House Washing

Providing House Washing, Deck Washing, Roof Washing and more

Our house washing process can be used on any type of house surface including, vinyl, aluminum or painted wood, as well as Dryvit and brick. We use low pressure and specific cleaners for cleaning specific surfaces and types of dirt. The lower pressure and targeted cleaners lessen the risk of damage to your house.

HOUSE WASHING: THE PROCESS

• First, each side is treated with a solution designed to kill mildew, algae and other biological contaminants.
• Next, heavily soiled and stained areas are treated with specialized cleaners and detergents.
• The gutters are often the dirtiest part of the house and won’t come clean without scrubbing. We use a special soap specifically for cleaning gutters.
• As we rinse the entire side of the house down, we rinse each of the windows thoroughly to be sure we get as much soap residue off of the windows as possible.
• The last step in the process is to apply a polymer wax to the siding. This is done to give the siding a protective coating that will resist the adhesion of dirt and mildew for up to a year.

What is Artillery Fungi

Increasingly people are starting to find small black specks appearing on the siding and other surfaces around the house. These specks resemble insect feces or other air-born pollutants, however they are actually the spores expelled from the fruiting bodies of a fungi known commonly as “artillery” or “shotgun” fungus. It usually grows in organic matter like mulch under cool moist conditions

Artillery fungus is a very small mushroom fungus that has a cup shaped fruiting body filled with small spores. As the fruiting bodies grow they point themselves toward strong light sources such as light colored buildings, cars and light reflecting glass. The mushroom opens up like a flower, and the black sticky spores are shot out as high as twenty feet and are adhered as if with “Super Glue”.

Most attempts to remove the spores are futile at best especially if the spores have been in place for more than a few weeks. A number of chemists are working toward a chemical solution to the problem, but to date have not developed a product that works. The only process that has seen any success is the use of high volume hot water under very high pressure. However this cannot be used in many cases because the cure has the potential to be more damaging to the surface being cleaned than the artillery fungus itself.

Prevention is the key, and the best way to do that is to completely remove all the bark and hardwood mulch from around the home, and replace it with decorative stone or some other non-wood ground cover. If this is not a viable option, a good compromise might be to use mulches made from rot resistant woods such as cedar, redwood, or cypress. Though this will not guarantee the fungi will stop growing, it will give the fungi less organic matter to feed on, and slow down the appearance of those little black dots on your siding.