Power Washing in Grosse Pointe, Michigan

What Five Cities on One Shoreline Have in Common

Macomb Power Washing Solutions runs out of 21366 Hall Rd in Clinton Township, about 25 minutes from Lake Shore Rd, and the Pointes route as one corridor for our crews. Grosse Pointe Park, the City of Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Farms, Grosse Pointe Woods and Grosse Pointe Shores held a combined 46,555 residents in the 2020 census. Five separate cities, one shoreline, one set of exterior problems. Every Pointe also keeps a lakefront park of its own, from the pier and harbor at Neff Park in the City to the 55 acres of Lake Front Park that serve the Woods and hold the largest outdoor swimming complex in Michigan.

The building record here is unusually legible. Large lakefront houses went up along the shore in the late 1800s. The City, Park and Farms filled in between 1910 and 1950, with the southern and western neighborhoods finished by the 1930s, in neo-Georgian, Tudor Revival, Dutch Colonial and arts-and-crafts styles. Grosse Pointe Woods and the inland streets came after the 1930s and through the mid-century decades on wider lots. The result is brick and limestone masonry, slate and clay-tile roofs, copper gutters and valleys, painted wood trim and leaded-glass windows.

Two conditions work on those materials every year. A century of planted street trees now shades slate roofs, north-facing brick and copper gutters on nearly every block of the Park, City and Farms, and the fall leaf load on these gutters is among the heaviest we service. Lake St. Clair forms the east and south edge of the community, so lake humidity, east-wind spray and the November gales reach every lakeside elevation. Moss and lichen take hold on shaded slate and tile, and a green film settles on north walls. Along Mack Ave, Jefferson Ave and the storefront blocks of Kercheval Ave, traffic adds a gray road film on top of it.

Every service page below is written for those surfaces. Nothing we use puts pressure on slate, clay tile, copper or leaded glass. The work is soft washing, controlled chemistry and hand methods, with a rinse no stronger than a garden hose. Prices are published and identical in all five Pointes, there is no travel charge from Hall Rd, and a written line-item estimate reaches you inside 24 hours.

Masonry, Slate and Clay: What the Housing Asks For

Masonry sets the pace on most of these streets. Brick and limestone walls from the 1910s through the 1930s hold a green film on their north and east faces, especially where a mature canopy keeps them damp past noon. The fix is a mild solution that kills the growth, then a rinse, never abrasive pressure, because pressure opens mortar joints and etches soft limestone. Painted wood trim and leaded-glass windows around those walls are worked by hand.

Roofs are the other constant. Slate and clay tile last a hundred years if nobody walks on them and nobody points a wand at them, and under this canopy they grow moss in the shaded courses and lichen on the north slopes. A treatment is applied from ladders and the ground, left to work, and rinsed gently, and it holds three to five years. Copper valleys and gutters below are flushed and protected while it runs.

Underfoot, the ground is flat lake-plain clay that drains slowly. Century-old brick-paver and poured-concrete walks and drives settle and heave with freeze-thaw, and the low joints stay damp long enough to grow a dark film. Grosse Pointe Woods and the inland streets built after the 1930s sit on wider lots with more flatwork per house, so cleaning and, where the slab is sound, sealing is the usual sequence there.