Preparing your property for a wash day

Move what is against the building

Anything within a few feet of the elevation being washed: patio furniture, planters, sandwich boards, bike racks, pallets, stock, trash cans, hoses. It is faster for your people to move it than for a crew to move it and put it back, and things that get moved by somebody who does not know where they live do not always go back to the right place.

Cars off the elevation

Overspray is the single most common complaint on a commercial wash day and it is entirely avoidable. Whichever elevation is being done that day needs the adjacent spaces empty. On a multi-building property or a dealership that means a section-by-section sequence and a small number of vehicles moved at a time — which needs agreeing before the day, not on it.

Close what opens

Windows, roof hatches, dock doors on the elevation being washed, and anything with a vent at low level. Worth a specific word to tenants who prop a door open, because they will, and the door they prop is usually the one nearest the work.

Point out the things only you know

The window that leaks. The electrical penetration somebody sealed with tape. The low-voltage or alarm conduit running down the outside. The irrigation controller in the unlocked box. The section of siding that is already loose. The sensitive planting the landscaper will bill you for. None of this is visible to a crew and all of it is cheap to say at the walk-through.

Sort out water and power in advance

Which spigot, whether it is turned on, whether it actually has pressure, and whether the outside outlets are live. A surprising number of commercial properties have an exterior spigot that has been shut off at the interior valve since a previous winter, and finding that out at 6am on the day costs everyone the morning.

Tell your tenants and your staff

Which day, which building or elevation, what hours, and what you need from them. Most complaints on a wash day are not about the work — they are about somebody discovering it by walking into it. A day, a window and a sentence about moving cars prevents nearly all of them.

Be there at the end

Ten minutes walking the finished work with the crew, against the scope, closes out a job properly. It is the cheapest quality control available and it is much easier than describing a problem by email two weeks later.