House washing
Soft washing for render, Colorbond, weatherboard and brick — mould off, paint on.
Phones on Mon–Sat. After that, send a text and we call back before 9am.
- How long
- Most single-storey homes take half a day.
- Where
- Broadbeach based, Gold Coast wide
- Also
- Brick walls, Render and cladding, Eaves and cobwebs.
- Price
- Free, no-obligation on-site quote. We do not publish figures.
- Fibro
- We do not pressure-clean asbestos cement. If we find it, we stop and tell you in writing.
- Arrival
- Arrival window confirmed the evening before.
How it gets done
The same order, every job. If we depart from it, you hear on the day.
- Walk the house with you — cladding, paint, any fibro, tap access, where the run-off goes.
- Shut windows, move pots and furniture, and soak every bed and lawn edge along the walls.
- Apply the soft-wash solution low to high so nothing streaks, and let it dwell.
- Hand-agitate only where needed — window reveals, meter boxes, heavy lichen — never abrasives on a coated finish.
- Rinse top-down at low pressure: glass, frames, sills, garage door and the front entry.
- Re-rinse the gardens, lawn and paths so nothing is left concentrated.
- Walk it with you again in daylight before we pack up.
What comes with every job
Not a premium package. It is what a job is, at no extra charge.
- A walk around first
- We go over the property with you before a hose comes off the ute. You hear the bad news at the start.
- Before photos, every job
- Shot before we touch anything, including whatever was already cracked, lifting or perished. That record is as much for you as for us.
- Plants, drains, furniture
- Garden beds wet down and rinsed. Drains and pits covered. Furniture, mats and the barbecue moved out of the way and put back.
- Biodegradable products
- Diluted, left to work, then rinsed. Drains and pits in the wash zone stay covered, and run-off keeps off the inlet where the fall allows.
- The full photo set
- Before, after, and a separate set of anything already damaged. Out with the invoice, sooner if you ask.
- A person you can text
- The number reaches the person who will be standing on your driveway. No call centre, no subcontractor.
None of it is an add-on. No tier unlocks it. Hold any exterior cleaning quote against the list, ours included.
Every Gold Coast house has a shady side, and that is the side that goes green: salt drift off the water, humidity that barely drops from November to March, and a wall that never gets an hour of sun make a perfect nursery for mould, algae and lichen.
The instinct is to hire the biggest pressure washer going, and it is the most expensive mistake a homeowner makes — the things that keep a wall watertight are exactly the things a high-pressure jet destroys.
Soft washing is the point
Soft washing means the solution does the cleaning, not the water pressure. We apply a dilute sodium hypochlorite blend with a surfactant so it clings to a vertical surface, let it dwell while it kills the growth, then rinse at low pressure — roughly a garden hose. Two reasons it beats high pressure on cladding. First, damage: pressure forced at a wall drives water past window seals, up under weatherboard laps, through weepholes and behind sheeting, where it sits in the frame for years. It also cuts paint, leaves permanent lap marks in acrylic render and strips the chalky top layer off older paintwork. Second, pressure does not work. Mould is a living organism with roots into the surface: blast it and you knock the visible top off while leaving it alive, so it is back next wet season. Kill it and it stays gone for years — which is why a soft-washed house looks better at twelve months than a blasted one does at three.
Render, Colorbond, weatherboard, brick
Acrylic render is the most common finish on new Gold Coast estates and the most commonly wrecked. The texture that makes render look good also gives spores somewhere to live, and any pressure high enough to scour them out will cut the topcoat and leave wand marks you cannot paint over without doing the whole wall. Render gets solution and dwell, nothing else. Colorbond and metal cladding carry a baked paint finish over a zinc or aluminium coating: no abrasive pads, no strong acidic cleaners, and after fifteen years of sun it is chalking, so aggressive scrubbing takes colour off onto the cloth. We wash it bottom-up and rinse top-down so nothing streaks. Weatherboard — timber or fibre cement — is about the gaps: water driven up under the laps has nowhere to drain and sits against the frame, so everything is worked downward at low pressure. Pre-1970 painted timber may also have lead-based paint under the current coat, another reason not to blast flakes off a wall. Face brick handles more, but its problem is efflorescence — a white salt bloom pushed out by moisture in the wall — and cleaning removes the bloom without touching the cause, so it returns until the moisture is dealt with.
Walls washed at ground level
Every wall we wash is washed at ground level. A telescopic lance and the right nozzle reach the top of a typical two-storey wall without anyone on a wet ladder leaning against wet render — which is precisely how people end up in hospital doing this themselves. Second-storey wall and facade washing is not something we take on, and that is a deliberate limit rather than a gap: where a wall cannot be reached safely with a lance planted on the ground, we say what it would need rather than improvise, clean what we can safely reach, and be clear about what we have left. Roofs run the other way, and the asymmetry is deliberate rather than an oversight. We do soft wash roofs and clear gutters — single storey and up to a second-storey roof, worked off a ladder at the roof edge, set out in full on our roof and gutter cleaning page. Ladders are the only access we use anywhere: no harnesses, no fall-arrest systems, no elevated work platforms, no high-rise and no multi-storey commercial facades. Roof up, walls down. It is also why we ask how many storeys before we quote — it changes the gear, the volume of solution and the time, and on a steep block it can change the access entirely.
