Power Washing in Eastpointe, Michigan

A City Built Mostly of Brick

Macomb Power Washing Solutions runs out of 21366 Hall Road in Clinton Township, about 20 minutes north of Eastpointe, and there is no travel fee on that drive. We have washed enough of this city to know its pattern before the truck stops. Gratiot Ave runs up the middle as M-3, City Hall sits at 23200 Gratiot Ave, and the residential grid fills in evenly on both sides between 8 Mile Rd and 10 Mile Rd, with eight public parks and the Eastpointe Memorial Library set into it. The city covers 5.16 square miles, and most of it went up inside four decades.

The housing came in three waves. Along the Gratiot corridor stand the 1920s through 1940s homes of the Halfway and early East Detroit years. Then came the 1950s build-out, when the population climbed from 21,461 to 45,756 in one decade and block after block of brick bungalows and brick ranches went in. The 1960s filled the last open lots. What that leaves is a city of masonry, with original poured-concrete porches, steps and single-car drives, aluminum trim and soffits on the postwar blocks, and updated vinyl siding on a share of the houses.

Two site conditions drive most of our calls. The street trees over the 1950s grid are full-grown now, so north walls under them stay shaded and damp into the afternoon, and gutters pack with leaves every fall. The ground is flat lake-plain clay that drains slowly, so yards hold water after a storm and seventy-year-old drives pool at the apron. Eastpointe sits inland, a few miles west of Lake St. Clair, but east winds push lake humidity onto the eastern blocks near Beaconsfield Ave, and brick holds that damp longer than paint does.

Then there is the salt. Gratiot Ave, 8 Mile Rd, 9 Mile Rd, 10 Mile Rd and the I-94 service drive are plowed and salted all winter, and what the plows throw lands on flatwork and the lower courses of brick for blocks around. Add the gray traffic film that settles on walls near those corridors and you have the two colors we remove most here: charcoal concrete and a dull cast on masonry. The six pages below cover what Eastpointe books most, with published starting prices and a written quote inside 24 hours.

Masonry, Trim and Seventy-Year-Old Flatwork

Brick sets the terms on most of these houses. A bungalow wall that has stood since the Halfway years carries soft mortar joints, and pressure aimed at them opens the joint instead of cleaning it. So brick and block get a mild solution, dwell time, and a rinse no stronger than a garden hose. The film that comes off is the atmospheric kind, laid down season by season so gradually that owners stop seeing it. Under it the brick still has its color, and on a shaded north wall the same wash also takes the green.

Where a house has been re-sided in vinyl, or still wears its aluminum trim and soffits, the chemistry changes. Aluminum from the postwar blocks chalks to a powder that smears if it is washed like vinyl, so it gets a pre-treatment that lifts the powder evenly. Vinyl takes standard soft-wash mix at a pressure that cannot drive water behind the laps. Lots here are close-set, which makes overspray discipline part of the job: we pre-wet the neighbor's shrubs and siding when they sit a few feet away, watch the wind, and keep the fan tight.

The concrete is its own conversation. Original porches, steps and single-car drives have taken seventy winters of salt and frost heave, and clay that holds water at the apron keeps the bottom of the slab wet longest. Cleaning brings back a surprising amount of that gray. Once it dries, a penetrating sealer protects the sections that are still sound, and we say which sections are not.