Serving Clients Since 1977
Power Washing in Meriden, CT
Gagnon Painting & Decorating has completed thousands of jobs safely since 1977, using state-of-the-art equipment to blast away grit, grime and contaminants.
In Meriden the most common reason to wash is not general dirt but mildew, and the reason is geography: the traprock ridge above the city leaves a lot of houses with elevations that lose the sun early and stay damp long after the rain stops. We do not strip paint with pressure washing.
Why does one side of a Meriden house go green?
Because mildew needs shade and moisture, and the ridge supplies both to specific elevations. A wall that loses direct sun by early afternoon simply does not dry between wettings for much of the year, and the result is the dark green-grey film homeowners usually read as dirt.
Washing removes it. What washing does not do is change the conditions that produced it, which is why the same elevation will look the same again in a few seasons unless the exposure or the coating changes. That is worth knowing before you pay for it, and worth factoring into which product goes on that wall when the house is next painted.
The limit we hold to matters most on Meriden's older stock — 26.7% of the city's housing predates 1940. Water at high pressure driven into clapboard laps and trim joints has no fast route out, and softwood raised and furred by pressure gives the next coat a rough, thirsty surface. So we clean at a pressure the substrate can take, and remove failing paint separately, by hand and tool.
We do not perform mold or fungi testing, abatement, remediation or air sampling.
Meriden power washing questions
Is the green on my siding mold or mildew?
On an exterior wall it is almost always surface mildew, and washing is the right response to it. We are not the people to tell you whether you have a mold problem, though — we do not do mold or fungi testing, abatement, remediation or air sampling. If the concern is inside the building envelope rather than on the outside face of the siding, you want a specialist.
How often will it need doing again?
It depends almost entirely on the elevation rather than the house. A sunny, well-ventilated wall may go many years; a shaded one below the ridge can show mildew again within a couple of seasons. If a particular elevation keeps coming back, the more useful conversation is about the coating and the drainage around it rather than a more frequent wash.
Can washing damage my house?
Badly done, yes — which is why we treat pressure as something to limit rather than maximise. High pressure drives water behind siding, raises the grain on softwood, and strips material off decorative trim. We wash to clean the surface so paint can bond, not to remove paint, and on older Meriden wood that distinction is the whole job.
Need a wash before the paint goes on?
Call for a free estimate and a written summary quote on your first visit.