Power Washing in Potomac, MD

Even on hard-coat stucco, the field of the wall is not the vulnerable part. The openings are.

Before washing we walk the elevations and look at the sealant around every window and door, every penetration for a light, a hose bib or a vent, and every control joint. Sealant that has gone hard, split or pulled away from one face is an open path, and pointing several gallons a minute at it is how a wash turns into an interior repair.

On hard-coat we look for cracking, particularly the diagonal cracks that run off the corners of window openings as the building moves. Fine cracks are normal and cosmetic. A crack you can get a fingernail into, or one with a stain trailing out of the bottom, means water has already been through it and that is a repair before it is a wash.

Where we find open joints we say so and, if you want, we come back and do the sealant and stucco repair as its own scope. We would rather delay a wash than push water into a wall we have already been told about.

On a large lot, several hundred gallons leaving a wall has to go somewhere, and the ground around these houses is usually planted.

Ornamental beds get pre-wet before we start and rinsed after, because a plant that is already full of clean water absorbs far less of anything else. We tarp where beds sit tight against the wall.

Plenty of properties here are on private well and septic. If the water is coming out of your well we ask about recovery rate and stage the wash across the day or across two days rather than running continuously. And because rinse runs downhill, we ask where the septic drain field and the reserve field sit before anything starts, then route runoff away from both.

On the lower properties toward the C&O Canal, Carderock and Bells Mill, and anywhere near the flood plain, we check what restrictions apply before we set up. That is a two minute question at the estimate rather than a problem on the day.

Nearly every call we take here is about one side of a house rather than all four.

The north and northeast elevations behind mature planting never get direct sun, and on the low ground toward the river they hold morning damp for hours after the Village has dried out. That wall goes green while the sunny side stays clean for years.

We will wash one elevation, and we will tell you plainly that it is the one that will need doing again first. A wash lasts longer when something else changes: a limb resting against the wall, a shrub grown in tight against the base, a downspout discharging at the foundation instead of away from it. We point those out at the estimate because they are the difference between a two year result and a one year result.

On stucco specifically, growth at the base of a wall is worth a second look. If the finish stops too close to grade, or mulch has been piled up against it over the years, the wall stays wet at the bottom and nothing we clean off stays off for long.

The bottom band of a house here gets dirty in ways the rest of the wall does not. Trails run along fence lines and through beds, hooves throw mud and grit onto the lowest few feet through the winter, and where browsing has kept foundation planting chewed back, the wall gets splash it was never exposed to before.

That band needs more attention and less force at the same time, because on stucco the base is exactly where impact damage is already sitting. We work it closer and slower with the cleaner rather than stepping up pressure to save time.

Fence lines and posts along the paddocks get the same treatment, and we quote fence by the run and by the face, since usually only one face is dirty.

Both are normal, and they are not the same job.

A wash as a standalone clean is about appearance. We do it, we leave, and the house looks right for a couple of seasons.

A wash as preparation for painting has a different standard and a different schedule. The wall has to be not just clean but dry through, and stucco holds water longer than siding does, so the gap between washing and coating is measured in days rather than hours. Any cleaner residue has to be fully rinsed, because a coating going over a film of it will not bond. We plan those two steps together, with the weather allowed for, and we would rather move a coating day than paint a wall that still has moisture in it.

Fredy Vargas looks at the walls himself before quoting either version, because the method depends entirely on what they are made of. Monday to Friday 8 to 5, weekends by appointment, no minimum job size. Call 703-869-0593.