Water gets directed to soil and lawn where it can soak in instead of running straight off pavement.
• Tree root zones. The street canopy here is old and protected, and the root zones run right under the strip where a rig would naturally sit. We keep equipment and concentrated runoff off them.
• The mildest chemistry that works. Not the strongest product available. A cleaner with enough dwell time does the job at a strength that will not burn a neighbor's boxwood.

Essentially every house in this ZIP predates 1978, so a wash on a painted exterior will loosen and bring down some old paint wherever the film has already failed. That is not something to be casual about on a narrow lot.

We control it rather than hosing it into the yard. Sheeting goes down under the elevation being washed and runs out far enough to catch what carries, debris is collected the same day rather than left over a weekend, and nothing is swept or flushed toward the curb.

Where a wash is prep for painting, the two get planned together, because a wash that dislodges material is doing part of the prep and the scrape that follows is where the federal RRP threshold, more than twenty square feet of exterior painted surface disturbed, comes into play. Maryland is not an EPA-authorized state, so that federal rule applies directly here. It is a fair question to put to any company quoting a wash on a house this age, and worth checking the answer. What we do is tell you what the rule covers on your scope and keep the site clean.

The practical staging question here is one most contractors never ask. Inside 20815 there are eight separate towns and villages, Montgomery County lists them each with their own office, and several of them administer their own curb, right of way and start times. Where a rig stands, how long it can stand there, and what hour it can start running are local answers, not one answer.

We establish which municipality your house is in at the estimate and ask that office directly rather than assuming. On a narrow lot with no driveway that is not a formality, because the truck and the hose reel have to be somewhere and the alternative is finding out on the morning.

Water comes from your spigot on public supply, and we confirm that flow is adequate before the day rather than discovering it is not. Walks, steps, brick, flagstone, patios and the porch floor all get washed at pressures chosen for each one, because old brick and soft mortar joints are no tougher than the stucco.

No minimum job size, so a single porch and a set of steps is work we will take. Fred General Painting has been at this since 2002 out of 8040 Trevor Place in Vienna, same four-person crew every day. Call 703-869-0593.