How pressure washing is priced

The floor in this trade is set by people who have not costed their own work. A machine, a truck and a trailer put you in business, and there is no national license for exterior cleaning. So the $99 driveway you keep getting compared to is a guess, not a price: nothing in it covers drive time or the pump. You cannot out-cheap a guess. Price so your number survives the comparison.

Whether your state wants a license turns on whether it counts washing as construction work, and states genuinely split. Oregon's CCB lists "power and pressure washing for the purpose of cleaning (siding, sidewalks, etc.)" among work needing no license — but painting does need one, so a wash sold as prep inside a paint job is a separate question. California runs the other way: its C-61/D-38 "Sand and Water Blasting" classification covers using compressed air with abrasives or water to clean or prepare surfaces. Where the board treats your work as contracting, the minor-work exemption has capped unlicensed jobs at $1,000 since January 1, 2025, and only if no permit is needed and you hire nobody to help. Plenty of cities and counties want a local business license or tax registration on top. Ask your state board what your work counts as before assuming you are exempt.

Cost out one driveway before you argue about price

An 800-square-foot concrete driveway, 15 miles away, light oil staining. Every figure below is illustrative, not a benchmark.

The $99 bid is under water on labor alone. And $150.50 is only cost: no liability premium, no truck payment, no self-employment tax, no profit. Those live in the burdened rate — your hourly cost with overhead in it — which contractor hourly rate builds.

Two of those lines have to be yours. Pace tracks flow rate, so time your own first jobs: a 4 GPM machine moves far less concrete per hour than an 8 GPM rig. And keep the vehicle line near the current IRS standard mileage rate.

The line most operators miss is the equipment reserve: rig replacement cost plus expected repairs, divided by the engine hours you expect from the rig. A self-built 4 GPM trailer and a commercial hot-water rig are thousands apart, and a consumer direct-drive pump does not last like a commercial belt-drive one, so use the manufacturer's rating and your own service history. The $4,000 over 800 hours behind the $5 above is arithmetic, not a benchmark: pumps, hoses, tips and bearings are consumables on a slow timer.

Pressure and soft washing are two different products

Blasting concrete is mechanical: high pressure, a surface cleaner, and the risk is etching. Soft washing is chemical: dilute sodium hypochlorite and surfactant at low pressure, left to dwell, then rinsed. The risk is plants, pets and painted trim.

On an asphalt shingle roof this is not a preference. The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association tells you flatly not to use a power washer, or a brush or broom, to clean algae from shingles: high-pressure systems "are likely to damage asphalt roofing and should not be used to remove algae or for any other purpose." Their method is a bleach-and-water solution gently dispersed, left 15 to 20 minutes, then rinsed with low-pressure water — the friction of scrubbing or blasting is what loosens granules. Anything else risks the homeowner's shingle warranty and puts the granule loss on your invoice. Read the manufacturer's own instructions before you quote a roof.

Name the method on the quote. "Soft wash, low pressure, roof" stops the customer comparing your bid to a high-pressure one.

Do not price soft washing off somebody's per-square-foot table. Consumer estimate sites show anything from roughly $0.08 to $1.00 a square foot, and a "house wash square foot" may mean wall area, floor area or footprint. A spread that wide means there is no national number to pick from the middle of. Price each surface off your own cost sheet, then check what your last ten jobs earned per hour on site.

Match the unit to how the work scales

Flat wins on small residential work: homeowners want one number, and measuring to reach $260 burns the time you saved. Per square foot wins once a wrong guess costs a half-day. Either way, set a minimum service call fee that covers loading, driving and setup — the jobs that lose money here are small rather than cheap.

The jobs worth declining

• Pre-1978 painted exteriors. The EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule covers paid work that disturbs painted surfaces in housing and child-occupied facilities built before 1978, with a minor-repair exemption for jobs disturbing 20 square feet or less on the exterior. Washing hard enough to remove old paint can put you inside it, and a firm doing covered work has to be EPA-certified with a certified renovator assigned. Fifteen states and one tribe run their own authorized programs instead of the federal one. Check the EPA page and your state program first.
• Soft or eroded mortar. Mortar is softer than the brick around it, and pressure that leaves the brick alone can wash out joints. Brick manufacturers commonly advise staying well below the pressures a driveway takes. If the joints are already sandy, that is a repointing job somebody else should quote first.
• Chalking siding, spalling concrete, failed sealer. You lift what is already loose, and the customer blames the wash for a failure he is seeing for the first time. Put it in writing or walk.

Ask where the wash water goes before you quote, especially on commercial work. Under the Clean Water Act, a city that holds a municipal stormwater permit must adopt and enforce an ordinance banning non-stormwater discharges into the storm drain, and washwater carrying detergent, oil, grease or paint chips is exactly what it is aimed at. The rules are local: some allow discharge to landscaping where the water infiltrates and carries no sheen, some make you block the drain and recover the water for the sanitary sewer, which the sewer authority may want to pre-approve.

Enforcement is usually a local citation, but a discharge that reaches waters of the United States is a federal matter, and the penalties there are not small. Read your city's guidance for mobile cleaners before the bid, and put the containment, recovery and disposal it requires on the quote.

Quoting from your own numbers

Keep each unit as its own priced service, so the number the customer sees is the one you costed. If those prices already sit in a spreadsheet, upload it to DoneQuote and it reads the services and units into your catalog.

Carry these into the next quote

• Cost one real job end to end, drive time included, before you compare yourself to anyone's price.
• Amortize the machine per engine hour: the pump is a consumable, not an asset.
• Name the method, price off your own cost sheet, and never put high pressure on asphalt shingles.