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3 Reasons to Switch to a Pressure Washing Company That Uses Hot Water

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If you’ve ever pressure-washed a house before, you know there’s only one easy option for your water: tepid or cold water from the exterior water outlet. Heating the water is an extra step you might not have had the tools for. With many pressure washing companies, you’ll come across the same constraint: they don’t have the tools or the time to pressure wash with heated water. But when your building gets washed with cold water, it gets less clean. Here are three reasons to switch to a company that can also pressure wash with heated water:

3 Reasons to Switch to a Pressure Washing Company That Uses Hot Water

1. Heat cuts through grease and oil better.

Soap and water aren’t enough to cut through oils. Even if your home is off the main road in the middle of a neighborhood, the dirt that’s gradually built up on your house includes traces of grease and oil from air pollution. But hot water provides enough agitation and power to strip through the buildup without damaging the underlying surface.

2. They can get the job done faster.

Professional pressure washing services that use hot water pressure washing know how to take advantage of the extra power hot water provides. They can clean your driveway or your home’s whole exterior in a fraction of the time of cold water pressure washing. If you’re getting your house ready for out-of-town guests or an open house, that saved time matters.

3. Hot water pressure washing uses fewer chemicals.

If you want to go green, go to a company that uses hot water. Heated water can cut through grease, dirt, and chemicals with less soap than cold water processes need. That’s better for the environment in general and for lowering your home’s potential toxicity. It’s also easier on your plants, which can recover from exposure to hot water a lot easier than from exposure to cleaning chemicals.

Go to 214 Pressure Washing to see what other services we can offer for a quick, all-in-one clean.

4 Reasons to Pressure Wash Your Residential Rental Properties

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Residential real estate investment is all about striking a balance between making a profit and keeping your properties inviting. Annual pressure washing can help with both goals. Here’s how:

4 Reasons to Pressure Wash Your Residential Rental Properties

1. Long-term tenants appreciate the maintenance.

The real profit is in long-term tenants. If you can find families that plan on staying in one of your properties for years, you don’t have to worry about empty units or a set of fees for your property management company to find a new tenant. They also tend to take better care of the property. If you show regular signs of maintenance and property improvement, they’re even more incentivized to stay.

2. Stage a better first impression for prospective tenants.

When it is time to invite potential tenants to tour the property and sign a lease, you want that property as clean as possible. That starts with the exterior. A thorough annual pressure washing removes built-up grime, dirt, and moss. Even if you don’t have time to do it right before the open house, an annual habit keeps the property welcoming.

3. Get rid of chemical buildup.

Even in the DFW area, there are still a few times when road crews bring out road salt and snow melting chemicals. These can build up on the concrete surfaces of your property and etch through the material. There’s also the constant accumulation of car exhaust, air pollution, and chemicals.

Pressure washing doesn’t just make your property look clean. It removes those chemicals before they can cause further damage.

4. Don’t let plants dig into the siding.

Tiny plants like moss and algae hook into the walls as they spread across a house’s surface. Eventually, that will make the materials start to crumble and weaken. Ivy can do even more damage as it sinks its roots through the brick walls. An annual pressure washing gets rids of these damaging root systems.

Go to 214 Pressure Washing to set up a scheduled annual washing.

3 Ways DIY Power Washing Can Hurt Your Building

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There’s no one-size-fits-all setting for power washing a building. Every surface and circumstance needs a slightly different solution. Properties up against a lake need softer scouring that won’t penetrate their protective paint or powder coating. But properties up against an interstate need tough water pressure and cleaners to cut through the road grime.

commercial building pressure washing

 

Even individual parts of the same building need different treatments. So don’t risk property damage with all of the contradicting tips you’ll find online. Hire professional power washers who have plenty of experience with different surfaces, especially:

1. Cobblestone sidewalks.

If your building has decorative cobblestone sidewalks around the property, then keeping them clean is essential to customer enjoyment. But getting them clean is tricky. Stones have a hard surface, but their grout or dirt joints might not be able to handle the pressure. The landscaping right along the sides of the paths certainly won’t be able to, and the grass won’t respond to harsh cleaners, either. Find a service who can use just the right cleaners and equipment for the situation.

