Exterior home cleaning
in Fort Worth.
Fort Worth has houses that went up before 1900 and houses finished last spring, sometimes fifteen minutes apart. A painted wood bungalow on the near south side and a brick two-story off Bryant Irvin want opposite things from a pressure washer. On the old ones, what ruins a house isn't the dirt, it's the pressure.
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Why Fort Worth homes need regular care
On the near south side the job is restraint. Walk Fairmount and a lot of what you're looking at is still the original material. Painted wood siding, single-pane sash set in wood, beadboard porch ceilings, brick laid in soft lime mortar you can scratch with a key. None of it is hard, and that's the whole point. Modern siding is built to shrug off a wand. Century-old siding splits along the grain, and paint that's been layered on since before anyone alive owned the house comes off in sheets. Pre-war brick is softer than what goes up today, and the mortar between it is softer than the brick on purpose, because the joint is the part that's supposed to move. Blow that out and you haven't cleaned the wall, you've opened it. Then there's the geometry. The houses sit close to the street and close to each other, the porches are deep and shaded, and a lot of the blocks have an alley running behind. You don't find pre-war housing at this scale out in the newer suburbs. Cleaning it is a different trade than cleaning a subdivision, and running the same machine setting on both is how houses get hurt.
The houses here
Fairmount is bungalows and foursquares in painted wood, deep front porches, narrow lots, wood floors over a crawlspace. Ryan Place is the same era at a larger scale and in harder material, brick and stucco set well back behind deep front lawns. Out Camp Bowie, Arlington Heights runs to 1920s and 30s bungalows and English cottage styles, some frame, some brick, along a boulevard that's still paved in brick. Rivercrest sits beside it with bigger houses, stone, tile roofs and older trees. Around TCU, Bluebonnet Hills is mostly single story, low brick cottages with steep gables on small lots. Overton Park and Tanglewood are the wide-lot version, brick, long low rooflines, heavy canopy over the street. Then the calendar jumps. Mira Vista, off Bryant Irvin behind a gate, is stucco and stone with tile roofs, two stories, long drives and a lot of wall twenty feet up. Same city, same truck, opposite ends of the dial.
What the ground does
The porches are the first thing you notice. They're deep, the roof keeps the floor in shade most of the day, and a painted porch floor in that much shade goes dark long before the walls do. The windows are single pane in wood sash, and the putty holding the glass has gone hard and cracked, so water pushed at a window like that goes past the glass into the frame instead of off it. Underneath, a lot of these houses sit on pier and beam, which means an open gap at ground level behind lattice or brick skirting, and anything driven at the base of a wall ends up under the floor. Gutters are usually a later addition, hung off fascia and rafter tails far older than the gutter itself. The street trees are big and close in, so roofs and gutters stay loaded and north walls stay damp. And the lots are tight. On a lot of these blocks the neighbor's wall is close enough that their windows, their car and their plants are all inside rinse range, so containing water and cleaner is part of the work, not a courtesy.
Original painted wood siding that splits if you push it
Soft mortar joints in old brick that wash out before the stain does
Single-pane sash where the glazing putty has cracked
Deep shaded porch floors and beadboard ceilings that hold mildew
True across North Texas
Hard water
It dries to a white film on glass and brick, and sprinkler overspray puts it there faster than weather does.
Two leaf drops
Live oaks hold last year's leaves through winter and drop them in spring. Cedar elm and pecan come down in November. Gutters fill twice.
Clay that moves
It swells wet and shrinks dry. A gutter overflowing at the same corner every storm is watering the ground your foundation sits on.
What we clean in Fort Worth
The whole exterior, handled.
Pressure Washing
Driveways, walkways, and patios stripped of stains and grime.
House Soft Wash
Siding, brick, and stucco rinsed clean. No algae, no pressure damage.
Gutter Cleaning
Oak litter cleared, downspouts flushed, fascia and foundation protected.
Window Cleaning
Hard-water spotting and pollen film gone. Glass you forget is there.
Roof Soft Wash
Black algae streaks removed and treated, extending shingle life.
The Homestead Plan
One plan. Your whole year, handled.
Instead of tracking down a different company every time something needs doing, you hand the whole exterior to one person. Twelve focused visits a year. Pressure washing, gutters, windows, soft washing, and roof treatment, rotated through the calendar so small problems get caught before they turn into expensive repairs. Someone who knows your home, locked-in pricing, photos each time. And yes, it costs less than booking piece by piece.
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Common questions
Fort Worth exterior cleaning
Our Fairmount house still has its original wood siding. Will washing hurt it?+
Not the way we do it, and the difference is pressure. Old siding is thin, it's been painted many times over, and it splits along the grain when a wand gets pushed into it. So the wall gets a cleaner, time to sit, and a rinse closer to a garden hose than a machine. Nobody can tell you what's in the bottom layers of paint on a house that old, which is one more reason not to blast it into the flower beds. If we find boards already split or paint lifting on its own, we stop at those spots and tell you, because rinsing them just drives water behind the siding.
The shaded side of our old brick has gone dark and the mortar looks chalky. Can it be cleaned?+
Usually yes, carefully. Sometimes the honest answer is no. Brick that old is softer than what goes up today, and the mortar is softer than the brick because the joint is the part that gives. High pressure takes the joint out faster than it takes the stain off. So it's cleaner, dwell time, low pressure and plenty of rinse water. Here's the check we run first. If you rub a joint and get sand on your thumb, or the joints are already set back behind the face of the brick, that's masonry repair, not cleaning. We'll say so and stop rather than wash your wall out a spoonful at a time.
Our porch floor is painted and always in shade. It's black. Does it have to be stripped and repainted?+
No. Most of that black is sitting on the paint, not in it, and it comes off with a cleaner and dwell time instead of force. A wand will take the black off and the paint with it, and then you're paying for a repaint you didn't plan on. Same story for the beadboard ceiling and the columns. Expect it to come back, because the cause is the shade and the shade isn't going anywhere. A porch like that does better on a regular visit than on one hard cleaning a year.
Our lots are narrow and the neighbor's house is maybe eight feet away. How do you keep spray off their side?+
By working out the side yard before anything gets turned on. On a tight lot their windows, their car, their plants and their patio furniture are all within reach, so we work that wall from the direction that carries spray back toward your house, wet down and cover whatever's in line, and use less water at lower pressure than an open lot would need. If there's a car parked in the drive next door, we knock, or we start on another elevation and come back. That's cheaper than a conversation about somebody else's paint.
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