Power Washing in Center Line, Michigan

Brick From the Streetcar Years Forward

Center Line grew up along the Van Dyke streetcar line from Detroit, which ended at 10 Mile, and it is still an independent city ringed on every side by Warren. Its oldest houses date to the streetcar years of the 1920s and 1930s. Kramer Homes, the 476 units that Eliel and Eero Saarinen and Robert Swanson laid out around a six-acre village green as defense housing in 1941 and 1942, has been a resident-owned co-operative since 1949. The bungalows and ranches that filled the rest of the grid went up through the 1940s and 1950s, as the city grew from 2,604 residents in 1930 to 10,164 by 1960.

Those eras share a material. The bungalows and Cape Cods are brick, and so are the ranches, which wear aluminum trim. Brick and block take in water and give it back slowly, so a wall that soaks in October can stay damp into November, and mortar struck seventy years ago is softer than the brick it holds. The porches, steps and driveways were poured with the houses, which puts much of the city's flatwork at 60 to 80 years old and well past the point where it can be cleaned with force.

Two things set the cleaning problems here. The lots are close-set, so one house shades the next one's side wall for most of the day, and under the mature street trees on the prewar and 1940s blocks that shade never fully lifts. Green algae grows on those side walls every summer. The second is traffic. Van Dyke Ave and 10 Mile Rd lay a gray exhaust-and-tire film on the center blocks, I-696 along the north edge does the same to the streets near 11 Mile Rd, and road salt spray rides in on both from December through March. Neither film rinses off with a garden hose.

The six pages below are the services Center Line asks for most: house washing, concrete cleaning, soft washing, gutters, roof treatment and concrete sealing, each written for this housing rather than for a generic subdivision. The drive is about 25 minutes from our Clinton Township shop, and there is no travel charge for it. Written, itemized quotes come back within 24 hours, and the prices are the same published schedule we use in every city, starting at $349 for a house wash and $149 for a driveway.

Brick, Aluminum Trim and Original Concrete

The prewar and 1940s brick gets the gentlest treatment we carry. Old lime-rich mortar dissolves under acid cleaners and erodes under a pressure wand, so the wash is a mild brick-safe solution applied to a wet wall, left to dwell, and rinsed at hose pressure. Because brick and block hold water, we book these houses for a dry day with a dry day after it, so the wall can give back what it took on instead of carrying it into a freeze.

Kramer Homes is a co-operative rather than a homeowners association, and the city has no HOAs at all, so exterior upkeep here is a household decision and not a letter in the mailbox. We quote Kramer units the way the co-op prefers, one at a time or several on one visit. On the 1950s ranches the aluminum trim has usually chalked, and it gets an oxidation pre-treatment so the rinse lifts the powder in one even sheet instead of leaving streaks.

The original porches, steps and driveways show their age first. Center Line sits on the flat lake-plain clay of southern Macomb County, water stands in the low spots after rain, and sixty winters of freezing in that standing water have scaled the surface of many drives. Scaled concrete cannot be cleaned back to smooth, and we say so on the walkaround. Sound concrete gets a surface-cleaner wash from $149 and, when the owner wants it, a penetrating sealer that keeps the next stretch of winters out.