Another company quoted a much higher psi. Is that a better machine?

It is a bigger machine, and on these materials that is not the same thing. The Brick Industry Association limits brick to 400 psi at the tip unless the brick manufacturer permits more, and calls anything over 800 psi inappropriate; the concrete masonry association recommends 400 to 600 for block when high pressure is used at all; the EIFS manufacturer stops at 500. There is nothing wrong with a machine that can reach four thousand. What decides whether your wall survives is what the operator dials it down to, and which tip is on the end of the wand.

How do we know whether our building is stucco or EIFS?

From the building record rather than from the wall, so tell us what the record says. They are different materials: real stucco is portland cement, while EIFS is a finish over an insulation board, which is why its manufacturer caps pressure at 500 psi and rules out steam entirely. If nobody on site can say which one it is, the safe reading is the more fragile of the two, and its maker's limits.

The white bloom keeps coming back on our wall. Can you wash it off?

Before anything is washed, the question is why it keeps coming back. The Brick Industry Association treats recurring efflorescence as a symptom of water getting into the wall, and says to find and correct that source before cleaning; on a new building it says to let the bloom weather off over roughly a year. The concrete masonry association adds the part that stings: it says to keep washing pressure to a minimum, because water driven into the wall can cause efflorescence. A wash for this can make it worse.

What do you need from us before the day?

One answer, mostly: where the water is meant to go. Somebody at the property may know — a wash bay, a sanitary connection, an area of ground the site already uses — so tell us before the job. Tell us as well about anything sensitive below the wall, and about hours we should stay out of. If your site needs the wash water collected and hauled away, we are not set up to do that, and you will hear it at the estimate rather than on the day.

Commercial pressure washing

The pressure a commercial building can take is set by what the wall is made of, and where a trade association or a manufacturer has published a number it is far lower than three or four thousand psi. Brick, block and synthetic stucco each have a published pressure limit, and cement stucco has a published method, which is a garden hose; going past either is damage you pay for twice — once to clean, once to repair. The other half of the job is where the water goes afterwards, which in Florida is a question with a legal answer.

The pressure ceiling is set by the wall

None of the three published limits below comes anywhere near three or four thousand psi. The Brick Industry Association limits pressurized cleaning of brick to 400 psi measured at the nozzle tip unless the brick manufacturer permits more, and states outright that anything above 800 psi is not appropriate for brick — and it goes further than a number, specifying a stainless fan tip in the 25 to 50 degree range held at least twelve inches off the wall. The Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association says pressure on concrete block — dumpster enclosures, warehouse rear walls, the back walls of retail strips — should be kept to a minimum, and that if high-pressure cleaning is used it should be limited to 400 to 600 psi, with a wide flange tip, also twelve inches minimum, and never a pointed tip. Sto, which manufactures synthetic stucco systems, caps cleaning at 500 psi with the nozzle several feet back. Two trade associations and a manufacturer, three different materials, and not one of them anywhere near three thousand. A zero-degree tip has no legitimate use on any of these surfaces at all. So a psi rating is the wrong thing to shop on: on a commercial wall the machine is not the skill. The skill is knowing what the wall is and staying within its published limit. A higher number is not more capability — it is the failure mode.

Synthetic stucco is not stucco

Two different materials answer to the word stucco, and they want opposite treatment. Real stucco is portland cement over lath. EIFS — the synthetic system — is defined by the EIFS industry association as a non-load-bearing cladding built on an insulation board, with a thin reinforced base coat and a finish coat over the top. The load-bearing word in that sentence is insulation: there is foam behind the finish, and Sto, which makes these systems, bars steam and high-temperature methods on them outright, because that foam has a service temperature limit of about 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A hot-water machine is not a better machine here. It is the wrong tool, and heat in this trade is substrate-dependent rather than universally better. Real cement stucco takes a different method again: the Stucco Manufacturers Association describes a garden hose — pre-wet from the bottom up, then wash from the top down — and warns that holding the nozzle too close can erode the finish. So on a building finished in stucco the first question is not what pressure. It is which of the two materials this is, and the building record answers that better than a look from the ground: tell us what it says, if you have it. Getting that wrong is how a wall gets destroyed instead of cleaned. Glass, awning fabric and the walkway at the door run by their own published rules again, and each is a separate job.

