Deck Cleaning in York, PA
Wood, composite and covered patios, cleaned at the pressure the material can actually take instead of the pressure the machine can put out.
Student-run & local · Certified & Professional · 5.0★ on Google
Decks around here go green from the bottom up. The boards closest to the ground and anything sitting under a tree hold moisture, and by the second or third summer there's a film you can feel underfoot before you can see it.
Cleaning one properly is mostly about holding back. Wood and composite both come clean at low pressure with the right product, and both get permanently wrecked by somebody in a hurry with a turbo nozzle. We clean decks in York, PA and everywhere around it.
Know your decking brand? Put it in the form and we'll tell you exactly how we'd clean it.
Wood decks, and how people ruin them
Pressure treated pine and cedar are soft. Hit them too hard and you raise the grain, which people in the trade call furring. You're left with a fuzzy surface that grabs dirt, feels rough on bare feet, and never really looks right again. It doesn't undo itself either. Fixing it means sanding the whole deck.
So we run low pressure with a wide fan tip, keep the tip moving, work with the grain instead of across it, and let the cleaner do the lifting. On bare wood we usually go with sodium percarbonate, which is an oxygen based cleaner that's easier on the wood and on whatever's planted underneath. Sodium hypochlorite kills mildew faster but it can lighten the wood and it takes a lot more care around your landscaping.
If you're planning to re-stain, cleaning is step one and drying is step two. The deck needs a real dry-out, normally about 48 hours of decent weather, before any stain goes on. Staining damp wood is exactly how you end up with a finish peeling off by next summer.
Composite decks, and your warranty
Composite doesn't rot, but it does grow mold, down in the embossed grain rather than sitting on top of it. That's why blasting it doesn't help. You need a cleaner that sits there for a while and a soft brush to get down into the texture.
The manufacturers publish real limits and they're worth paying attention to. Trex, for example, allows a pressure washer of no more than 3100 PSI with a fan attachment, held no closer than eight inches off the surface, then rinsed thoroughly so the dirty water doesn't dry into a film. Their care and cleaning page also says they don't recommend pressure washing early-generation Trex at all, and that doing it can void your warranty on any damage it causes.
We work well under those limits. Before we pick a method we'll ask what brand your decking is and roughly what year it went down, because the answer genuinely changes what we do.
What it costs
Deck pricing catches people off guard, because the flat part you walk on is rarely the expensive bit.
| What we look at | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Deck square footage | The base number, measured rather than guessed at from the driveway. |
| Railings and spindles | The biggest one by far. A railing has several times the surface area per foot that the deck floor does, it's all hand work, and every spindle has four sides. |
| Material | Bare wood, sealed wood and composite each want different chemistry and different pressure. |
| Stairs | Slow and awkward, so they're priced by the flight instead of rolled into the deck area. |
| Height and access | A ground-level deck and a second-floor deck over a slope are different jobs at the same square footage. |
| Staining after | A deck being prepped for stain needs a more thorough clean than one that just needs the green taken off. |
Same approach, on outdoor furniture
Furniture usually comes with the deck, and it responds to the same thing: give the cleaner time to work and use a soft brush instead of more pressure. More on the job portfolio.
When you should call us, and when you shouldn't
Call us if your deck has gone green, gray or slippery and you want to use it again, or you're about to stain it and want it prepped right. If somebody told you your composite deck can't be cleaned, call us too, because it can, just not the way most people go about it.
Hold off if your boards are soft, splintering or coming loose, because cleaning isn't the answer there and pressure makes it worse. If you've got a solid-color stain peeling off in sheets, that's a stripping and sanding job, which is a different trade and a much bigger number than a wash. And if you want weathered gray wood back to its original color, cleaning alone won't get you there. That takes a brightener and then stain.
We cover York, Red Lion, Dallastown, Felton, Stewartstown, Shrewsbury, Spring Grove, New Freedom and York New Salem. First job with us is 10% off.
Questions people actually ask us
Will this strip my stain off?
A stain that's still in good shape generally comes through a proper low-pressure cleaning fine. One that's already failing will come off in patches, because the cleaning just finds what was already loose. If your finish is peeling anywhere, tell us up front and we'll look at it before we start.
Can you clean composite?
Yes, and it's one of the more common calls we get. Composite grows mold down in the embossed grain, so it needs a cleaner that sits there and a soft brush rather than more pressure. We stay well inside what the manufacturers allow.
Do you stain or seal it after?
We clean and prep, we don't stain. Cleaning and staining are genuinely different trades, and we'd rather do one of them properly than both of them just okay.
How long before I can stain it?
About 48 hours of decent weather for most decks, longer if it's shaded or the weather turns on you. The wood has to be dry the whole way through, not just dry on top, or the stain won't bond and you'll be redoing it next year.
Are railings extra?
They're priced separately, and they're usually a bigger chunk of the job than people expect. A railing has way more surface per foot than your deck floor and every spindle is hand work. We'll always quote the deck and the railings as separate lines so you can decide.
How often should I have it cleaned?
Most decks around here want it once a year, usually in spring. Decks under trees or on the shady side of the house sometimes need it more, because they stay damp long enough for the algae to keep coming back.
Not sure if yours needs cleaning, staining or replacing? Send a photo through the form. We'll tell you honestly, including when the answer is that a wash isn't what you need.
Written by Owen Kauffman. I run XO Power Washing with Xavier, we're both students here in York County, and we do every job ourselves. No subcontractors, nobody in a call center. Got a question about your place? Just call us at 234-207-5553.
What else we clean
Decks usually get booked with the patio, or with the siding right above them.
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Fill this out and we'll get back to you with a real number, usually the same day. If you know what brand the decking is, tell us, because it changes how we clean it.