Pressure Washing in Fort Worth
Your driveway isn't grey. It's tan concrete under years of dust, tire film, and the dark growth that colonizes the shaded north edge of the slab. Add the orange fan-shaped stains where an irrigation well throws iron onto the apron, and the front of the house reads dirty from the street before anyone reaches the door. We take that off hardscape with a rotary surface cleaner, a chlorine mix for the growth, and oxalic acid for the rust.
How we do it
Concrete gets cleaned in two stages, chemical first, mechanical second. We pre-treat the slab with a sodium hypochlorite blend cut with surfactant, mixed stronger than a house wash, so it clings and dwells instead of running to the low spot. That kills the algae and mildew living down in the pores. A bare water pass knocks the color off the top and leaves the growth behind, which is why a water-only driveway greens back over in a few months.
Then we run a 16-inch rotary surface cleaner off a 4 GPM machine at 3,000 to 3,500 PSI. Head size has to match flow, roughly four to five inches of cleaning path per GPM, so 4 GPM drives a 16-inch head properly. Put a wider head on the same pump and each pass cleans weaker. Speed matters as much as the head: move too fast and the outer edge of each pass gets less dwell than the middle, which is what leaves stripes. Inside the housing, one bar spins with a nozzle on each end. The casters set the deck height and the skirt keeps the spray contained, so you get one even sheet of clean instead of the arcs a hand wand leaves. Flow does most of the work here, not pressure.
Stains get treated individually before that pass. Oil and tire rubber get a sodium hydroxide degreaser and time to break down. Rust from irrigation water gets oxalic acid. Never chlorine on rust. Chlorine oxidizes the iron further, darkens the stain, and makes it harder to pull later. Acid and chlorine also never go down together on the same wet slab. Edges, expansion joints, and the transition up to brick get detailed by hand with a 25-degree tip.
Some surfaces run lower. Pavers get reduced pressure, because a surface cleaner at full power strips the joint sand and the field starts shifting. Stamped and integrally colored concrete runs lower still, to clean the sealer rather than strip it. Where growth is heavy we put a light post-treatment down after the wash so it takes longer to come back. We soak the planting beds before and after so any runoff is diluted, and degreaser water gets contained instead of chased into the storm drain, which in Fort Worth runs to the Trinity. In July we wash early, because sodium hypochlorite dries off a hot slab before it can dwell, and by afternoon that concrete is hot enough to do it.
The visit, step by step
- 1
Read the stains before touching anything
Rust, oil, tannin from oak drop, and organic growth all look like dark blotches and all take a different chemical. Chlorine on rust makes it worse. Tannin wants oxalic acid or a percarbonate, not bleach. We identify each one first and mark what gets pre-treated separately.
- 2
Pre-treat and let it dwell
A sodium hypochlorite and surfactant mix goes down across the slab to kill algae and mildew in the pores. Degreaser goes on oil and tire rubber. Everything sits long enough to work and gets kept wet, and none of it goes down on concrete baking in afternoon sun, because it dries before it can do anything.
- 3
Surface cleaner pass with overlap
A 16-inch rotary cleaner at 3,000 to 3,500 PSI off a 4 GPM machine, walked at a steady pace with each pass overlapping the last by a few inches. Skip the overlap and you get the faint striping that shows up the moment the slab dries.
- 4
Hand-detail the edges and joints
The surface cleaner can't reach the last inch against the garage apron, the expansion joints, or the transition up to brick and stone. Those get a 25-degree fan tip by hand so the border matches the field.
- 5
Rinse, then check it dry
Full rinse pushed away from planting beds and off the walkway. Concrete lies to you when it's wet, so we walk it once it dries and go back over anything that came up uneven.
- 6
Re-sand paver joints on a dry return
Polymeric sand only sets if it goes into dry joints on a dry surface. Sweep it into a wet joint and it hazes the paver faces and never hardens. So pavers get washed one day and re-sanded on a return trip, once the joints have dried out.
Why it matters here
Concrete is porous, and in this climate that works against you twice.
