Power washing for the hard surfaces around your home

What we power wash

Power washing is for flat, durable surfaces that can take force without being damaged:

• Concrete driveways and garage aprons
• Sidewalks and front walkways
• Patios, concrete or paver
• Front steps and stoops
• Pool decks and other concrete around the house

Roofs and siding are a different story. They get a low-pressure soft wash, and you'll find out why further down this page.

Driveway cleaning

A driveway in the Chicago suburbs has a hard life. Winter leaves road salt and sand ground into the surface, spring brings mud and pollen, and shaded strips along the lawn or under trees grow a slick film of algae and moss that turns dark and slippery when it's wet.

We clean the whole surface evenly, edge to edge, so you don't end up with the clean stripes and dark patches a rented machine tends to leave. A surface cleaner (a round, spinning attachment that keeps the nozzle at a steady distance from the concrete) does most of the work, and edges, cracks and expansion joints are finished by hand.

• Tire marks and everyday grime come up with pressure and water.
• Oil and grease stains get a degreaser first, left to work before the wash. Fresh drips often come up completely. Old stains that have soaked deep into the concrete usually lighten a lot but can leave a shadow, and we'll tell you what to expect before we start.
• Green and black growth along shaded edges gets a pretreatment, so it's killed rather than just blasted off.

Pavers need a lighter hand than poured concrete. Too much pressure can wash out the sand between the joints and loosen the stones. We adjust the pressure and angle for pavers and let you know if the joints will need new sand afterward.

The right pressure for each surface

This is the rule the whole business is built on. Pressure is a tool, not a method, and it only belongs on surfaces that can take it.

For the full reasoning, see our guide on when to soft wash and when to pressure wash.

Power washing vs pressure washing

You'll see both names, and to most homeowners they mean the same service: cleaning a surface with high-pressure water. In the trade, “power washing” sometimes refers specifically to machines that use heated water, which helps with grease. Either way, the question that matters isn't the name. It's whether the surface in front of you should be cleaned with high pressure at all. Our power washing services cover what most people call pressure washing services: driveways, walkways, patios and pavers.

Why we don't power wash roofs or siding

A lot of homeowners call asking for their house to be power washed. It's a reasonable request, since it's the method most people know, but it isn't what we'd recommend for the house itself.

• Roofs: high pressure strips the granules that protect shingles and can force water underneath. We clean roofs with a soft wash roof cleaning instead.
• Siding: high pressure can crack vinyl, erode stucco and push water behind the walls, and it leaves the roots of algae behind so it grows back fast. We soft wash your siding instead.

If you call about power washing your house, we'll still quote the whole job. The driveway and patio get power washed, and the house gets soft washed.

Pair it with a house wash

A clean house next to a stained driveway, or a bright driveway in front of green siding, still looks half done. Many homeowners book the driveway and walkways together with a house wash, and doing everything in one visit takes less time than two separate appointments.