Power Washing in Reston, VA

Reston was laid out to keep the trees, so almost every house here has hardwoods on at least one side. The result is predictable enough that we can often tell you which wall we will be working on before we arrive.

The north and northeast elevations stay shaded and slow to dry, and what grows there is algae with mildew on top of it. It reads as dirt from the street. It is not, and it has a hold in the surface, which is why scrubbing a patch with a brush buys two months.

Sun-side walls in the same cluster can be genuinely clean while the back of the house is black. A single-elevation wash is a real job and we will quote one, though on a house never done we would rather do all four, since the clean-looking walls usually carry a chalk film you can lift onto your hand.

A lot of original Reston housing is vertical cedar and redwood finished in stain, and this is the surface that gets ruined by washing more than any other in our area. Stain lives in the top layer of the wood. Pressure removes the top layer of the wood.

What a rented machine does to rough-sawn cedar: it raises the soft summer grain into fuzz, it prints a wand arc across the boards that no weathering hides, and on semi-transparent stain it lightens the track it travels, so the wall ends up striped in the original color. That is a refinishing problem now, not a cleaning one.

So on stained wood we work at the bottom of the pressure range with a cleaner doing the work and real dwell time, rinsing downward, never angled up under a batten or a channel lap. The wall comes out clean and still stained. If your boards are far enough gone that cleaning will not save the look, we tell you that instead of washing it and handing you a bill.

The hard surfaces here are rarely a plain rectangle of concrete. Reston clusters run to brick pavers, exposed aggregate, railroad tie and block retaining walls, wood steps down a slope, and walks that tie into the pathway system at the lot line.

Each wants a different setup. Aggregate takes pressure and loses stone if you park a narrow tip on it. Pavers clean well and then need the joint sand topped up, because washing takes it out whether you plan for it or not. Block and stone walls hold dirt in the texture and want chemistry more than force, and mortar in a wall built in the seventies washes out of the joint if somebody treats it like concrete.

Wood steps running down to a path are the item people forget to mention and the one most likely to be slippery, which is generally why they called. Those get low pressure and a cleaner, the same as a deck surface would.

Cluster fencing takes shade from both sides and grows film faster than the house does. Washing a fence is straightforward work and it is the single most visible improvement per dollar on most of these lots.

Two things to settle first. One, if the fence is stained, the same rule as the siding applies and the pressure stays low. Two, a fence has two faces. Cleaning only yours leaves a line down the middle that your neighbor now has a view of, and we have been asked to come back and finish the other side more than once. Ask next door before we start. Most people say yes and split it.

Where a post base has gone soft at grade, washing finds it. We point it out. Replacing a post is not a washing job.

Pollen drop runs from late March into May. Book the wash after it finishes rather than during, or you are paying to clean a wall that is yellow again in four days. Late May onward is the window. Early fall is quieter and the work is the same.

Three things a wash will not fix. Faded stain is not dirty, it is spent, and washing removes the chalk without bringing the color back. Efflorescence, the white bloom on a block wall, is salt arriving with moisture behind it, so it returns until the water is dealt with. And artillery fungus, the black specks shot onto lower siding out of hardwood mulch, bonds hard, and some of it never comes off.

Fredy Vargas looks at the surfaces himself before quoting, because a cluster lot with pavers, a stained fence, a block wall and cedar siding is four jobs in one visit. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, licensed, bonded and insured, insurance certificate sent to your cluster when they want it. Weekdays 8 to 5. Ten percent off for veterans and for anyone 65 or over. Call 703-869-0593.