This was the first time we have been called for pressure washing a fire bombed house.
Fire crews along with this heavy air tanker dumping fire retardant near some houses in the Back Country subdivision where they battle a brush fire October 28, 2016 that threatened houses. The Chatridge fire was threatening homes in the Chatfield Estates and Back Country subdivisions. (Photo By John Leyba/The Denver Post)
We’ve done a lot of different jobs for this builder but cleaning fire slurry isn’t one of them. When he called us and said it got covered by slurry from a fire bomber, we thought he was kidding.
The house is in Highlands Ranch and we didn’t think it was far enough out to be in danger from grass fires. But this fire got dangerously close to some new houses being built. And the house he wanted us to clean was pictured in the Denver Post article.
This house was white stucco and stone – with little orange polka dots. Since we had never cleaned this chemical on this material before, we told him we would have to do a test patch.
You never know how a new chemical will react when it’s hit with water and we didn’t want the red dots to turn into permanent red streaks on the white stucco. Doing a test patch on a small area that won’t show saves a lot of headaches if the cleaning process doesn’t go quite right.
Many people think pressure washing companies just blast things clean.
But pressure washing takes a thorough knowledge of many different soaps and cleaning compounds. And when you’re running 3500 psi (4-5 times more pressure than a typical car wash), you have to be careful you don’t damage the underlying surface.
You have to use the right materials based on what you’re cleaning. Using something too strong can cause damage as well. We’ve washed hundreds of different surfaces covered with hundreds of different kinds of dirt and grime. If you don’t use the right procedure, you can make quite a mess.
So if you need an experienced pressure washing company to clean up your unique mess, give us a call.