Have You Ever Considered Power Washing to Clean the Outside of Your House?

In my last post I talked about what you needed to do if you wanted to sell your house.  I talked about how you had to make your house stand out from the rest if you wanted a potential buyer to take notice.  There I focused quite a bit about how you had to maintain the inside of your home.

Well, although the inside is important, the outside is just as important because there is nothing like curb appeal to really make your home stand out.  Even if you are not planning on selling your home there is nothing like the pride you feel when your home has a certain look.

A couple of weeks back while I was doing a job I noticed that the house that I was working in had a very drab look.  One thing that bothered me in particular was that the vinyl siding, which was tan in color had some sort of moss growing on it.  It was actually making the house look green.

But, since I was working inside, I finished what I had to do and went on to my next job.  About a week later the same client called me back to do some additional work, only this time instead of the house having the drab green look – the house stood out more than any other on the block.  In fact the house actually had a shine to it.  And that green color which was overtaking the house was no longer there – the house was tan again.

When I mentioned to my client just how nice his home looked, he very proudly told me that he had just power washed it.

Is the outside of your home looking kind of drab and would you like it to stand out from the rest and look just as nice as my client’s?

Power washing is a great way to clean many surfaces of your home’s exterior and it is even a job that you can do yourself.  Power washing machines can be rented at your local home center from about fifty to seventy five dollars.  However, if you do decide to take on the job yourself there are a couple of things that you need to know because although power washing is easy, without knowing what you are doing you can cause damage.  Here are a few of the things that you need to know.

1. Protect bushes and remove any free standing items – things like patio furniture and flower pots should be removed from the work area.  The force from a power washer is powerful, so make sure that you move these things well out of the way.

2. Connections - before you begin, make sure that you have the machine fully assembled before you turn on the garden hose or the machine itself.  These machines work at a very high pressure and a not fully seated connected can be very dangerous.

3. Technique – as I said before power washing is not very difficult to do, but it does take some know how.  Make sure that you are using the right size machine for the job.  Too powerful of a machine can damage the surface that you are working on.  Make sure that you are using the correct tip for the surface as well.  Then once you know that you are working with the right size machine, holding the wand on a 45 degree angle and about 4 to 5 inches from the surface move it  back and forth in a sweeping motion carefully monitoring the your progress.

Power washing is a great way for any do it yourselfer” to restore many of the exterior surfaces of their home.  However care needs to be taken because power washing if not done right, can be dangerous and do damage.  Begin by taking a few simple precautions and becoming familiar with the process.  The once youu get the hang of it, get ready to be amazed at just how clean the outside surfaces of your house will become.

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