Cleaning outside of a house and a wall tips please

[Welshyyyyy]

Can I ask for some advice please, I've been asked if I can do a house and wall outside clean, I've been sent some photos of the work and it looks a nice job but I'm not sure how to tackle it. They've asked if I can pressure wash it (but I haven't got a "decent" pressure washer yet (thinking of buying one shortly) so that's probably out for this job. But not sure whether pressure washing would be the best option anyway (I certainly don't fancy getting on a ladder with a pw to get up to the top)
Looking at the pictures is this something that could be done with a wf pole with a weak hypo mix?
I did a small patio this afternoon with hypo (no outside tap) so I just used some barrels of water that I had in the van and with a bit of scrubbing it came up a treat. Several barrels of water needed to rinse it though!
Could I do the same for this house/I was thinking maybe doing a small test on the wall first to see how it comes up, or is this one of those jobs that needs that Ionic foam stuff?
As you can tell I haven't done one of these before...?
 

 

[Part Timer]

@Pjj will tell you, plenty of water plenty of hypo a little scrub and then plenty more water I think. His version will be a bit more professional ?

 

[Pjj]

Softwash  it , 4-1 mix and a bit of surfactant will help , should come up very well , if you want a more detailed explanation of how to do it just let me know . 

 

[Welshyyyyy]

Thanks guys, yes I think a day of scrub scrub rinse rinse repeat and it will probably come up as new

I haven't been there yet so can't tell how big the wall is, it looks very long and the guy wants an idea of cost from the photos, I'm thinking approx £250, sound about right?

 

[Pjj]

Thanks guys, yes I think a day of scrub scrub rinse rinse repeat and it will probably come up as new

I haven't been there yet so can't tell how big the wall is, it looks very long and the guy wants an idea of cost from the photos, I'm thinking approx £250, sound about right?

If you are doing the house and the garden walls we would be in the region of £600-800 , material costs will be around £100 unless you are experienced in softwashing I doubt you will do that in a day unless there are two of you , £250 is way underpriced you will regret taking it on at that price , it’s hard work scrubbing that amount of area the mid terraced one in the pictures was £300 just to give you an idear of pricing , and we do loads like this and much bigger .

 

[Welshyyyyy]

Thanks, those houses look like new!

I'll go back with a higher price than I was thinking, I don't think I can go to what you suggest (my cheap mindset needs a slap ?) but I'll add a couple of hundred onto what I said and see what he says.

The wall might be an option for pressure washing so it may not be all scrubbing, at the moment I'm quoting probably way too low on all my jobs, something I need to address

 

[Pjj]

Thanks, those houses look like new!

I'll go back with a higher price than I was thinking, I don't think I can go to what you suggest (my cheap mindset needs a slap ?) but I'll add a couple of hundred onto what I said and see what he says.

The wall might be an option for pressure washing so it may not be all scrubbing, at the moment I'm quoting probably way too low on all my jobs, something I need to address

The picture quality isn’t great but it looks like black and red algi growth to me , just pressing washing won’t kill it , it will look clean fir a short time but will re colonise quickly bit like when you cut the grass it will re grow quickly , you need to kill the algi and bacteria the only way to do this is with hypo or a biocide hypo will give you instant clean bio will take longer to work , most customers want tk see a clean wall when they get back at the end of the day .  

 

[Welshyyyyy]

Thanks PJJ, I'm going there this afternoon and my plan is to use a little hypo on a small patch to show them what the while house will look like, and do the work tomorrow if they like what they see, which they obviously will ?

Thanks, those houses look like new!

I'll go back with a higher price than I was thinking, I don't think I can go to what you suggest (my cheap mindset needs a slap ?) but I'll add a couple of hundred onto what I said and see what he says.

