Most of the houses on the old grid south of Front Street went up between about 1905 and 1950 — narrow lots, deep porches, and lap siding that has been painted, re-sided in aluminum, or stuccoed at least once since. What stains them here is not city grime. It's irrigation water and shade.
Downtown Nampa is a mixed bag of siding, and that changes the wash. On the older blocks you get narrow wood lap or cedar bevel under three or four coats of paint, a fair number of 1970s and 80s aluminum re-sides laid over that original wood, stucco on the 1920s and 30s bungalows, and painted brick on the houses closest to the commercial blocks. Rebuilt and infill lots run modern vinyl or hardie. Each one takes a different mix and a different amount of water. Chalky aluminum wants a weak solution and a long rinse or you streak it. Stucco holds soap down in the texture and has to be flooded out. Painted brick will pull loose paint if you get greedy with pressure. We walk the house and test a low, out-of-sight spot before anything goes on a whole wall.
Most of this side of Nampa runs pressurized irrigation off canal water, and that water carries iron and silt. Every time a head throws against the house, it leaves a little of both. After a season or two you get a rust-colored stain that starts at the splash line, fades upward through the first two or three feet, and is always worst on the wall closest to the head and on the fence right beside it. Soap will not touch it. Rust is a mineral stain, not dirt, so it takes an oxalic treatment worked into the stained band and rinsed out — we do that as part of the wash when we find it. The other half of the fix is yours: turn that head down or change the nozzle, or the stain is back by next August.
Walk around a downtown house and you can see the split. The north wall — the shaded one, under the big elms and maples that line these old streets — carries a gray-green algae film, heaviest up under the eave line and anywhere air doesn't move, like behind a lilac hedge or between the house and a detached garage sitting two feet off the line. That comes off and stays off for a while. The south and west walls have the opposite problem. Years of sun break down the paint film or the surface of older vinyl, and the wall leaves white chalk on your hand. Washing pulls the dirt out of that chalk and evens the color, and the house does look dramatically better from the sidewalk. What it will not do is bring back gloss. If your hand still comes away faintly white after a clean wash, that's oxidation in the finish, and only paint fixes it.
Nothing on a house this old needs a pressure washer on the siding. We soft-wash: low pressure, a cleaning solution that does the actual work, dwell time, then a full rinse from the top down. On a 1915 lap-sided house with decades of paint stacked on it, high pressure drives water up under the boards and behind the trim, where there is no house wrap and no fast way for it to dry, and it strips whatever paint was already letting go. If your paint is failing — flaking, curled edges, bare patches — say so up front. We can still wash it, but we go lighter, and you should expect some loose flakes to come down, because they were coming down anyway. If it's badly failing, wash it right before you paint, not instead of painting. Windows closed, screens off old wood sash, plants soaked before and rinsed after.
House washing is $0.18 per square foot and the soft-wash method is safe on every siding downtown — wood, stucco, aluminum, painted brick, vinyl and hardie. That's wall area, not floor area, so the small bungalows on these lots usually come in under what people guess, while a two-story four-square with a wraparound porch runs more because of the reach and the trim work. Rust treatment on a sprinkler band is included when we find one. Most houses on this grid are a half-day. Memberships are monthly or quarterly with no contract, though honestly most siding here only wants washing once a year, twice if you sit under heavy tree cover. Same-day and next-day slots open most weeks. Reflekt is locally owned and fully insured, started in 2025 by Hunter Stevens and Ethan Seusy, 4.9 stars across 115+ Google reviews. Call (208) 453-6760.
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Usually yes, but not with soap. That band is iron out of canal irrigation water, and it's a mineral stain rather than dirt, so it gets an oxalic treatment on the stained area and a thorough rinse. Most of it lifts. Old, deeply set staining on chalky aluminum can leave a faint shadow. And unless the sprinkler head gets adjusted or renozzled, it will start rebuilding the same summer.
Partly, and I'd rather tell you before than after. Washing removes the dirt trapped in the chalk and evens out the color across the wall, which makes a big visual difference from the street. But the chalk itself is the paint finish oxidizing after decades of south and west sun. No wash brings gloss back to an oxidized surface. If your hand still picks up a little white afterward, that's the finish, and repainting is the only real fix.
That's exactly what soft washing is for. The pressure stays low and the solution does the work, so we're not forcing water up under lap boards on a house built without house wrap, and we're not blowing out old mortar joints or lifting paint off brick. Failing paint is the one caution — if yours is flaking, tell us, and we go lighter and expect some loose pieces to come off.
On a shaded north wall under mature canopy, figure a year to eighteen months before the film is visible again, and faster if there's a hedge or a garage wall crowding the airflow. Sunny walls go two or three years easy. If you want to slow it down, thinning the branches that overhang that wall does more than any product we could put on it.
Standard practice on every house: beds and shrubs get soaked with plain water before we start, covered where they're right under the work, and rinsed again when the wall is done. Wetting them first is the part that matters — saturated foliage doesn't take up solution. Downtown lots often have established plantings tight to the foundation, so point out anything you're protective of and we'll work around it.
No. A rinsed wall doesn't care about rain — that's just more rinse water, and it's a different situation from glass, where our 7-Day Rain Guarantee covers spotting. What rain does affect is scheduling. We won't wash into a rainstorm, because solution needs dwell time on the wall and rain cuts it short, so we'll move you a day rather than do a half-job.
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