Algae and mildew in the pores hold water. The shaded run of a Keller driveway stays damp for days after a storm and gets slick underfoot. That saturation also matters on the handful of hard freezes we get, because saturated concrete is what freezes badly and pops the top layer. Growth on the slab isn't the whole story on spalling, a weak surface finish and deicing salt do more, but the water it traps is the part you can actually take off.
Then there's iron. If your irrigation runs off a well, which is still common on the bigger lots out toward Aledo and Parker County, the overspray that hits your driveway and the base of your brick carries dissolved iron. It soaks into the pores, oxidizes there, and every wet and dry cycle carries a little more in a little deeper. Sun isn't driving it. Water is. Caught in a season or two, oxalic acid pulls it clean. Left for five years, it lightens a long way but the concrete under it has changed color. Fort Worth city water is a different problem. It's treated reservoir water, hard but low in iron, so it leaves white calcium film on brick and glass rather than orange.
Oil is the same story in reverse. It wicks down through the slab, and once it's below the depth a surface cleaner reaches, no amount of pressure gets it back. That's the difference between concrete you maintain and concrete you eventually replace.
Signs it's time
- ✦A dark green or black film on the shaded side of the driveway that's slick underfoot for a day or two after rain
- ✦Orange fan-shaped stains spraying out from a sprinkler head across the concrete or up the bottom course of brick
- ✦A clean rectangle where a planter or doormat has been sitting, noticeably lighter than everything around it
- ✦Black lines in the mortar joints of a flagstone patio, or dark growth filling the seams between pavers
- ✦Yellow-green pollen crust on the patio and pool deck every March and April that a garden hose smears instead of removing
- ✦Dark tire tracks at the top of the drive that don't lift with soap and a brush
What it costs
One-time pressure washing starts at $250, which covers a typical driveway and walkway. Larger runs of concrete, or a slab that needs dedicated stain work on rust and oil, price up toward $350. Square footage and stain work are the two things that move it. On the Homestead Plan it's included twice a year, in the January driveway wash and the July concrete refresh, with no charge beyond your monthly plan price of $149 to $449 depending on home size.
Questions
What's the difference between pressure washing and soft washing? Do I need both?
Different jobs, different tools. Pressure washing is mechanical, high pressure on hard surfaces that can take it: concrete driveways, walkways, patios, pool decks. Soft washing runs around garden-hose pressure and lets chemistry do the cleaning, which is what siding, stucco, painted trim, and shingles require. Point a surface cleaner at your siding and you drive water behind it. Most homes here need both, on different surfaces, which is why they're separate services on the plan.
Will pressure washing damage my concrete, pavers, or stamped patio?
Sound concrete handles it fine at the pressure we run. Three cases we throttle down for. Stamped and integrally colored concrete has a sealer we clean rather than strip, so it goes lower and slower. Pavers get reduced pressure and fresh joint sand on a dry return, because full power blasts the sand out and the field starts shifting. And the older brick and lime mortar on the historic bungalows around Fairmount and Magnolia is soft enough that high pressure will chew the mortar joints out, so anything touching that masonry is hand work at low pressure.
Can you actually get the orange sprinkler stains off my driveway?
Usually, yes. Orange from irrigation is the most common concrete stain in this part of Texas, and it's a well-water problem far more than a city-water one. That's iron that soaked into the pores with the water and oxidized there. It comes out with oxalic acid, not chlorine. Chlorine oxidizes the iron further and darkens the stain, so a slab somebody already hit with bleach is harder to clean than one nobody touched. Fresh staining lifts close to completely. Rust that's been soaking in for several summers lightens a long way, but the concrete under it has changed color, so plan on better rather than gone.
How often should concrete be washed, and is it in the Homestead Plan?
Twice a year keeps it ahead of the growth, and that's the schedule it's on in the Homestead Plan. January is the driveway and walkway wash. July is the concrete refresh for the patio and pool deck. Rust and hard-water stain work rides along with both of those visits. Off the plan, the honest answer is the same twice-a-year rhythm, just booked one job at a time and paid for at each visit.