The wall might be an option for pressure washing so it may not be all scrubbing, at the moment I'm quoting probably way too low on all my jobs, something I need to address

 

[Welshyyyyy]

So I went to have a look at this house earlier, nice house, nice people, the outside walls look awful.
I had a look at a small patch on the side of the garage that isn't too visible and first of all gave it a gentle brush (soft brushes) with water to see what would happen. The red stain turned bright orange
and at first glance it looks like the original render has been painted/sprayed over and is wearing off and what you can see is the original render, however doing a bit of googling I found a few old forums that mention the likely cause...."On properties that suffer from red, brown or orange staining on either rendered, pebble dashed, Krend or slap dashing is due to iron ore pigment in the sand getting wet due to water ingress which then causes them to rust and bleed out through to the surface causing the staining"
One forum post that I found says "Sodium Hypochlorite will get rid of it, spray it on neat over the whole wall with a pump sprayer and power wash it the next day. I do it on my house every few years, brings it up like new. After you spray the stuff on the red marks will get even redder even to a luminous orange but don't worry about that it will be gone after a couple of hrs"

I don't particularly want to try this method in case I turn the whole house orange !  but potentially the bit that I cleaned earlier with hypo, that turned orange, what's the likelihood of it looking like new if I go back tomorrow and wash it off?!

A couple more pictures below, the first two are after a quick wash and the last pic is the before pic

Cheers

 

[Mx19]

Without trying to hijack the thread too much (sorry @Welshyyyyy) I was just wondering if anyone could give me some tips on pricing the softwashing of this place. It's a customers house, who I hugely underpriced in the first place but I put up with her due to the amount of referrals she gets me haha! 
I was thinking 2 days (so 1 day between 2 of us) plus a bit for materials so thinking somewhere in the region of £450-550, what does everyone think? it's just the walls shown that need cleaning.

I'm thinking just a soft wash with Hypo as recommended above? Also any recommendations on Hypo?

Cheers

Max

 

[Pjj]

Price wise depends on what the customer is prepared to pay and how you sell the service , we would be 550-700 aprox . We buy hyponfrom a farm supply shop £12 fir 20 ltr 19% strength , some on hear use Benz lightning clean casts around £65 and comes from Ireland , if mixing your own get some surfactant from bonnymans and just add 300 mm to a drum of hypo , it’s not just a case of spraying hypo everywhere it will need applying let it dwell then re apply and give it a scrub with wfp then rinse with garden hose . 

 

[Welshyyyyy]

No worries on the hijacking Max ?

I saw some replies and thought someone had a good answer to my ? wall ?

 

[Pjj]

No worries on the hijacking Max ?

I saw some replies and thought someone had a good answer to my ? wall ?

If the walls all’s have been painted over red green and black algi there is very little you can do as it will grow through the paint , we have a large hotel that we do the windows on and they asked us to softwash the place after a close inspection and a trial patch the job could not be done , as it was coming through the paint layers , great shame as it was a very expensive job lost , but if we had tried to do it it would have ended in an unhappy customer and us out of pocket as we couldn’t achieve the required results , so before saying you can do a job it just goes to show that a careful look is needed tk make sure that the growth is on the surface and not coming through the paint from underneath 

 

[scottish cleaning service]

If the walls all’s have been painted over red green and black algi there is very little you can do as it will grow through the paint , we have a large hotel that we do the windows on and they asked us to softwash the place after a close inspection and a trial patch the job could not be done , as it was coming through the paint layers , great shame as it was a very expensive job lost , but if we had tried to do it it would have ended in an unhappy customer and us out of pocket as we couldn’t achieve the required results , so before saying you can do a job it just goes to show that a careful look is needed tk make sure that the growth is on the surface and not coming through the paint from underneath 

Once painted, all one can do is keep painting it which will cover it up for a year or two.

 

[Iron Giant]

If the walls all’s have been painted over red green and black algi there is very little you can do as it will grow through the paint , we have a large hotel that we do the windows on and they asked us to softwash the place after a close inspection and a trial patch the job could not be done , as it was coming through the paint layers , great shame as it was a very expensive job lost , but if we had tried to do it it would have ended in an unhappy customer and us out of pocket as we couldn’t achieve the required results , so before saying you can do a job it just goes to show that a careful look is needed tk make sure that the growth is on the surface and not coming through the paint from underneath 

This is what some people have had done local to me, they have white render and have paid a painter to paint over it, only hiding the issue of the black mould, there is a good number of houses that could do with soft washing and no one anywhere near me offers this service