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For pressure washing: the square feet of driveway, siding and fence

Driveways, sidewalks, patios, decks, fences and the house itself: a wash job is sized by the square feet of each surface, and each surface is washed its own way. TailGateBid puts every surface on the quote as a line of its own, and your customer signs it on their phone.

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The work

Flat concrete: driveways, sidewalks, patios, pool decks. House washing: vinyl siding, brick, painted walls. Wood: decks and fences. And gutters, and roofs with dark streaks, which are a method of their own.

How a wash job is measured

  1. Flat surfaces: length times width is the square feet. A driveway and a walk are two sums, added.
  2. The house: the distance all the way round it, times how tall the walls are, gives the wall in square feet.
  3. A fence: its length times its height, and twice that when both sides are washed.
  4. Vinyl siding takes care. The siding makers' association says a power washer can be used, with caution: held straight, at eye level, and never aimed upward, which can force water behind the panels. Some siding makers do not recommend power washing, and others limit the pressure and the cleaners: Polymeric Exterior Products Association (formerly the Vinyl Siding Institute), How to Clean Vinyl Siding.
  5. An asphalt shingle roof is not a pressure job. The makers' association says not to use a power washer on one, and that high-pressure washing is likely to damage asphalt roofing. It describes a solution of household bleach and water, rinsed off with a gentle spray, and says to ask the shingle maker before using anything else: Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association, Algae Discoloration of Roofs.

An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate

Say the driveway is 20 by 40 feet and the front walk 4 by 30: 800 and 120 square feet, 920 of flat concrete. Say the house is 160 feet around with 9 foot walls: 1,440 square feet of wall. And say the fence is 100 feet long and 6 feet tall, washed on 2 sides: 1,200 square feet. That is 3,560 square feet on the quote, in three lines.

A wash quote, worked through

Sample

Sample Pressure Washing Co.

Driveway, house wash and fence

  • Driveway and front walk, pressure washedQty 920 square feet$202.40
  • House wash, siding on all four sides, at low pressureQty 1440 square feet$403.20
  • Wood fence, washed on both sidesQty 1200 square feet$240.00
Subtotal
$845.60
Sales tax (7.25%)
$0.00
Total
$845.60

Only you see this part. Your customer never does.

What it costs you
$494.00
What is left for you
$351.60

You keep about $42 of every $100

A sample. Its prices are made up and are not a going rate: TailGateBid has no price data. Every line is charged by the square foot, and each surface has a price of its own, so a driveway, a wall and a fence can each be priced differently. No line is ticked as taxed, so sales tax reads $0.00: ask your state whether washing is taxed where you work. At these made-up costs you keep $351.60 of the $845.60, about $42 of every $100.

What TailGateBid does for a pressure washing business

  • Each surface is a choice

    Driveway only, driveway and house, or all three: put each on the quote as an option with its own price, and your customer picks one. Sealing the driveway afterwards can be an add-on they tick. They sign on their own phone. How quotes and signing work.

  • Bid Partner, from photos of the property

    Walk the property, take a few photos and say in a sentence or two what is being washed. Bid Partner, the AI tool in TailGateBid, gives you back a draft quote priced from your own rates. A price it had to supply itself is marked "Typical": swap in what you charge and that is your price from then on. It stays a draft until you press Send.

  • Before, after, and the invoice

    Photos on a job are filed as before, during or after, and stay private until you share one. The approved quote becomes a job to put on the schedule; a customer who wants the house washed again next year can be a job that repeats every so many days. When the work is done, the invoice is one tap away.

  • A pressure washing website

    A clean driveway shows up best beside the dirty one. The website that comes with every account, hosted at no extra cost, turns a before photo and an after photo from the same job into a slider a visitor drags across, once that customer has agreed. Under it go the services you offer and the reviews you have approved, and a visitor can send photos of the job with a request. What else the website holds.

What a square foot is worth

That figure is yours to set. The job price calculator turns your hours, the cost of one of them, and your fuel and cleaners into a price, and can show it for each square foot. If your hour has to carry a trailer, a machine and a tank, the hour calculator shows what it really costs.

Then put the price on paper: what goes on an estimate, in order, with one filled in.

This page is about one trade. TailGateBid works the same way for any other, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.

Sources

Related

Measure the driveway and send the quote from the curb.

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