Middlesex County

Road film is not algae

If your home is within earshot of Route 1, 287 or the Turnpike, the gray haze on your siding is mostly traffic: brake dust, tire particulate and diesel soot bound together with oily residue. It is a different problem from the green growth on a shaded wall, and the reason a generic house wash sometimes underwhelms here is that it was mixed for algae.

We treat it with a degreasing surfactant that breaks the petroleum film first, then clean normally. Same visit, different chemistry, noticeably different result.

Older siding needs a lighter hand

Much of Middlesex County was built out in the sixties and seventies, and a great deal of that original aluminum and early vinyl siding is still on the walls. Aluminum of that age chalks — the finish oxidizes into a powder that comes off on your hand. Cleaning it is straightforward if you know it is there and disastrous if you treat it like new vinyl. We test a section first and tell you honestly whether cleaning will restore it or whether it has reached the point where painting is the better spend.

Commercial and industrial

Middlesex has the densest concentration of warehousing and light industry in our service area, and a lot of our commercial work is here: dock aprons, trailer courts, tilt-up panels and retail frontage along the highway corridors. Wash-water containment matters on those sites and we handle it properly — see warehouse and industrial washing.

Townhomes and condos

The county is full of townhome communities from the eighties onward, most of them managed by associations. Shared walls mean shared scheduling, and it is nearly always cheaper to clean a whole row at once than one unit at a time. If your association has not looked at it, we are happy to quote the community as a whole.