2. Soft siding.

If you have a brick or concrete building, the walls can handle quite a lot of pressure to leave them clean and gleaming. But softer materials need a gentler approach. Wood or poly siding have to be carefully handled, and shingles may need a different approach altogether. Don’t risk tearing up the siding, especially if it’s an intricate design.

3. Hard concrete.

Even concrete can require special handling. Too much pressure near a crack can increase the damage. On the other hand, too little pressure and too soft of cleaning chemicals won’t get out the rust stains and accumulated exhaust.

214 Pressure Washing has the experience to safely clean any type of commercial building surface. Whether you have an industrial concrete building or a themed restaurant with a perfectly decorated exterior, our trained teams can get it done. Contact us here to schedule an appointment.

Pressure Washing Abandoned Commercial Buildings

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When you’re in the market for a commercial real estate investment, sometimes you need to buy some fixer upper properties. If it’s in just the right spot, even an abandoned building can turn you a profit.  Commercial Building Washing Can Wash Away These Three Signs of Abandonment:

Pressure Washing Abandoned Commercial Buildings

But making a good deal on the property is just the beginning of the hard work to get the building up to snuff. The entire interior might need to be refurbished, and, if you’re converting it into an office building, the electricity and cabling need to be redone. The exterior also needs to be cleaned up to make it look like new. Hire an all-in-one power washing service so they can wash away these three signs of abandonment:

1. Get rid of graffiti.

General power- and pressure-washing won’t be able to completely get rid of graffiti. The paint has seeped into the brick, and you need high-powered equipment to get it out. Hire a trained team who has the horsepower, the chemicals, and the experience to get the graffiti off the side of your building. Even the echo of removed graffiti can make tenants think twice about your building, but professional cleaners can make it look like it was never there.

2. Remove old rust stains.

If your building is in an older commercial or industrial part of town, the concrete surfaces have collected quite a few rust stains. Easily available cleaning agents won’t be able to get rid of the rust. Some cleaners just push the stain around, while other etch the damage deeper into the concrete. Rust stains don’t carry the same negative connotation as graffiti often can, but it makes your building look old and poorly maintained.

3. Make the concrete surfaces clean.

Dirt will always age your building. Once the parking lot is covered in old stains and the sidewalk is gray with years of dirt, even the most welcoming entrance isn’t welcoming enough. Clean parking lots make your building stand out and look better to drive on. Power washed sidewalks are even more important even tenants can see them up close.

Go to 214 Pressure Washing to get your commercial building ready for business.

The Benefits of Having a Low Pressure Soft Wash for Your Home

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Over the years, pressure washing has been the preferable choice to having the atmospheric debris removed from the exterior of your home. However, over the past few years, many pressure washing companies have started to adopt another method for cleaning exterior surfaces – soft washing. Let’s discuss the Benefits of Having a Low Pressure Soft Wash for Your Home.

But why? Pressure washing has always gotten the job done, so why the need for a new lower pressure method? While pressure washing, or spraying exteriors will a highly pressurized water, is effective, it can be somewhat inefficient as the technician and their sprayer have to be relatively close to the home. This isn’t a problem for single story houses, but what of two-story or higher buildings. In order to get the same effects, the technician may need to get up on a ladder or scaffolding to get the job done right. Even then, sometimes there are stains on the house from its exposure to weather that water alone won’t remove or the pressure that would be needed would damage the building materials. For these times, soft washing is the best and most effective alternative.

The Benefits of Having a Low Pressure Soft Wash for Your Home

What is Soft Washing?

Soft washing is pretty close to what its name suggests. Instead of using a high pressure stream of just water, the technician uses a much lower pressure stream of water mixed with Sodium Hypochlorite (bleach). Bleach is kind of a scary word to many, but the same solution that a technician uses on your house is the same thing used to treat drinking water from city facilities or to disinfect your swimming pool. Essentially the mixture is just a touch stronger than the solution in your standard pool water, mixed with a foaming agent to help it cling and clean effectively.

When applied to a home, the mixture dissolves and kills mold, mildew, and algae as well as helping dirt and anything else clinging on your home be washed away easier. Once applied, the mixture is then washed away from your house, taking every atmospheric contaminant away with it. It can be done all from ground level and much faster than a higher pressure wash.

