Most of Depot Bench went up between 1946 and 1965: painted lap siding over a brick wainscot, twelve inches of eave if you are lucky, and a lawn watered off canal irrigation. That combination stains three different ways on the same house — sprinkler rust low, algae on the north wall, chalk on the sun side.
Most of the Bench waters off canal-fed pressurized irrigation, and that water carries iron plus a lot of dissolved mineral. Set a head too close to the wall and it throws that water at the brick wainscot and the bottom two courses of lap siding four or five nights a week for twenty years. What you get is an orange band eighteen to thirty inches off the ground, heaviest on the driveway side where the spray catches the garage wall. Here is the honest part: that is not dirt. It is oxidized iron bonded into the paint film and into the face of the brick, and no amount of soap or pressure moves it. It takes a separate oxalic rust treatment, brushed on and rinsed. On painted siding it usually clears completely. On porous mid-century brick it lightens a lot and can leave a faint ghost.
North and northeast walls in Depot Bench stay green because nothing here helps them dry. The roofs are 3:12 with twelve to eighteen inches of overhang, so rain hits the wall instead of running past it, and the street trees planted when these houses were new now close over the whole lot. A wall that is wet at seven in the morning and shaded until dark grows algae. It reads as a green-black film sitting in the lap shadows and creeping up from grade, worst behind an overgrown juniper. Soft wash clears it: mild cleaner, a few minutes of dwell, low-pressure rinse. What does not work is a pressure washer. On horizontal lap siding a 3,000 psi tip drives water up under the butt joints and into the sheathing, and you will not know it went in until the paint blisters next summer.
Sixty years of Boise sun on a south or west wall breaks down the binder in old paint, and the pigment turns to loose powder on the surface. That is chalking. Test it yourself: drag a dark rag or your palm down the siding and see whether it comes back white. If it does, know what a wash will and will not do. We can take the chalk layer off, and the wall will be genuinely clean afterward. It will also look lighter, and it may look uneven next to a shaded wall that never chalked, because you are finally seeing the real condition of paint that has been fading at different rates for two decades. On a heavily chalked house, a soft wash is prep for painting rather than a substitute for it. We will tell you which one you have before we quote it.
Soft wash means the cleaner does the work and the water only rinses. We run roughly garden-hose pressure at the wall: the mix goes on, sits a few minutes, comes off. That matters more on this housing stock than on a 2005 subdivision. The brick on these ranches sits in soft lime-heavy mortar that is sixty-plus years old, and a turbo tip will cut the sand straight out of a joint. Stucco on the remodels and infill spalls at the edges. Vinyl and hardie on later additions handle water fine but trap it behind the courses when it gets forced up under them. One thing worth naming: a chalky white bloom on brick is not dirt, it is efflorescence, salt migrating out of the masonry, and washing it can pull more to the surface for a season.
House washing runs $0.18 per square foot, measured on wall area rather than floor plan, so the typical one-story Depot Bench ranch is a straightforward number over the phone. If you are having windows done too, book them together and let us wash the house first. A house wash sends runoff down the glass, and the mineral in Boise water spots it as it dries, so windows go last and get finished with 100% pure deionized water. Memberships are monthly or quarterly with no contract, and the 7-Day Rain Guarantee applies. Same-day and next-day slots open most weeks. Reflekt was started in 2025 by Hunter Stevens and Ethan Seusy, is locally owned and fully insured, and holds 4.9 stars across 115+ Google reviews. Call (208) 453-6760 and tell us which walls actually bother you. That is usually a shorter list than the whole house.
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Not by itself. That band is almost always sprinkler iron, and it is bonded into the brick face rather than sitting on top of it, so cleaner and low pressure will not move it. It takes a separate oxalic rust treatment. On painted lap siding it usually comes out clean. On porous brick it lightens substantially and can leave a faint shadow. Move or adjust the head at the same time or it returns within a year.
Soft wash will not lift paint that is sound. It will take off paint that is already failing, and on a house built in the 1950s that is worth knowing before we start. We walk the walls first and look for peeling, alligatoring and open seams. If a section is already lifting, we say so, and we either skip it or wash it knowing it will shed. We would rather flag it than surprise you.
Almost always no. Black or green film on a north wall in Depot Bench is airborne algae growing on a surface that stays damp from shade and short eaves. It lives on the paint, not inside the wall, and it washes off. If you are also smelling something musty indoors or seeing stains on interior drywall, that is a different problem and a different trade. Call a moisture inspector, not a wash crew.
Shut the irrigation off the morning of the job so the beds are not already saturated, and point out any heads sitting right against the wall so nobody steps on them. Old junipers and yews grown four feet deep against the house get pre-wet before we start and rinsed after. If a shrub is tight enough to the siding that a wand will not fit behind it, we will tell you instead of forcing it.
House first, windows second, ideally on the same visit. Washing sends runoff sheeting down the glass, and Boise water is hard enough that it dries into spots on every pane it touches. If we clean windows first and wash the house a week later, you have paid for the glass twice. In the right order, the house gets washed and then the windows get finished with pure deionized water that leaves nothing behind.
Less often than most companies will tell you. Useful test: stand at the sidewalk and look at the north wall. If there is no green-black cast in the lap shadows and nothing creeping up from grade, you can wait. Sun-facing walls on these ranches often go two to three years between washes. North walls under heavy tree cover are the ones that need it yearly, and sometimes that side is the only one worth doing.
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