I was doing some d-t-d sales today when a homeowner wan’t some info. on getting a house wash done. She said she needs the screen room cleaned, but “don’t use any bleach because of what it did to my window screens”. They look horrible, and I noticed that a lot of the houses on the street had the same problem.
My thoughts are A: Too strong of a HW mix, allowed to sit too long; B: Sun damage; C: Pressure washer used incorrectly…What do you guys think may have caused it?
My main concern is what will happen if I use HW mix to soft wash the screen room? I really think a normal or mild HW mix will be fine, but I don’t want to do any harm.
She wants info and a bid ASAP. This will only be my 3rd house wash, and it’s in a very tight knit neighborhood, so I don’t want to give her any wrong info, and I SURE don’t want to mess this up!
PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a “what would you bid” question. This is a “how would you handle this job” question. I haven’t taken it to the PWRA yet, thought I’d check here first.
Looks like thread bare (old screens), some p/w damage to thread bare screens, as well as pollen or algae from the deck made its way down. The screens in my neighborhood are pretty thread bare/sun beaten here.
My first reaction is that those screens look pretty old and worn and she needs a re-screening job. However since you asked about cleaning I would use a very soft brush such as the boars hair WFP brush and brush on water and fresh wash (no chlorine) then rinse from the inside out with low pressure. I use a 1500 psi electric unit for this kind of thing, use the widest tip and stand pretty far back.
The screens are just old and weathered. Is it a prefab neighborhood? You can rescreen those very easily, we see it around here all the time, especially on condos and prefab communities build 20-30 years ago.
Thanks for the quick response and the great info. I figured it was just old, worn out screens, but I wanted to make sure.
What about using my soft-wash tips to rinse from inside out? The only thing I have is a 4000psi, 4gpm unit, but the SW tips put out some really low pressure.
You could use the soft wash tips but be careful how close you get as that material looks like it will rip if you just look at it wrong. You could also use the soap tip to rinse if you turn off your soap injector. The reason that I use an electric unit is because I don’t like running the high pressure hose through the house in case my hose blows.
I clean screen porches all the time. There is always mold on them and pollen. What I do is use a soft bristle blue brush you can buy in the window cleaning section of Home Depot. The blue brush attaches to a small 4’ water fed pole (Home Depot). Any WFP would work this one has no pressure. I use my window cleaning solution(my secret mixture) to brush on the soap and rinse with the WFP. It works very well and customers always are like wow. You got it clean! I charge $45 per hour to do this.
Hope this helps.
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I’ve been having a lot of success with my old ionic pole washing houses with just pure water the customer usually just wants the Moss side Don and the pure water does an extremely good job in about an hour I’m most of the size of these houses it’s quite surprising
Most of these customers have had the bleach experience with pressure washers and don’t want to repeat it they just want the house cleaned without bleach The pure water and water fed pole do a surprisingly good job the house this house is look very good when I’m done with him
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I would brush with soap and water, same HD blue brush, use it on a pole to scrub the screen.
Start on the exterior first, scrub rinse then go interior scrub rinse… If the screened porch isn’t fully finished and nice like the inside of a house this would be the technique.
If it’s nicely finished I would scrub exterior first, skip the rinse part, go inside and scrub the rinse inside to the out. All with a simple garden hose.
As far as the screens go, they look old and beat up. Just comes with age, if the neighbors’ screens look the same then they all are just aged and need to be re-screened. Perfect upsell to the house wash and you most likely can get a few neighbors on board as well.
Good luck!
Mike Radzik
Pro Window Cleaning
Central Massachusetts
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