Most Lusk District houses show the same tell: a chalky white band along the bottom three feet of siding where the sprinklers hit, and a green shaded strip on the north wall. Painted lap wood on the older bungalows, vinyl on the rentals near Broadway. Different siding, same two problems.
Walk the side streets off Lusk and you get pre-war bungalows and small cottages: painted lap siding, wood shingle in some gables, and a few sand-float stucco jobs from the same era. Closer to Broadway and University the stock changes to rentals and low-rise apartment buildings, most re-sided in vinyl over the last thirty years, plus hardie on the newer infill. That matters, because the three fail differently. Vinyl holds algae down in its grain texture and chalks on the sun side. Painted wood loses its paint film and lets water sit in the seams. Stucco is porous enough that dirt settles into the texture and will not lift with a rinse alone. We set the mix and the pressure by what is actually on the wall, not by the address.
The bottom two or three feet of a house in this neighborhood tells you exactly what the sprinklers are doing. Boise water is hard, and pressurized irrigation off the valley ditch system carries silt and iron on top of that. A fixed head aimed at the wall leaves a white mineral crust; ditch water often leaves a rust-orange stain instead. Those are two different problems. The white mineral film comes off with the right cleaner and dwell time under a soft rinse. Iron is a chemical stain, not dirt, and it needs an oxalic treatment. Hitting it harder with a pressure washer only chews paint off wood and leaves wand marks in vinyl. Turn those heads down and away after we wash, or the band comes back by August.
North-facing walls, anything under a deep eave, and anything shaded by a mature street tree stay damp long enough to grow algae. That green-black film is the single most common thing we wash off around here, and it comes off easily with a soft-wash mix and a low-pressure rinse. South and west walls have the opposite problem. Years of Boise sun break the surface of the paint or the vinyl down into a fine chalk that comes off on your hand. Washing removes the loose chalk and the dirt bound up in it, so the wall reads cleaner and lighter. It does not restore the color. If the chalk is thick enough to hold a fingerprint, that siding is asking for paint, and we would rather say so before you pay us.
House washing here is soft washing, not pressure washing. Siding gets clean from the cleaning solution and dwell time, not from force, and force is what drives water behind lap boards, cracks old glazing, and lifts paint on a 1930s bungalow. We apply at low pressure, let it work, then rinse. On painted wood we keep the wand off the seams and work down the wall so nothing is pushed uphill under the laps. Plants get pre-wet and rinsed after. What will not come out with a wash alone: iron staining without a separate treatment, artillery fungus specks thrown up out of bark mulch, heavy oxidation, and anything soaked into bare unsealed wood. We call those out during the walk-around, not after you have paid.
House washing runs $0.18 per square foot of washable wall, meaning the wall area we actually spray, not the floor square footage on your tax record. A single-story bungalow on these blocks usually lands well under a two-story with a walkout, where more of the wall sits up high and takes longer to reach. Reflekt is fully insured and locally owned, started in 2025 by Hunter Stevens and Ethan Seusy, with 115+ Google reviews at 4.9 stars. Same-day and next-day slots open up regularly. Monthly and quarterly memberships have no contract, which for a shaded north wall that greens up every spring beats waiting until it looks bad. Every wash carries our 7-Day Rain Guarantee. Call (208) 453-6760 for a number on your house.
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Usually, yes. The white band at the bottom of the wall is hard-water mineral left behind when spray dries on the siding, and it comes off with the right cleaner and enough dwell time. If the stain is rust-orange instead of white, that is iron from ditch water and it needs a separate oxalic treatment, which we quote separately. Adjust the heads afterward or the band returns within a season.
Not the way we do it. Soft washing runs at garden-hose-level pressure, so the cleaner does the work instead of the water. We work down the wall rather than up, which keeps water from being forced behind the laps, and we stay off the seams and any spot where the paint is already lifting. If the paint film has failed and is peeling, washing will take those loose flakes with it. We will point that out before we start.
Not permanently. Algae grows because that wall stays damp, and short of removing the shade nothing changes that. What we can do is knock it back to bare siding and keep it from getting established again. Most Lusk District homeowners with a heavily shaded north or east wall end up on a quarterly or annual rhythm, which is far less work than letting three years of growth set in.
We wash stucco. Older sand-float stucco in this neighborhood needs low pressure and patience, because dirt settles down into the texture and a fast rinse just moves it around. We flood the wall with cleaner, let it sit, then rinse thoroughly. Pressure high enough to blast stucco clean is also high enough to open hairline cracks and drive water into the wall, so we do not use it.
Run your palm down a shaded wall. If it comes back gray-green, there is algae worth removing. If it comes back with fine white powder on the sunny side, that is chalking paint or oxidized vinyl. If your hand comes back clean and the siding just looks slightly dull from dust, wait. Dust rinses off in a spring storm on its own and washing it is money you do not need to spend.
Yes, and the order matters. We wash the house first and clean the glass afterward with our deionized water system, because rinse water running down a wall carries dirt onto windows that were just done. Booking them together on the same visit is the cleanest result and one trip instead of two. Both are covered by the 7-Day Rain Guarantee.
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