Eagle Hills went up between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, and it still shows: brick with painted T1-11 above it, wide painted fascia, and fifty-year-old canopy shading the north elevations. Three things stain those houses here — sprinkler overspray, shade algae, and sun-side chalking — and each one takes a different answer.
The newer Eagle subdivisions off Floating Feather and Beacon Light are synthetic stucco and cultured stone. Eagle Hills is not. Around the golf course you're mostly looking at a brick or brick-veneer lower third with painted T1-11 plywood board siding above it, painted wood fascia, and aluminum-framed windows. T1-11 is wood, and wood has seams. Every vertical groove and every lap joint is a place water can get behind if somebody points a pressure tip at it, and once it wicks in behind the paint you get blistering and delamination six months later that nobody connects back to the wash. So this whole neighborhood gets a true soft wash: cleaning chemistry does the work at low pressure, roughly what a garden hose puts out at the wall. Stucco elsewhere in Eagle can take a firmer rinse. These houses cannot, and we don't pretend otherwise.
Walk the south and east sides of most Eagle Hills homes and you'll find a rust-orange or chalky-white band running eighteen to thirty inches up the brick, dead level, following the spray arc of a head that's been hitting the house for years. That is not dirt and it is not algae. It's iron and hard-water mineral baked into porous brick and mortar by valley water. Here's the honest part: a soft wash will not remove it. Soap and sodium hypochlorite kill organic growth — they do nothing to metal oxide. Mineral staining needs a separate acid-based masonry treatment, it's priced separately, and on brick that's been soaked for a decade it often lightens several shades rather than disappearing. Adjust the sprinkler head first or it comes back in one season.
Quarter-acre lots planted in the seventies mean mature trees hanging over almost every roofline in Eagle Hills, and the north and northeast elevations barely see sun from October through March. Siding that never fully dries grows algae — the green-black film you see creeping up from the foundation and out from behind downspouts, always worst on the shaded side. It's a living organism with roots in the paint's surface, which is why pressure alone is a waste of money on it. Blasting takes off the visible top layer and it's back in a few weeks looking the same. A soft wash kills it at the root, so the siding stays clean for a real season instead of a month. On heavily shaded Eagle Hills lots that's usually an annual job; full-sun lots elsewhere can go longer.
The opposite problem shows up on the south and west walls. Idaho sun oxidizes exterior paint, and forty-year-old T1-11 with two or three repaints on it eventually chalks: run your hand down the siding and your palm comes away white. Washing removes that loose chalk and most homes come back looking dramatically better, because what you were seeing was oxidized paint dust holding dirt. But we'll tell you at the estimate if the chalk is heavy, because there's a point where the finish is simply spent. Rinsing the chalk off spent paint can reveal uneven fading underneath, and no pressure setting fixes that — it needs paint, not a wash. We'd rather say that standing in your driveway than have you find out after we've packed up.
House washing runs $0.18 per square foot, soft-wash, safe for all siding. Before anything gets applied, landscaping gets soaked down and rinsed again after — established Eagle Hills yards have fifty-year-old shrubs sitting right against the walls, and those aren't replaceable at a nursery. We keep the wand off the T1-11 seams, out from under the lap joints, and away from the brick weep holes at the bottom course. If you're having windows done too, siding gets washed first and glass afterward, since window work is 100% pure deionized water and we're not putting soap residue back onto freshly cleaned panes. Same-day and next-day slots are usually open. There's a 7-Day Rain Guarantee, Monthly and Quarterly memberships with no contract, and we're fully insured and locally owned. Call (208) 453-6760.
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Not the way we run it. T1-11 is plywood board siding with open vertical grooves, so the risk isn't the paint surface — it's water driven behind the seams and lap joints by high pressure, which blisters the finish months later. We soft wash at roughly garden-hose pressure at the wall and let the cleaning solution do the work, keeping the wand off the seams entirely.
Usually we can lighten it, not always erase it. That band is iron and hard-water mineral from years of sprinkler overspray, not dirt, and standard soft-wash chemistry does nothing to it. It takes a separate acid-based masonry treatment, quoted separately. On brick that's been soaked for a decade, expect real improvement rather than a perfect match. Move or reaim the sprinkler head or it returns within a season.
Most homes here do well on once a year, driven by the shaded north side rather than the sunny ones. Mature canopy over these lots keeps north elevations damp for months, and that's where algae regrows first. If your lot is heavily treed or you have downspouts dumping against the siding, a Quarterly membership catches it before it darkens. Open lots with less shade can often stretch longer.
No, and we'd rather not. Shrubs planted in the seventies right up against the foundation don't transplant well and don't get replaced at a nursery. Instead they get saturated with plain water before we start, which keeps solution from concentrating on the foliage, and rinsed thoroughly again when the wall is done. Anything unusually sensitive, tell us at the estimate and we'll tarp it.
Yes, and it's the efficient way to do it. Order matters: siding first, glass second. Washing the house sends soap and runoff down the windows, so cleaning them first just means doing them twice. Window work uses 100% pure deionized water with no soap, which is exactly why it has to follow the soft wash rather than precede it.
It's $0.18 per square foot for soft washing, safe for all siding, so a quote depends on the wall square footage rather than the number of stories. Mineral or rust treatment on brick is quoted separately. If it rains within seven days of the service, the 7-Day Rain Guarantee covers it. Memberships are Monthly or Quarterly with no contract.
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