The primary use for soft washing is typically on roofs because it is much more effective than higher pressure methods, but it can be used on every surface of your exterior to great effect. Furthermore, because it uses low pressure, the likelihood of damaging any exterior surfaces is much lower than a high pressure wash. This can be the best path to take for easily damaged exteriors such as stucco.

While high pressure washing still has its uses, particularly for cleaning porous surfaces like concrete, soft washing should be something to consider if your exterior isn’t looking as great as it once was. If you want a pressure wash for your home or business, contact us today.

3 Reasons to Automate Your Pressure Washing Schedule Between Tenants

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Property management isn’t just about solving problems. It’s about limiting tenant turnover and downtime between tenants. Here’s how adding pressure washing to your process can help:

3 Reasons to Automate Your Pressure Washing Schedule Between Tenants

1. Looking clean is more important than looking new.

New tenants might want new features and contemporary designs. But they absolutely refuse to move into a dirty building. No matter what new improvements are on the agenda or how recently the house was built, prospective tenants will prioritize cleanliness. That starts when people pull up to the driveway. Get the exterior pressure washed to make that essential first impression.

2. Building it into the routine saves you time and money.

Pressure washing doesn’t just bring in new tenants faster. A pressure washing is almost always necessary to spot clean and remove buildup that damage the structure over time. But if you have to call up your client every time, that slows down your process. It also becomes a pain point, something that from your client’s perspective is just “one more thing they have to pay for.” So make pressure washing part of your standard operating procedure. You’ll get less pushback, and both sides profit from it.

3. Find a one-stop-shop service so you can focus on complicated problems.

Property management is about management. If you have to manually set forces in motion whenever a tenant leaves one of the properties you control, one of two things happens: either you can’t expand your business to handle more properties or you have to hire on more people to keep track of the processes. Both of those choices shrink your bottom line. So instead of going to ten different places to get the property’s exterior ready for the new tenant, find a pressure washing service who can handle everything from soft washing the roof to pressure washing the driveway.

Whether you manage ten properties or fifty, 214 Pressure Washing can work with your schedule and your property types to save you time. Contact us here to get started.

Removing Rust Stains from Concrete

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On any metal surface that even has the chance of being exposed to water, you expect rust. However, it is somewhat less expected to show up on your concrete, but it can and if the right conditions are met, it will.

Removing Rust Stains from Concrete

So how does that big orange rust stain show up on your concrete when it isn’t a metal surface? There are a few culprits. Most commonly, you will find rust stains on concrete from metal ornaments or lawn furniture. You will typically find smaller rust stains where the metal had contact with the surface. However, if you have a larger rust stain, you will want look to nearby irrigation systems. Some water has trace amount of iron inside and when iron meets water, it creates rust. Thus if your sprinkler system is overflowing onto your concrete, it is likely to blame for that ugly orange stain.

Now that you know where the rust probably came from, what can you do about it? Scrubbing concrete with a cleaner formulated for rust can help to dull the stain, but it doesn’t completely remove it. The real issue is that concrete has pores, and like with dirt, once rust gets into those pores, you need to go in and clean them. The best way to do this is with power washing. The high pressure water penetrates and cleans concrete better than any scrub brush ever could.

By contacting a skilled power washing company, they can save you several afternoons of scrubbing by cleaning that ugly stain away in just a few minutes. By pre-treating with a rust remover and then giving it the power washing treatment, that stain is gone. However, it isn’t gone for good if the cause isn’t treated.

If you have rust stains or even just dirty exteriors that need cleaned, contact us today.

Keep Your Asphalt Parking Lot Clean with Pressure Washing

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Pressure washing isn’t just for sidewalks and building sides. It’s also not just a tool for one set of circumstances. Here are three times when pressure washing is the right move for making your asphalt parking lot look inviting:

Three Ways to Keep Your Asphalt Parking Lot Clean with Pressure Washing

1. Get oil stains spot cleaned.

Parking lots develop all manner of car stains. Tires leave behind rubber and road chemicals. The cars themselves can be dripping anything from oil to antifreeze under the hood. While these stains are to be expected, sometimes they build up too much and start to ruin your lot’s overall appearance. Hire a pressure washing company to remove particularly visible oil stains. Sometimes trying to absorb the material up doesn’t work, and pressure can remove the stain without caustic chemicals.

