Protecting plants when pressure washing is a concentration problem, and every step that actually works is a way of lowering the concentration of cleaning solution that reaches a leaf or a root. The jet is the minor actor here. A 40-degree fan that catches a hosta leaf will tear it, and that is cosmetic damage
Cleaning window screens is a removal job first and a washing job second: the panel comes off the window, gets supported from behind, and is washed with dish soap, a soft brush and a garden hose — and there is no pressure-washer setting that belongs within arm’s reach of one. Nobody has ever wrecked a
Cleaning artificial turf is a brushing job with a rinse attached, and not a pressure job at all — the trade body that writes the maintenance guidelines for these surfaces lists “high pressure sprays exceeding 500 psi” among the things that damage synthetic turf. That is lower than the soap setting on most machines. It
Cleaning gutter guards is still gutter cleaning — the debris has simply moved from inside the trough to the top of the cover, where it is harder to reach and where it sheds water over the front edge instead of into the gutter. That is the honest version of the sales pitch, and it is
Cleaning pool deck surfaces is the only flatwork job on your property where the cleaner has to be safe for two things at once — the deck under the brush, and the twenty thousand gallons of water three feet away that is going to end up drinking it. Every other slab you own drains somewhere
Removing weeds from pavers with a pressure washer clears the patio today and sets up a worse one next summer. The jet lifts out the weed you can see, and it lifts out the joint sand that was the only thing standing between the next seed and somewhere to germinate. You finish the afternoon with
**Removing lichen is a different job from removing moss or algae, because lichen is neither of those things: it is a fungus and an alga living as one organism, and the fungal half grows *into* the surface instead of sitting on top of it.** That single anatomical fact decides the rest of this page —
Cleaning a log home is a job where the seams matter more than the wood — the chinking between courses, the drying checks in the log faces, and which kind of finish is already on the wall each decide what a pressure washer does, and on all three counts the machine’s honest role is to
Removing tree sap is a solvent problem, not a pressure problem. Resin is not water-soluble, so a pressure washer pointed at a sap blob achieves nothing except damage to whatever the sap is sitting on. Going closer, narrower or higher does not change that. Park under a pine for one night and by morning the
Cleaning travertine patio pavers safely turns on one question the first page of search results never asks: is your travertine filled or unfilled — because the filler is not stone, and under a jet it leaves before the dirt does. Every guide on this topic says roughly the same four things. Sweep first. Use 1,200
