Power Washing in Oakton, VA

Nearly every colonial and split foyer here has a deck off the back and a concrete pad or patio underneath it. That slab sits in permanent shade, gets dripped on through the boards every time it rains, and never dries out.

It is usually the greenest, slickest surface on the property, and it is the one people put off because nobody sits out there. It cleans up easily. It is also an annual item rather than a five-year one, because the conditions are not changing.

Washing under a deck means the deck gets wet and so does whatever is stored down there. We move what can be moved, and anything on a shelf against the house wall should come out before we arrive.

A lot of these lots fall away at the rear, and the answer in 1985 was a retaining wall: segmental concrete block, or landscape timbers stacked and spiked.

Block walls clean up well. We work the faces and keep the tip off the joints. At grade we ease off, because a concentrated stream washes the gravel and soil out from under the bottom course, and that is a structural part of the wall.

Timber walls are a different answer. Forty-year-old landscape timbers are soft on the surface and a machine carves them, so they get a cleaner, a soft brush and a low-pressure rinse. A timber that crumbles under a thumbnail does not need washing, and we will say so.

The garage on a split foyer is tucked under the living space, which makes the floor an interior surface that gets treated like an exterior one. Oil, dropped fuel, road salt carried in on the tires, and years of dust in the pores of the slab.

Oil is a degreaser and dwell time job, not a pressure job, and on a slab that has been soaking it up since the house was new we lighten most stains rather than remove them. Salt is a rinse, and it is worth doing every spring.

The part people do not think about is drainage. An attached garage floor usually slopes to the door and nowhere else. We squeegee water out rather than flooding the slab, and we check where the low corner is before we start.

Oakton has a lot of attached housing, from the Hunters Branch side near the Vienna Metro station out to the clusters off Chain Bridge Road, and nearly all of it sits under an association.

Before you pay anybody to wash it, find out what is yours. In some clusters the association maintains the siding and the common walkways while the owner maintains the deck, the patio and the entry. Some associations also wash on a cycle of their own, and there is no reason for you to pay for the same elevation twice.

When it is your surface, one more thing is worth knowing. Washing one unit in a row makes the units beside it look worse the same afternoon, and on an attached house that contrast reads from the street, so some owners would rather we spoke to the neighbors first.

Plenty of Oakton backs onto the Difficult Run Stream Valley Park tree line, and the houses along it have a rear or north elevation that stays shaded and damp for days after rain.

That elevation grows the black and green film, and it returns there sooner than anywhere else. The growth is alive, so force removes what you can see and leaves the rest rooted in the surface. Cleaner with real dwell time kills it, and on a shaded wall that is the difference between a result that holds through next summer and one that does not.

Spring pollen is the other local fact. Wash while it is still falling and you will see a yellow film again within the week, so the useful window opens once it has finished.

Worth saying plainly before we roll out a hose, because on houses of this age a few things look like dirt and are not.

• Rust streaks running down from a grid of points. Those are the face nails in the siding. Washing takes the streak off and the steel keeps bleeding, so it is back by the following summer. That is a prep and priming job, not a cleaning job.
• Chalk and fade on a west wall. Removing the chalk makes the surface cleaner and more even. The color that has gone is gone.
• Gray on a fifteen-year-old fence. It will lighten. The gray is weathered fiber, and getting the wood tone back takes a cleaner, a brightener and usually sanding.

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 fifteen minutes away at 8040 Trevor Place in Vienna. Monday to Friday 8 to 5, weekends by appointment. No job minimum, so a driveway and a patio is an ordinary call. Veterans and anyone 65 or older take 10 percent off. Call 703-869-0593.