Power Washing in Falls Church, VA

A great many brick Capes, ramblers and colonials here have been painted white or a soft gray over the last fifteen years. Washing one is not the same job as washing bare brick.

Two things get settled first: what coating is on there, and how well it is holding. We wet a small area out of sight and watch it. If the film softens, lifts at an edge or comes away under a gentle rinse, the coating was already failing, and a wash will find every weak spot on the wall.

On sound painted brick we soft wash: cleaner, dwell time, low-pressure rinse, wand kept moving and kept off the mortar lines. Pressure on painted masonry pushes water through a hairline break in the film, and once it is behind the coating it lifts the paint from the back a month later. The chalk that comes off on your hand is oxidized coating, and taking it off leaves the wall lighter and more even than it was. That is the honest result, and it is not the same thing as a fresh coat of paint.

The Pimmit Hills plans and plenty of the ramblers have a carport or a single-width drive with fifty years of cars parked on the same two feet of concrete. Oil and transmission fluid are not sitting on the surface, they are down in the pores, which is why pressure alone does almost nothing to them.

That is a degreaser and dwell time job, sometimes more than one application. We lighten most and fully remove some. A stain that has been feeding a bare slab since the seventies has gone deep, and anyone promising a uniform gray driveway has not scrubbed many of them.

Rust is different chemistry again. The orange ring from a grill leg, or streaks thrown by a fertilizer spreader, need a rust remover rather than force. Tannin from the oaks needs something else.

Broadmont has mature oaks over the street, there are woods at Cherry Hill Park, and the W&OD corridor is shaded most of the day. A north or east wall standing behind that canopy does not dry for two days after rain.

The black and green film on it is alive. Blast it and you take off what you see while leaving the growth rooted in the surface, which is why a pressure-only wash looks finished in June and is turning again by August. A cleaner given real dwell time kills it, and the difference shows up in months rather than weeks.

We also look at what feeds it: a dripping gutter seam running down one line of siding, a downspout discharging against the foundation, a shrub planted tight to the wall holding damp against it all summer. A wash that ignores those is a wash you buy again next spring, so we point them out.

Almost everything in the established parts of town predates 1978, and the windows are why we keep pressure down on these houses. Glazing putty on original wood sash shrinks and cracks long before the paint does, and a gap like that will take water from a garden hose, never mind a washer. Aluminum storms can be worse, because the track fills and then drains to the inside.

So we walk the house first and check that sash and storms are shut, and we point out any that no longer seal rather than leaving you to find a wet sill. We wash downward or level, never angled up under a lap, because water driven up behind siding has nowhere to go but into the wall. Soffit vents, gable vents and dryer vents get left alone. On a one-story rambler the whole wall is reachable from the ground at a sensible distance, so there is no reason to creep closer and cut the surface.

The City of Falls Church is its own two square miles, nearly all of it 22046. Everything else with a Falls Church address is Fairfax County: 22041, 22042, 22043 and 22044. Washing involves neither permit counter. What the line touches is staging, when a truck and a hose run have to sit in a right of way on a narrow street.

Most people call in spring once the pollen has finished falling, and that is the right instinct. A coated wall stays damp longer than a clean one. Early fall is the quieter window. Either way we need an outside spigot and a route to all four sides of the house.

Fredy Vargas has been doing this work since 2002 and is on site with the crew. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, licensed, bonded and insured. We are on Trevor Place in Vienna, about fifteen minutes up Route 7. Monday through Friday 8 to 5, weekends by arrangement. No job minimum, so a front walk and a set of steps is an ordinary call. Veterans and anyone 65 or older take 10 percent off. Call 703-869-0593.