Soft Washing vs. Pressure Washing
Keeping your home’s exterior clean is one of your biggest priorities, and it’s an extremely important part of maintaining any home. At Midwest Softwash & Pressure Wash, our soft washing and pressure washing services can help you keep every part of your home looking as attractive as possible, and they’ll also keep it healthy by eliminating mold, mildew, fungus, dirt, and grime from your exterior surfaces. When you’re having any part of your home cleaned, the first thing that you’ll need to decide is whether you need pressure washing or soft washing services.
Our Illinois and Missouri exterior cleaning experts can provide you with either of these services expertly, and we can also help you decide on which service would be best for the material that you’re having cleaned. The best way to know that you’re able to accurately determine which service you’ll need is to know what the difference is between the two, and how each can benefit your home in different ways.
The Difference Between Pressure Washing and Soft Washing
ss are both effective ways to clean exterior elements of your Illinois or Missouri home, but they accomplish this in very different ways:
- Pressure washing uses highly pressurized water to forcefully remove any dirt or bacterial growth on your home’s exterior surfaces. While this is a highly effective method, the amount of pressure it uses may prove to be damaging to some parts of your property.
- Soft washing uses detergents in place of that pressure. It’s just as effective as pressure washing in most instances, and the chemicals used are safe for both your home and the environment.
Both pressure and soft washing will do an excellent job job of cleaning your home’s exterior, and each of them can be an excellent method, but depending on the job, one may be favorable to the other.
When to Use Pressure Washing
Pressure washing uses a wand that expels water at 2,500 PSI (pounds per square inch) or more. While this amount of pressure is highly effective for removing stains, there is a possibility that it could damage some softer surfaces of your Illinois or Missouri home’s exterior. It may remove paint from wood, damage shingles, destroy window screens, or disturb your siding.
Pressure washing is best for use on surfaces like:
- Concrete sidewalks, driveways, and walkways
- Paved patios
- Brick, stone, and other durable surfaces
When to Use Soft Washing
Water that is expelled during soft washing will not have a PSI of more than 1,000, which is less than half of the minimum PSI for pressure washing. Instead of relying on pressure to clean your Missouri or Illinois home’s exterior, soft washing techniques take advantage of specially formulated detergents and “dwell times” to clean these surfaces. Dwell times are simply the length of time that the detergent rests on the surface to allow the chemicals to loosen and remove stains and grime. In many cases, soft washing is the only method you should use in order to avoid damage to your property.
Soft washing is recommended for surfaces like:
- Cedar shake
- Wood panel siding
- Stucco and coquina
- Screens, screened enclosures, and lanais