Most Hillcrest houses are painted lap siding over a brick or block wainscot, built between about 1952 and 1965. The dirt line you see from the driveway is usually three separate problems stacked together: sprinkler splash on the bottom three feet, algae on the shaded north wall, and chalked paint on the sun side. Each one comes off differently.
Hillcrest went up mostly between 1952 and 1965, and the wall you are looking at is usually one of three things: painted wood lap siding, a brick or split-face block wainscot running under it, or 1980s-90s vinyl that got hung over the original when somebody got tired of scraping. A few streets have T1-11 plywood on the gable ends and cedar shake accents by the front entry. Stucco is rare here compared to the newer Meridian subdivisions, and hardie only shows up on houses re-sided in the last fifteen years. That matters, because every one of those takes a different amount of pressure and a different dwell time. We walk the house first and tell you which surfaces we are treating differently before anything gets wet.
The most common call we get on the Bench is the stripe across the bottom of the wall. Sixty-year-old sprinkler layouts on these lots throw at the house instead of away from it, and Boise water is hard. What builds up is a mix: dirt splashback, a chalky white mineral crust, and often a rust-orange tint if the system pulls off an older galvanized line or an irrigation share. The dirt and the biological film come off with a soft wash. The mineral and iron staining is a separate job that needs an acid-based siding or masonry treatment, and on painted wood that has sat long enough to etch through the paint film, nothing we do brings the original color back. Have us look at it and we will tell you which of the two you have before you pay for anything.
The maples and elms planted when these blocks were new are well over the roofline now, and the north and northeast walls under that shade stay damp most of the year. What grows there is green-black algae, not dirt. Pressure alone knocks the top layer off and it is back by the following spring, because the organism is still rooted in the surface of the paint or vinyl. We soft wash with a solution that kills it and then rinse, which is why the shaded side stays clean two or three times longer than it would from a pressure-only wash. On heavily shaded houses we also check the bottom edge of the siding and the band board, since that is where moisture holds longest and where paint fails first.
South and west walls have the opposite problem. Fifty-odd years of Idaho sun breaks down the binder in old paint and the pigment turns to powder at the surface. Drag your hand across it: if your palm comes away colored, that wall is chalked. Two honest things about that. First, washing lifts the loose chalk, so the wall comes out cleaner but also flatter and slightly lighter, and any spot a previous owner touched up with a different batch will show once the film is gone. Second, chalked paint is failing paint. A soft wash is the correct prep if you are painting this year, but it is not a substitute for painting. We put that on the estimate rather than take the job and let you be surprised on completion day.
House washing is $0.18 per square foot on a soft-wash setting, meaning low pressure with the solution doing the work instead of a turbo nozzle doing damage. On vinyl we keep the wand angled down so water is not driven up behind the courses. On painted lap we stay off loose and peeling edges. On brick and block we back off for the mortar, which on a 1950s house is softer than the brick and will wash out if you hit it hard. Plants get rinsed before and after, and we keep solution out of window wells. Memberships come Monthly or Quarterly with no contract, every job carries our 7-Day Rain Guarantee, and we usually have same-day or next-day slots open on the Bench. Locally owned, fully insured, 4.9 stars across 115+ Google reviews. Call (208) 453-6760.
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Soft washing at low pressure will not strip sound paint. It will take off paint that was already failing, and on a house this age there is usually some. We test an inconspicuous section first, keep the wand off cut edges and peeling seams, and stop and show you if we find an area where the film is lifting. If most of the wall is chalked or flaking, we will tell you it is a paint job, not a wash job.
Sometimes. If it is surface mineral crust and dirt sitting on top of the paint or vinyl, a soft wash plus a rinse-aid treatment takes most of it. If the iron has soaked into the paint film or into porous block, it needs a dedicated acid-based stain treatment, and even then old etch may only lighten. We quote that separately so you are not paying for a house wash and expecting a stain job. Re-aiming those heads keeps it from coming straight back.
Yes, it is included in the square footage. We drop the pressure for it, because the lime mortar on a 1950s Hillcrest house is softer than the brick and a tight nozzle will cut the joints out. Split-face block is more porous than it looks and holds algae in the texture, so it usually gets more dwell time than the siding above it. If we see joints already crumbling, we point them out before we wash rather than after.
Once a year is right for most of these houses. If your north wall sits under mature trees, the green film starts showing again around eighteen months after a soft wash, so an annual spring visit stays ahead of it. If your house is in full sun with no canopy and your sprinklers are aimed away from the walls, you can often go two years. We would rather tell you to wait than sell you a wash you do not need yet.
Not with the way we run it. Plants get wet down before we start, which stops the solution from soaking in, and we rinse everything again when the wall is done. Junipers and arborvitae planted tight against the wall in 1962 are the usual issue on these lots, since we have to work around them and they hide the siding behind them. Tell us at booking if there is anything you do not want us pushing through and we will work it from the side.
Yes, and the order matters. We wash the house first, then clean the glass, so overspray and runoff off the siding do not end up drying on windows we already did. Window work is 100% pure deionized water with no soap, which is what keeps old single-pane aluminum units spot-free. We quote both together. Give us the address and rough square footage at (208) 453-6760 and we will price it on the phone.
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