Saturate first, and keep the acid off

On brick, the step that decides how the job looks afterwards happens before any product comes out of the truck. The Brick Industry Association requires that brick and mortar be saturated with water before a cleaning solution touches them, and that the wall below stay wet until after the final rinse. Skip it and the masonry drinks the solution instead of holding it on the surface. The association identifies that failure to saturate as a primary cause of cleaning failure, and it is what produces the white scum and the streaked staining the customer then blames on the cleaner. It is not an optional step somebody skips to save time. It is the step. The other half is what is in the bottle. The same association prohibits unbuffered muriatic and hydrofluoric acid on brickwork, and attributes the discolouration known as acid burn to it. The concrete masonry association is blunter about acids generally: they dissolve the cement matrix of the masonry from the surface inward, leaving the face more porous and changing its colour and its texture. Even weak acids belong at the end of the list rather than the front of it.

The second half of the job is where the water goes

A good part of a commercial wash happens after the wall is clean. Florida's Department of Environmental Protection states that discharging wash water into a storm drain, ditch, retention area or any surface water is prohibited without a permit, and the EPA is blunt about why that matters: storm drains lead directly to local waterways, not to a treatment facility. That is a different pipe from the sanitary sewer, which is the route Florida DEP recommends wherever it is practicable — one of four lawful destinations it recognises for collected wash water. Pushing the water onto the landscaping is not automatically allowed, either: the state requires it to meet ground water standards, and repeated discharge to the same patch of ground can put a permit requirement on the washing contractor. Chemistry changes the picture as well. The federal industrial stormwater permit authorises building washdown water only where no detergents or hazardous cleaning products are used, and it names bleach as one of those products — so soft-wash runoff is water to be managed, not water to be waved through. On our side that comes out simple. Tell us before the job starts where the water on your property is meant to go; and on pavement we pick up oil and grease with dry methods before any water touches the slab, which is what the federal standard requires. Pavement, oil spots and that dry work are the parking-lot side of the trade.

Common questions

Another company quoted a much higher psi. Is that a better machine?: It is a bigger machine, and on these materials that is not the same thing. The Brick Industry Association limits brick to 400 psi at the tip unless the brick manufacturer permits more, and calls anything over 800 psi inappropriate; the concrete masonry association recommends 400 to 600 for block when high pressure is used at all; the EIFS manufacturer stops at 500. There is nothing wrong with a machine that can reach four thousand. What decides whether your wall survives is what the operator dials it down to, and which tip is on the end of the wand.
How do we know whether our building is stucco or EIFS?: From the building record rather than from the wall, so tell us what the record says. They are different materials: real stucco is portland cement, while EIFS is a finish over an insulation board, which is why its manufacturer caps pressure at 500 psi and rules out steam entirely. If nobody on site can say which one it is, the safe reading is the more fragile of the two, and its maker's limits.
The white bloom keeps coming back on our wall. Can you wash it off?: Before anything is washed, the question is why it keeps coming back. The Brick Industry Association treats recurring efflorescence as a symptom of water getting into the wall, and says to find and correct that source before cleaning; on a new building it says to let the bloom weather off over roughly a year. The concrete masonry association adds the part that stings: it says to keep washing pressure to a minimum, because water driven into the wall can cause efflorescence. A wash for this can make it worse.
What do you need from us before the day?: One answer, mostly: where the water is meant to go. Somebody at the property may know — a wash bay, a sanitary connection, an area of ground the site already uses — so tell us before the job. Tell us as well about anything sensitive below the wall, and about hours we should stay out of. If your site needs the wash water collected and hauled away, we are not set up to do that, and you will hear it at the estimate rather than on the day.

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