Soft Washing in Richmond

The idea is simple. A cleaning solution mixed for the surface goes on at roughly the pressure of a garden hose, sits long enough to kill the algae, mildew and mold at the root, and rinses off at the same low pressure. Nothing is blasted. The growth is dead, so it does not come back in a season the way it does after a pressure wash, and a surface that could not survive pressure is never put at risk.

Richmond is full of those surfaces. The painted wood houses around Main St and Beebe St would lose paint in sheets under a pressure wand. The aluminum on the ranches is chalked and dents easily. The vinyl on the newer homes cracks at close range and takes water behind the laps. Add the wood porches downtown, the picket and privacy fences, the screened porches, the painted garage doors, and the metal siding on the barns and outbuildings of the acreage properties in Richmond and Lenox Townships, and soft washing covers most of what a property owner here wants cleaned.

What soft washing does not do is remove iron. The rust-orange stains that well water leaves below spigots and sprinkler heads are mineral, not biological, and the hypochlorite in a soft-wash mix can set them darker. Those spots get a separate rust-specific treatment before the wash, quoted on their own line. A soft wash of the house starts at $349; fences, porches and outbuildings are quoted per structure, and all of it fits in one visit.

Why Pressure Fails on These Surfaces

Pressure treats the symptom. It shears the green off the top of the siding and leaves the roots in the texture, so the wall is green again by fall. On the village houses it lifts paint, raises the wood grain and drives water into a wall that was built without a moisture barrier. On the ranches it strips chalked aluminum unevenly and dents it. On vinyl it cracks a panel where the jet lands and pushes water up under the laps into the wall cavity. On a screened porch it shreds the screen. And in every case, if only water was used and the solution was skipped, the job has to be repeated within a year.

Timing It Right

Any frost-free month, with the biggest stretch in late spring when the houses along Main St and around Beebe Street Memorial Park come out of winter, and a second push in August before the Good Old Days weekend brings guests to town. A soft wash is also the right prep before repainting one of the village-era houses, so painting season drives spring bookings on the old blocks. Fences and outbuildings can be added to any house wash visit, and October is the quietest month on the calendar.