Pressure Washing Guide

Shoot2thrill · Joined: 24 Mar 2008 Posts: 8 Location: Atlanta

OK, now at this point I've done about 10 driveways.
The last driveway I did, when I got there they had a pretty solid stain(not sure what it was), plus a few oil spotted areas. They also had some rust stains.

I stated before I got on the job....
1) No guarantee the stain comes up or will even look much better but we can attempt to make it look better.
2) What we do is wet the spotted areas.
3) Take a degreaser such as Simple Green and use a scrub brush and brush the areas for a good while in hopes to get down in the concrete as far as possible.
4) Use concrete bleach and pressure wash the entire driveway.

When completed the 1 main stain was unphased. Alot of the rust was removed as were alot of the oil spots.

I had about 20 minutes left when the home owner left and gave me a check for $100. The driveway was about 25 feet long.
They called back a couple hours later saying they wanted to cancel the check because they were very unsatisfied.

I had already made a deposit afterwards and that check was included.

Now a week has passed and they called back saying I left 2 inch guages in thier driveway and want my ins info!!

Trust me... I left no gauges in there driveway what so ever.
I'm 100% positive about this.
1 thing I never wanna do is damage something.

I never use too much pressure because I don't even wanna change the texture of the concrete if I can help it.
I like to think I'm extra gentle on driveways not to damage ANY part of it.

Theres no question in my mind these people were out to get something for free and when the check went through they decided to go for more.

They seem very arrogant to be fighting for $100 after I did exactly what I said I was gonna do.
They have about a $400,000 house and a couple BMWs.
They have a recycling company and have recently opened up a ministry.
Probably for tax purposes only.

Anyhow, just wanted to get your thoughts on this AND what would you have to do to repair a damaged driveway?
Just so I know.

Thanks

Midwestpro · Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 9:00 am Post subject:

This sounds like it was a bad situation from the beginning. For one I don't do anything for $100, with expenses like insurance, payroll, taxes, chemicals, and fuel, you end up losing money. As a business owner you deserve better.

Secondly this is exactly what happens when you do jobs for that cheap. Cheap people will hire you and they are the one's that are never satisfied and also try to take advantage of you like in this situation. Raise your prices, provide a good honest excellent service that is second to none and people whom understand value will hire you.

As far as the concrete fix, I am not a concrete expert and without actually seeing the gouges I can only speculate. I am guessing you may be able to just patch them or put a skim coat over them. Worse case scenario would be to tear up that whole section of concrete and have a new slab poured. Good luck!

Shoot2thrill · Joined: 24 Mar 2008 Posts: 8 Location: Atlanta

Very late follow up!

We went out there the next morning for a scheduled meeting to see the damage and they never showed.
We searched for any damage and we saw none.
We've not heard from them since.

As far as pricing... We are a new company and we need all the work we can get.
Pressure washing a 20-30 foot driveway can't be worth much more than $100.

There are guys out there working for beer money with signs up on street corners doing it very cheap.
The last thing we wanna do is drive the price down, but we are eager for work.

We are in 2 different markets but how do you price driveways?

Thanks alot for your input.

Midwestpro · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:20 am Post subject:

Normally we price by the square foot but in the case of a small driveway or any small job like that, we have been forced to charge a "show up" fee. Right now our show up fee is more than $100.

By the time expenses are factored in like fuel, chemicals, payroll, taxes, insurance, wear/tear, and so on charging any less would be working for free in our case.

We have gone out many times and did a quick little 10 or 20 minute job to help someone out and have charged $150. Most people understand that's just the way it is when you are operating with a legitimate business that has insurance and pays taxes and so on.

People that want to hire the weekend warrior or handyman that thinks he knows how to pressure wash, aren't my type of customers anyway. We too have guys around here that work for cheap, but as most people know you get what you pay for. People hire us for our knowledge, experience, professionalism, the peace of mind that the job will get done right, and get done promply. That's called value and our customers understand that and that is worth more than 100 bucks to them.