Soft Washingin Covington

Soft washing, in our own words

Soft Wash your home and/or roof. A soft wash is done to remove the dirt and grime that has built up over time. A soft wash does not remove moss growing on the roof.

Low pressure is the whole point

The name describes the method. A soft wash swaps force for chemistry: a cleaning solution does the work of releasing what is stuck to the surface, and low pressure water carries it away. Nothing is blasted.

That matters because the exterior of a house is not a slab of concrete. Lap siding is designed to shed water running down the face of it. It is not designed for water driven sideways and upward at pressure, which is exactly what a pressure washer does. Push water up under a lap, behind a trim board or past a window seal and it lands inside a wall cavity with no route out and no airflow to dry it.

Paint and caulking have the same problem. A pressure washer takes off loose paint quickly, and it will take sound paint with it. Soft washing was developed for this category of surface specifically. It is not a gentler version of pressure washing, it is a different job with different tools, and we lay out the distinction in pressure washing and soft washing are not the same job.

What builds up on a house here

Walk around your home and look at the walls one at a time. They will not match.

The wall that gets the most sun usually looks the best. The shaded walls, the north side and anything under a tree or an overhang, carry a greenish grey film. That film is organic: algae and mildew that need moisture and low light, both of which a shaded wall in the South Sound supplies for most of the year.

Underneath that there is the ordinary layer. Pollen in spring. Fine needle dust from firs and cedars that settles into every horizontal surface, including the top edge of every lap on your siding. Road dust if you are near a busy street. Cobwebs and nests in the corners under the eaves, where they sit undisturbed all year.

None of it washes off on its own, which surprises people in a climate this wet. Rain runs down the face of a wall in sheets. It does not scrub, and it leaves the film exactly where it was while carrying fresh dust onto it.

What a soft wash covers

A soft wash is for the parts of the house that cannot take pressure:

• Siding, whether it is vinyl, painted wood, lap or panel.
• The shaded walls where the green film gets established first.
• The eaves and the undersides where grime and cobwebs collect out of sight.
• Trim and the areas around windows, which are exactly where driven water would find a way in.
• A roof, where the purpose is built up dirt and grime rather than moss.

The last one is worth stating clearly. A soft wash of the roof takes off the dirt and grime that has accumulated over time. It does not remove moss growing on the roof. If the roof is green, the moss has to come off physically. That is roof cleaning and moss removal, where the moss is brushed off, the gutters are included and a pet and plant safe moss treatment goes on afterward.

Where soft washing stops and other work starts

Three surfaces, three methods, and mixing them up is where damage happens:

• Siding and the house: soft wash, low pressure, this page.
• Driveways, walkways, patios and decks: pressure, because a flat hard surface can take it. That is driveway and patio cleaning.
• Roof moss: brushed off by hand with a treatment applied. Never pressure, and never a soft wash on its own.

One more overlap worth knowing. The outside face of your gutters is part of gutter cleaning rather than a house wash, and it is usually best done alongside it, because runoff streaks below the gutter line and the film on the gutter face are the same problem showing up twice.

Getting ready for us

• Close all the windows and doors on the walls being washed, including any that are propped for ventilation.
• Move patio furniture, grills and planters a few feet away from the walls.
• Point out any window or door with a broken or missing seal.
• Tell us about anything sensitive growing right up against the house.
• Unlock gates and let us know about a dog in the yard.

What to expect afterward

A house wash is one of the few exterior jobs where the before and after is obvious from the curb, especially on a home that has never had one. Expect the shaded walls to change the most, because they were carrying the most.

Expect the windows to look worse for a moment, too. Washing the walls above them puts runoff on the glass, which is why window cleaning is worth doing after a soft wash rather than before it. If you want both, book them together and we will sequence them properly. Our season by season rhythm for South Sound homes covers the order for the rest of the exterior.

Soft washing across the South Sound

We soft wash homes in Covington and throughout South King County, Pierce County and Thurston County, including Kent, Renton, Maple Valley, Auburn, Federal Way, Puyallup, Sammamish, Issaquah and Olympia. The full list is on our service areas page. We are a residential only company.

Book a soft wash online or contact us and tell us which walls have gone green, and whether you want the windows done in the same stretch.