Plants, pets and windows
The active ingredient in our wash mix is the same one in pool chlorine and household bleach, at a working dilution, and it breaks down quickly — but concentrated run-off pooling in a garden bed will burn a hedge or a lawn. So the beds, the lawn edge and anything planted against the wall get soaked with clean water before we start, kept wet while we work, and rinsed after. Dilution is the protection, not luck. Pots move; anything precious gets covered. Dogs and cats stay inside until the walls are dry and water bowls come in. Tell us if we are washing the pool side, so the cover and filter get sorted. Windows and screens should be shut — we rinse glass, frames and sills as part of the wash, so the salt film and cobwebs go, but that is a rinse, not a squeegee-finish window clean, and we would rather say so than have you expecting streak-free glass.
Pre-1990 houses and fibro
Plenty of Gold Coast homes built before 1990 have asbestos cement somewhere outside: fibro wall cladding, gable infill, the shed, or corrugated Super Six on a carport or lean-to. High-pressure water on asbestos cement is prohibited under Queensland's asbestos code of practice, because it releases fibres into the air and into the run-off heading for your garden and the stormwater drain. The rule does not bend: we identify it at the quote, we keep pressure off it, and where a sheet is weathered, chalking or breaking down at the edges we leave it entirely and tell you why. Dealing with it is a licensed asbestos removalist's job, not a pressure cleaner's.
What a wash cannot fix
A house wash removes mould, algae, lichen, salt film, dust, cobwebs and mud wasp nests. It does not repaint your house. Where paint has already lost adhesion, washing finds it — the flakes were coming off anyway, but they come off on our day, so we point it out before we start and let you decide. It does not restore paint the western sun has chalked flat; that is a painter's job, and we do not paint, seal or coat anything. Rust bleed from a fixing and the dirty run-off stripe below a leak both come back until the source is repaired, and the repair is someone else's trade. Saying so at the quote costs us nothing and saves you paying twice.
Questions we get asked
My walls are really bad. Is soft washing strong enough?
Yes, and heavy growth is exactly where it wins. Bad walls are bad because the mould is well established with roots into the surface — the one case pressure cannot solve, since it removes what you can see and leaves what you cannot. Solution and dwell deal with the whole organism. Very heavy lichen sometimes needs a second application on the day, which we allow for rather than reaching for a bigger nozzle.
Will the wash mix hurt my paint or my render?
At working dilution, no. Sodium hypochlorite is not a paint stripper — it is an oxidiser that kills organic growth, and it gets rinsed off rather than left to sit. What damages paint and render is mechanical: high pressure, turbo nozzles, abrasive scrubbing. That is why we do not use them on cladding. If paint is already flaking or the render has hairline cracking, we show you before we start.
How often should a Gold Coast house be washed?
Most homes want it every twelve to eighteen months, but it varies wall by wall. The shaded southern side, anything under trees and anything within a few streets of the water go first; a north-facing brick wall in full sun might go three years. On a schedule, we would rather do the shaded elevations more often than the whole house too often.
Do I need to be home?
No. We need a garden tap, any locked side gates opened, and the windows closed. Plenty of our house washes happen while people are at work — we send photos and you come home to it. If there is a dog in the yard, though, we need to talk before the day rather than on it.
Do you clean roofs?
Yes. Roofs are soft washed — solution and dwell time, never high pressure, which strips the coating off concrete tiles and blows the pointing out of ridge capping — and we clean single-storey roofs and roofs up to second storey, worked off a ladder at the edge. Gutters get cleared by hand and the downpipes flushed at the same visit. Our roof and gutter cleaning page sets out the method and the limits. The line we hold is on walls rather than roofs: wall and facade washing is ground level only, so second-storey wall washing is not something we take on. And ladders are the only access we use — no harnesses, no fall-arrest systems, no elevated work platforms, no high-rise.
Can you clean the eaves and the garage door too?
Eaves, fascias and soffits are soft washed as part of the house wash, along with the garage door, the entry and the outside faces of the gutters — they carry the worst of the mould, so leaving them out makes the rest of the wall look half done. Clearing the gutters out on the inside and flushing the downpipes is roof and gutter cleaning rather than house washing, and we will scope both at the same visit if you want them together. Where an eave on a two-storey elevation sits beyond a lance planted on the ground, we say which bits while standing there with you rather than leaving you to find the missed strip afterwards.
Why is there no price list for a house wash?
Because a single-storey brick cottage and a two-storey rendered house on a sloping block with a pool between us and the back wall are not the same job, and a number on a website would be wrong for one of them. We come out, look at the access, cladding and condition, and give you a fixed price on the spot for the scope we agree standing there — if the job on the day turns out to be a different one, we stop and talk to you first. The visit is free and there is no obligation to book.
Not sure it needs doing?
Ring and describe it. We will tell you straight.
Ask for a quote
We look at the job and price it on the spot. It costs nothing.
After hours the form still reaches us. We call back before 9am.
Suburbs we cover
House washing across the Gold Coast. These are the ones written up so far.
Related services
Two or three surfaces on one visit costs less than separate trips.
Roof and gutter cleaning
Soft washed roofs and cleared gutters, reached by ladder — the growth killed, the downpipes flowing.
Driveway cleaning
Concrete, exposed aggregate and pavers back to an even colour, without the stripes.
Pool surrounds and patios
Travertine, pavers and tiled alfresco — the black line at the coping and the sunscreen film, gone.