It’s natural to want to spruce up your home with good exterior cleaning services after years of wind, rain, and snow ravaging the exterior. It is also imperative to keep your home’s exterior clean. Such ideals are not just for the looks, but it also keeps your house healthy by eliminating molds, mildews, fungus, dirt, and grime. The building up of dirt, mold, pollen, algae, and the decaying matter has a significant impact on your health. Such debris usually ends up between cracks, beneath sidings, and around stones, as well as on patio furniture.
Soft VS Power Washer (Pressure Washer)
If you are thinking of having the exterior of your home cleaned, you will have to decide what methods to use. It is not possible to get rid of these contaminants by simply using a garden hose. It is also not enough to use a conventional ‘cleaning soap.’ This leads to a subpar cleaning, still leaving many contaminants that can cause illnesses without you even realizing the source.
One of the best options for exterior cleaning is home pressure washing or soft washing. These may be new to you, but these two are the most common processes that most people utilize to effectively clean the exterior of their home. In order to determine and understand which is best for you, let’s define and examine the differences between soft vs. power washer (pressure washer).
Pressure Washing
Pressure washing uses highly pressurized water to forcefully remove any dirt or grime from the surface that it comes in contact with. Cleaning various surfaces of the home with pressure washing is a highly effective home cleaning solution. And quite frankly, a lot of people use this. Although pressure washers don’t heat water, the pressures can still be high enough to be dangerous. Especially if you are not a professional. Amateurs often discover how powerful a pressure washer can be only by experiencing it. Most of the time, it’s a disaster.
With pressure washing, the water is forced out so fast that it can cut the skin to the bone in a split second. Also, with its pressure, it can even descale fish and carve pumpkins. That’s how powerful the pressure is. When pressure washing home sidings, special care must also be taken. It’s essential to keep a safe distance to protect your sidings, wood shingles, and other surfaces.
Pressure washers can clean walking surfaces, decks, stone pathways, patio furniture, and so forth. It is often recommended to pressure wash anything that is hard and has deep grooves in which dirt accumulates.
Pros and Cons of Pressure Washing
You’re probably more familiar with pressure washing for a house’s exterior, as opposed to soft washing. It has some benefits, obviously, but some might not be applicable for your home. A major advantage of pressure washing is that it is easy to find a professional cleaning service to conduct the work for you. It’s convenient for many people to hire a pressure washer that they can count on whenever they need to because of how jarring it can be to learn how to properly use a pressure washer without causing damage to themselves or their homes.
The use of a pressure washer DIY style on any exterior surfaces entails a number of additional negative impacts. For starters, it is difficult for first-timers to handle the high pressure and could hurt themselves or others. If not done right, water can get under siding and overhangs, causing more damage than good. If water gets into your attic through your soffit, the insulation can get soaked.
Washing your siding with high pressure can also leave a streak on the siding that is cleaner than others. The general consensus on pressure washing is that it is dangerous and potentially damaging, yet not an effective way to wash your siding and exterior surfaces legitimately. Therefore, the best solution is to hire a professional crew to get the job done!
Soft Washing
In soft washing, water pressure is below 500 pressure per square inch (PSI) for rinsing and cleaning. A widening spray tip replaces the tip of the pressure washer’s pressure point, and so drops the point of pressure. Additionally, soft washing employs special cleaning solutions to break down dirt and organisms living on surfaces. These chemicals are completely safe for both your household and the environment.
You will not have to worry about stripping protective coatings from the exterior of your home when using these cleaning solutions. In several situations, soft washing methods are preferable to pressure washing. Soft washing should be the option for soft surfaces, such as vinyl siding, cedar shake siding, screens, enclosures, and lanais, wood panel siding, outdoor wood furniture, outdoor rooted plants, and stucco and coquina.
Pros and Cons of Soft Washing
The reason why soft wash systems perform better is that they use much lower water pressure while still providing effective cleaning. As opposed to pressure washing which uses only water, soft washing actually kills all bacteria & algae on your siding & removes them at the same time instead of blasting them off. Furthermore, it can be done in a day, and it will also last longer while not damaging any of your home’s exteriors.
If you want to clean your siding, roof, deck, or fence without damaging anything, soft washing is your best bet. You will also see a long-lasting result thanks to the anti-bacterial components added to the chemicals used. One drawback is that it requires the service of a professional exterior washer to perform the work. Nonetheless, its effectiveness is by far superior to anything else.
Conclusion
Cleaning the outside of a home or business is a big job and is obviously not that easy. Choosing between pressure washing and soft washing is really up to you. It all depends on the build-up of contaminants that have accumulated on the exterior of your home.
