What Drives the Cost of Pressure Washing in Cairns

Area is not what you are paying for

The first useful thing to know is that exterior cleaning is not priced by the square metre, whatever the calculators online suggest. Two driveways of identical size in Edmonton can be a comfortable morning and most of a day, and the difference has nothing to do with how big they are.

What is actually being priced is time on site, the chemistry the surface needs, and how much setting up and protecting has to happen before any water is used. Once you understand which of those your job is heavy on, a quote stops feeling arbitrary.

There are five of them, and every job sits somewhere along each one.

Preparation sits across all five rather than in any one of them, and it is dealt with further down.

Access and height

Ground level work with a clear run around the house is the cheap end of everything. Height changes it. A two storey rendered wall cannot be safely reached from the ground with a lance held overhead, so it needs either a stable extended reach setup or proper access equipment, and both take longer to position than they do to use.

Access on the ground matters just as much. Older Cairns suburbs have side setbacks under a metre in places, which means gear does not fit through and hoses run the long way around the house. Sloping blocks, high set Queenslanders with stairs, locked side gates, tight strata car parks and a long carry from the street all add real time before the work starts.

Surface, method and how far the growth has gone

Concrete, rendered block, fibro, weatherboard, Colorbond and roof tile all need different handling. Concrete takes direct pressure and moves fast. Anything painted or glazed has to be soft washed instead, which means chemical volume and dwell time rather than speed, and chemical is a genuine line item rather than a rounding error.

Then there is how long it has been left. Fresh algae rinses. Established lichen has physically worked into the surface and often needs a longer dwell and a second application to release it, which can double the time on a wall that looks only slightly worse than one that is easy. A roof carrying heavy black cyanobacteria staining is the clearest example of this. The same tiles, cleaned every few years, are a fraction of the work.

Prep, protection and water supply

Good preparation costs time and saves damage, so it belongs in the price honestly rather than being skipped. Gardens get pre-wetted and covered, downpipes into rainwater tanks get diverted before anything touches the roof, outdoor power points and vents get taped, and furniture gets moved and put back.

Water is the one nobody expects. A cleaning unit draws continuously, commonly somewhere between twelve and twenty one litres a minute depending on the machine. A tap that cannot sustain that flow means running from a buffer tank, and on rural blocks around Mareeba and the Tablelands where the house is on tank water it can mean carting water in. That is time and logistics before the first surface is touched.

Making two quotes comparable

Two exterior cleaning quotes will often describe different amounts of work while looking like the same job. The way to tell is to read each one for these:

• Which surfaces are included, listed individually, rather than “the house”
• Which of those are being soft washed and which are getting direct pressure
• Whether the roof is in or out, and whether gutters are separate again
• Who moves and reinstates furniture, pots and cars, and who covers the gardens
• What happens with the rainwater tank downpipes before and after roof work
• Whether a second application is included if the growth does not release on the first
• What the water arrangement is if your tap will not hold the flow
• What is specifically excluded, which is usually the most informative line on the page

Where one quote comes in lower, the interesting question is which of those lines it left out. Often the answer is the roof, or the assumption that you will shift the furniture and the pots yourself on the morning.

The other half of it is what you can put in front of us. A description of the surfaces, which walls are shaded, roughly how long since the last clean, whether there is a tank on the roof, and one photo of the worst side will get you much closer to a firm number than any measurement will.

None of the above turns into a number without seeing the job, which is why we will not put a figure on the phone for work we have not looked at. Describe the surface and the suburb, or send a photo, and the quote comes back in writing with no obligation attached to it. Call 07 4028 4268 or read what residential pressure washing includes.