Power Washing in Fairfax, VA

The older frame houses near the core and over toward Van Dyck Park and Daniels Run have real wood windows with putty-glazed lights, and most of them wear an aluminum storm window on the outside.

Failed putty is the weak point. Once it has shrunk out of the rabbet there is an open gap at the edge of the glass, and water at pressure finds it and goes inside onto plaster. Storm windows make it worse rather than better, because water driven past the frame sits in the channel between the storm and the sash with nothing to dry it. Those little weep holes at the bottom of a storm frame are the only way it gets out, and they are usually painted over or packed.

We wash those elevations low, level and downward, we check the weeps, and we look at the sills afterward. On a house where the putty is gone we will tell you to sort the glazing first.

On the 1960s houses across Mosby Woods, Cobbdale, Fairchester Woods and Westmore, the aluminum gutter is hung on wood fascia, and the metal is the only reason the board still looks acceptable from the driveway.

That sets a rule for us. Nothing gets aimed up behind a gutter or under a drip edge, because the gap there leads straight to an unpainted back face and into the soffit. Pressure against the face of a gutter also dents it and springs the hangers, which is how a straight run starts holding water.

The dark streaking on the outside of those gutters is oxidized aluminum holding what has washed off the roof, sitting in the chalked surface rather than on top of it. It takes a cleaner meant for that film, worked panel by panel, and an old gutter often comes back only part of the way. We say which yours looks like before we start rather than after.

George Mason sits hard against the southern side of the city and a good share of the housing there turns over on a fixed date. A wash on a turnover is a different list from a homeowner wash.

• Grill grease on a concrete patio. Degreaser and dwell time. An old cooking stain lightens and often does not leave.
• The trash and recycling corner. That slab and the siding behind it need cleaner and a brush, not just a rinse.
• Scuffed vinyl and bike marks. Rubber comes off with chemistry rather than a narrower tip.
• Stoops and steps. Worn concrete treads hold everything and are the first thing a new tenant sees.

Tell us the date at the estimate. A wash is weather-dependent in a way an interior repaint is not, and cold weather is a real constraint: cleaners work poorly near freezing and water left on a brick walk becomes ice. We will tell you if the window is too tight rather than booking it and hoping.

Our phone does the same thing every year. Pollen falls across this area from late March into May, it settles thickest on white trim, gutters and anything horizontal, and the calls start the week it stops.

That instinct is right. Washing in the middle of the drop is money spent on a house that is yellow again in three days, so unless something else is driving it, wait until the oaks have finished and book once. What that also means is that the back half of May and early June is the busiest stretch of our year. If you want a particular week, ask in March.

Early fall is the easier window, and a better one for a house under trees, since it takes the summer growth off before winter sets it.

Worth saying at the estimate rather than after.

• A peeling foundation band. Where the grade pushes water at a painted brick course, the coating fails and washing it takes more of it off. The grading is the job there.
• The white bloom on block or brick. That is mineral salt moving out of the masonry with moisture behind it. It rinses away and returns.
• Wood that has gone soft. A spongy fascia, sill or garage jamb does not improve wet. We keep pressure off it and point it out.
• Your roof. We do not run a pressure washer over asphalt shingles. Taking the granules off a shingle shortens the roof, and the streaking is algae, which wants a low-pressure soft wash and an honest look at the age of the roof first.

Fredy Vargas has been working in this city since 2002 and walks the property himself before pricing it. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, licensed, bonded and insured. Call 703-869-0593.