Understanding Soft Washing

As you learn more about pressure washing and how it can help your home or business, you've probably come across an unfamiliar term: soft washing. While it is easy to deduce what it might be, the specifics can be hard to find. Let's take a look.

Pressure Washing vs Soft Washing

With regular pressure washing, we use a high water pressure level, sometimes up to 4,000 psi, to physically scrub away at the surface. To understand this deeper, you first need to know that psi stands for "pounds per square inch." That means that these surfaces that can use regular pressure washing can take up to 4,000 pounds of pressure. This method is the most common pressure washing technique, as it can be used on a wide range of surfaces that are usually large in size, such as driveways. With regular pressure washing, we rely on the physical scrubbing manner of high-pressured water to do the cleaning.

Soft washing, on the other hand, is an entirely different pressure washing method. With soft washing, we turn down the water pressure to that comparable to a very good garden hose, and we combine it with a powerful detergent that we allow to soak and chemically scrub at the surface. This method ensures fragile surfaces are cleaned and treated from algae and mold without the risk of harming the material. With soft washing, we rely on agents and detergents to do the cleaning.

What Uses Soft Washing

When trying to decipher soft washing, it can be confusing to learn the surfaces it is used on. For example, house washing can use either regular pressure washing or soft washing, depending on the material. Let's break it down.

There is one surface area of your house that always requires soft washing: your roof. Roof tiles and shingles are not only susceptible to flying off under high levels of pressure, but they are also typically coated with granules that can be blasted and scrubbed off, which would cause the material to deteriorate.

House washing is a bit of a mixed bag, but you just need to consider the material. For example, vinyl siding is not only fragile but stacked in a manner that water can seep behind if sprayed at the wrong angle. In contrast, brick is solid and impenetrable under typical conditions and therefore requires regular pressure washing.

And some materials, in general, require soft washing. These materials include:

• Vinyl
• Wood
• Glass
• & Pebbled Materials

To schedule your soft washing service, call Dirt Defenders LLC today at 503-453-3774.