When you step outside and start to clean the exterior of your home, the first option is to grab the pressure washing equipment and work your way around the home. That’s the way it’s been done for years, and if it’s good enough for history, it’s good enough for modern day homes, right? Wrong, actually. Pressure washing can do a lot of damage to your home’s exterior and to your property overall, too. It’s important to take that into consideration the next time you decide to wash off all of the grime.
The risks of pressure washing
There are quite a few risks to pressure watching with a high PSI that a lot of people taking a DIY approach don’t often know about. Here are the highlights to think of before you turn on the jets.
- Damage siding and shingles: Your home takes a beating in the course of a year, and that will most likely cause loose shingles or even siding. When you combine that with a high pressure washer, it’s easy for pieces of siding or shingles to fly off and cause damage to your home or require an expensive repair that you otherwise wouldn’t need. It will easily show you any weaknesses in your home’s exterior.
- Break windows or damage doors: Having that much water hit a window or a door can also cause breakage or damage. Sure, you want to make sure that you don’t miss a spot when you clean your home, but you don’t want to have a broken window and end up with damage inside your home, or a dented door that needs to be totally replaced.
- Bodily injury: If you accidentally clip yourself with a pressure washer spray (or someone else) it can do damage both to your skin as well as even break bones or require a serious amount of stitches. It can even cause bruising and internal bleeding depending on where it hits (and who).
The alternative
Just because you can’t use a pressure washer with a high PSI doesn’t mean that you need to resort to a brush and soap. In fact, using a brush on a house can actually do damage too (due to grit and other dirt that can create micro abrasions). The alternative to consider for everyone’s comfort (and a clean home) is softwashing.
This is a kind of washing that still uses a pressure washer, it just goes with a lower PSI. Standard pressure washers use above 3,000 PSI, whereas soft washing is going to rely on a PSI under 1,000, maybe even closer to 500. This will give your home the kind of clean that you want but you won’t be at risk of damaging siding, breaking windows or causing injury to yourself. This is then combined with a detergent that will effectively remove the same grime that straight high pressure water would remove, all without the potential for damage.
It’s always best to contact a professional cleaning company for all your pressure and soft washing needs. No chance of you getting injured and the job gets done correctly the first time.
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