The most common thing we are called about on Arroyo Vista concrete is not dirt. It is the orange-brown streaking that appears where sprinklers hit the driveway, and it comes from iron dissolved in the untreated Boise-Kuna Irrigation District canal water that feeds every lot in this subdivision.
Untreated canal water carries dissolved iron along with its silt and mineral. When sprinkler overspray lands on concrete and evaporates, the iron oxidises and bonds into the pores of the slab, which is why the resulting orange staining does not lift with a surface clean at any pressure. It is a chemical stain inside the concrete rather than a deposit on top of it, and removing it needs a rust-specific treatment applied and dwelled before rinsing. Pressure alone on a rust stain just cleans the dirt off a stain and leaves the stain.
On an open driveway we use a rotating surface cleaner rather than a wand, because a wand leaves stripes. Wand cleaning depends on an operator holding a consistent distance, angle and speed across an entire slab, and no one does that perfectly, so you get the faint zebra pattern you see on a lot of cheaply cleaned driveways. A surface cleaner holds the nozzles at fixed height and spacing and overlaps its own path. The wand comes out for edges, steps and tight corners where the surface cleaner will not fit.
Arroyo Vista lots run 0.15 to 0.22 acres, so driveways here are conventional two and three-car aprons rather than the sprawling flatwork on Kuna's acreage lots. Pressure washing is $0.20 per square foot, measured on actual area, which puts a typical Arroyo Vista driveway and front walk into a genuinely modest number. Adding the back patio at the same visit costs little extra in setup and is usually worth doing together rather than as two trips.
Homes on the western rows back onto working ground, and coarse agricultural soil gets walked and driven into concrete where it acts as an abrasive, grinding fine particulate deep into the surface pores over time. That is why a Arroyo Vista driveway can look permanently grey rather than merely dusty. It does come out, but it wants a proper surface clean rather than a rinse, because the material is in the pores rather than on the face.
Pressure washing at $0.20 per square foot is for concrete, pavers, brick flatwork and similar hard surfaces, where high pressure is genuinely the right tool. It is not for your siding. High pressure on vinyl lap drives water upward behind the laps into the wall assembly where it cannot dry, and that surfaces as a problem a year later. Siding is house washing, a soft wash at $0.18 per square foot. We quote the two separately so it is clear which surface is getting which.
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Rust, from iron dissolved in the untreated canal water feeding your sprinklers. When overspray evaporates on concrete the iron oxidises and bonds into the pores, so it is a chemical stain inside the slab rather than dirt on top. Pressure alone will not lift it.
Usually a great deal of it, yes, with a rust-specific treatment applied and given dwell time before rinsing. What pressure alone does is clean the dirt off the stain and leave the stain, which is why people think their driveway is permanently marked when it often is not.
Wand cleaning. A wand depends on the operator holding a consistent distance, angle and speed across a whole slab, which nobody does perfectly, so you get a zebra pattern. We use a rotating surface cleaner on open flatwork, which holds fixed height and spacing and overlaps its own path.
Pressure washing is $0.20 per square foot of actual area, and on 0.15 to 0.22 acre lots the driveways here are conventional two and three-car aprons, so it is a modest number. Adding the back patio at the same visit costs little extra in setup.
Coarse field soil driven and walked into the surface acts as an abrasive and grinds fine particulate deep into the concrete pores, especially on the western rows backing onto farmland. It does come out, but it needs a proper surface clean rather than a rinse.
We would not use pressure on siding. High pressure on vinyl lap drives water behind the laps into the wall assembly where it cannot dry. Siding is a soft wash at $0.18 per square foot, quoted separately from the $0.20 flatwork.
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