Soft washingin Coral Springs.

Pressure washing is force. A commercial machine puts out enough pressure to cut stucco texture, lift paint, drive water behind siding and tear a screen. It is the right tool for concrete and the wrong tool for a house. Soft washing is chemistry. A cleaning solution goes on at close to garden-hose pressure, kills the algae and mildew, and gets rinsed off with plain water. The house is not blasted, it is cleaned.

The difference shows up in a year. A pressure-washed wall looks clean the day it is done and grows back fast, because the growth was knocked off the surface but not killed. A soft-washed wall stays clean longer because the organism is dead down in the pores. If anyone quotes you a pressure wash on stucco, ask them what pressure and watch what happens to your window seals.

Most Coral Springs houses are stucco over concrete block, and stucco is the ideal soft-wash surface: porous, textured, and easy to ruin with pressure. Hardie board and vinyl siding, which show up on newer builds and townhomes, clean the same way at a slightly lighter mix. Painted block on older homes and garden walls is the one that needs a check first, because if the paint is already chalking or peeling, any wash will show it.

Michael walks every elevation before he starts and points out anything that is failing. The wash cleans what is on the surface. It does not fix paint that has let go, and it is better to hear that from him than to find out after.

A pool cage is the most surface area on the property and the easiest thing to damage. The screen goes grey from algae and pollen, the aluminum frame gets black mildew in every corner, and the lanai ceiling under it grows the same film as the north wall. The whole thing gets the lightest mix and the softest rinse, working from the top down so the dirty runoff does not land on clean screen.

The lanai ceiling, the fans, the light fixtures and the top of the sliders are all done as part of the cage. The pool deck under it is a pressure-wash job and can be done the same day, after the cage, so nothing drips onto a clean deck.

White vinyl fences turn green on the shaded side and grey everywhere else, and they come back to white in one pass. Aluminum fences get the mildew in the corners of every picket. Soffits and fascia, the underside and face of the roof edge, are the most-missed part of a house wash and the first thing you see from the driveway. The face of the gutters gets the black tiger striping from years of runoff and needs a dedicated cleaner, not just the wash.

Front doors, garage doors, lanai furniture, the mailbox post and the trash-can pad all get done while the equipment is out. Ask for whatever bothers you and it goes in the same quote.