2. Clean the surface before refinishing the paint lines.

Parking lot lines fade over time, and that can make the area dangerous. Parking lots already tend to have reduced visibility, especially at night and during winter, so clear lines are essential.

But before your contractors start laying out new spaces, get the whole surface pressure washed. Not only can this help remove some of the loosened paint, it preps the surface for the new lines. Oil, organic debris, and loosened asphalt can all stop your new paint from sticking. Pressure washing the lot ahead of time makes the completed project look nicer and last longer.

3. Remove seasonal debris.

Oil stains aren’t the only stains that can make your lot look grungy. During the fall, falling leaves can stack up and start to decompose. That rot will stain the parking lot, even if it’s darkly-colored asphalt. Winter also brings its own set of stains, such as blue road salt. Schedule a seasonal pressure washing so you can get those stains removed before they really set in.

Go to 214 Pressure Washing here to schedule an appointment to clean your parking lot. We can also help keep your sidewalks, building exteriors, and more clean.

Pressure Washing For Retail Strips Isn’t Just For Dirt

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Every property owner knows how important it is to keep a clean building. When an exterior is clean, it practically glitters in the sun. However, just a little bit of dirt suddenly changes to the scene to look more like the bad side of town. However, while cleaning away the dirt through receiving regular pressure washing service is a major benefit, pressure washing the exterior of a retail strip removes so much more.

Pressure Washing For Retail Strips Isn’t Just For Dirt

When dirt is being washed away, the mold is going with it. This is what you really want to get rid of. Unlike dirt, mold is able to grow and spread across an exterior, completely taking it over. Furthermore, those with allergy sensitivities to mold can be affected by the diminished air quality that surrounds a retail strip covered in mold. You don’t want customers being driven off because they can’t stop sneezing or coughing.

Other concerns that pressure washing a retail strip exterior can address is the animal element. Bird nests and dropping or cobwebs can also be incredibly invasive if left unchecked. By removing the nest materials, it can limit bird droppings in the area and cobwebs need to be regular cleaned away before they catch dirt and leaves too.

It is also crucial to remember that pressure washing isn’t just for the exterior walls, it is also great for cleaning walkways as well. Dirt can make concrete sidewalks look poor as well, but what is even worse is the presence of gum. Once it has set in the pores, it can be near impossible to remove, but not with the power and expertise that comes from a pressure washing service.

If you are a property owner and are interested in what a pressure washing service can do to make that exterior look beautiful again, contact us today to see how 214 Pressure Washing can help.

What’s Causing All the Rust Stains on Your Concrete?

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Commercial properties have a lot of things staining their concrete surfaces. People leave behind gum stains and graffiti. Cars leave oil stains and rubber prints. But, aside from when you find rust near water spigots, it can be tricky to track down the culprit behind widespread rust. Here’s how to find it and how to stop it:

What's Causing All the Rust Stains on Your Concrete? Landscaping

Ask your landscapers if their chemicals include iron.

Some plants need more nutrients and chemicals than are available in the soil. So many landscaping companies use fertilizers with trace amounts of iron. Those bits of metal can be spread around during the application process and long after the landscapers leave. Even a faint, sporadic coating of iron can stain your concrete with splotches of orange rust.

What can you do about the rust?

The best way to make your sidewalks and parking lots look better is to get them pressure washed. Pressure washing can easily remove rust stains from a variety of sources, not just landscaping. Even better, it can get rid of many of the other stains plaguing your exterior surfaces.

Create pathways around the medians.

If your parking lot has green medians, then pedestrians and customers are going to walk across them. That means the granular fertilizers are going to get shifted around and start staining your concrete again. Use a combination of unpassable hedges and clear concrete paths to redirect the traffic.

Schedule a regular washing.

If you get your concrete pressure washed, then your building automatically looks more inviting and better maintained. But nothing lasts forever. Schedule regular pressure washes so your concrete surfaces always look clean and rust-free.

214 Pressure Washing can clean away anything from algae and moss buildup on the side of your building to graffiti. Contact us here to schedule either a one-off appointment or an automatic schedule.