As providers of high-quality pressure washing SmartWash technicians answer hundreds of inquiries from residents and business owners. Many of these questions concern the differences between power washing and soft washing.
Most people want to know whether soft washing can remove dirt as effectively as power washing without scratching windows, scuffing shingles, and damaging paintwork. Soft washing entails considerably more manual labor and might net you a higher quote from most home exterior cleaning providers.
If you’re wondering whether soft washing or pressure washing is appropriate for your property, you’re in luck. Here, our technicians outline whether high-pressure cleaning techniques will serve you better or if soft-washing is the way to go. Each process involves a multi-step process with different risk factors, as we’ll detail below.
What Is Pressure Washing?
Why People Love Pressure Washing
According to the National Association of Realtors, curb appeal plays a significant role in determining a home’s market value and its owners’ satisfaction with its appearance. Commercial pressure washers like SmartWash serve hundreds of businesses by sanitizing their dumpster pads, signages, and drive-throughs. Businesses with high curb appeal are more likely to attract customers, stay competitive, and generate higher profits.
Pressure washing, also called power washing, is a sanitation technique that removes stains, discoloration, mold, and debris from residential and commercial structures. It uses detergents and highly pressurized water to clean properties.
What Our Clients Pressure Wash
Our technicians at SmartWash power wash hundreds of homes and businesses annually, maintaining the brand-new looks and cleanliness of exterior structures such as driveways, decks, patios, and walkways. Pressure washing is gaining popularity among home and business owners because of its versatility, cost-efficiency, and speed. It helps technicians clean and refresh hundreds of square feet in under an hour.
A professional power washing crew can change nozzles, adjust pressure settings, and use hot and cold water to tailor their services to their clients’ needs. Pressure washing is a skill that requires years of professional experience, training, and state-of-the-art equipment to perfect. It also demands necessary safety equipment.
At SmartWash, we serve many customers who once thought renting a power washer and following instructional videos on YouTube could restore their homes’ original beauty. Most ended up with shattered windows, cracked sidewalks, and scuffed paint jobs.
Our technicians use truck-loaded pressure washing equipment to transform any indoor and outdoor space. Residential and commercial customers hire us to:
- Prepare their homes and businesses for renovation.
- Protect new structures from moss, mildew, mold, and other signs of disrepair.
- Help with deep cleaning hard-to-reach areas of their buildings, like gutters, drains, and high fences.
- Increase the value of their properties before listing them for sale.
What Is Soft Washing?
Instead of using water pressure washing, soft washing enlists manual techniques that require telescopic ladders, mops, and buckets to clean fragile areas of your home or commercial structure. Pressure washers might chip, scratch, and shatter building materials like asphalt, clay, and glass, even at their lowest settings.
At SmartWash, our technicians use soft washing to sanitize interior spaces carefully. We can also tackle outdoor surfaces that pressure washers might damage, like roofs, ceramic floors, and windows.
What Makes Soft-Washing Unique
Soft washing eliminates microbes, bacteria, moss, and mildew at the same level as pressure washing, but it takes longer to accomplish. Our technicians use three cleaning agents on nearly all soft washing jobs:
- Eco-friendly bleaches allow us to disinfect windowsills, doorknobs, and furniture without damaging their protective coats and paint jobs.
- Surfactants with low volatile organic content help us remove mold, dirt, and debris from exterior surfaces. At the same time, these cleaning agents pose minimal no risk to surrounding plant life and wildlife.
- Water that dilutes surfactant and bleach concentrations. It lets us rinse the residue off your home or business structure after hours of scrubbing and wiping.
Soft washing helps us clean hard-to-reach areas that a pressure-washing nozzle can not approach, allowing us to clean at a more granular level. Businesses often hire us to soft wash digital signs, billboards, and windows with advertising graphics. Homeowners typically want us to sanitize antique decks, skylights, and solar panel installations.
Why Professional Soft-Washing Is Essential
Soft washing is more labor-intensive when compared with power washing. With soft washing, our crew must set up scaffolding, extension poles, and ladders to hand-clean elevated surfaces.
Sometimes, soft washing might require an extended project timeline, which we discuss with our clients before providing a free quote.
Hiring a professional crew will make soft washing faster and more affordable while minimizing the risk of accidents.
Soft Washing vs. Power Washing
Calling a company providing pressure washing will stop you from making the wrong choice for your sanitation needs. Most commercial pressure washers can eject liquids at forces exceeding 2,000 pounds per square inch. They may destroy porous and fragile surfaces that would otherwise benefit from a manual wipe-down.
Our technicians recommend soft washing to clean the following surfaces:
- Glass windows
- Asphalt, clay, and wood shake roof shingles
- Indoor and outdoor bug screens
- Patio enclosures
- Wood panel and vinyl sidings
- Cedar shake surfaces
- Benches, playground equipment, and other outdoor furniture
- Stucco
- Floor graphics
- Wraps and murals
- Fleet and private vehicles
Alternatively, using a water-pressure washer will save you time and labor when cleaning the following surfaces:
- Drainages
- HVAC ductwork and outdoor vents
- Chimneys
- Driveways and parking lots
- Outdoor barbecue grills
- Boats, mountain bikes, and lawnmowers
- Metal and wooden fences
- Brick sidings
- Walkways and front entrance stairs
- Concrete patios
- Garage floors and driveways
Work with the Leading Provider of Pressure Washing in Knoxville, TN
Contact the number-one company providing residential and commercial pressure washing in Knoxville, TN by calling SmartWash at (865) 383-3622. Our project planners and technicians have earned hundreds of five-star reviews from a growing roster of satisfied customers. We provide a free, no-obligation quote for every client, so call us today to see your home or commercial structure restored to mint condition.
