Serving Clients Since 1977
Power Washing in New Britain, 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 New Britain, where 82.9% of the housing was built in 1979 or earlier, the judgement that matters is how much pressure a surface can take.
We do not strip paint with pressure washing. On late-Victorian wood that is a deliberate limit, and it protects the thing you are paying to keep.
What can go wrong washing a New Britain house?
The West End nomination lists exactly the features that suffer: mixed bevel-and-shingle siding on one elevation, decorative shingle-work, gable half-timbering, tiled roof crestings and turned porch columns. Every one of those is a place where water at pressure either gets behind the material or removes it.
Behind is the bigger risk. Shingle courses and half-timbering create laps and joints that shed falling rain perfectly well but were never designed to resist a jet aimed upward. Water driven into those joints has no quick route out, and it comes back later as failed paint, or as rot inside a member that looked sound.
The second risk is grain. Softwood raised and furred by high pressure gives the next coat a rough, absorbent surface, which shortens the life of the paint you are about to pay for.
So washing here is a cleaning step ahead of a coating step. It removes what would stop paint bonding. Removing paint itself is slower, done by hand and tool, at the pace the substrate allows.
New Britain power washing questions
I own a multi-family here. Can you wash the whole building?
Yes. About 21.5% of New Britain's housing sits in two-to-four unit buildings, so multi-family exteriors are ordinary work. The practical considerations are access on a dense lot, protecting porch detail on the lower floors, and controlling where the runoff goes when a neighbouring building may be only a few feet away. Tell us the tenancy situation as well — washing is disruptive to anyone home during the day.
Is washing enough on its own, or do I need to repaint?
Sometimes washing alone is genuinely enough, and it is worth finding out before committing to paint. A sound exterior that is simply dirty — atmospheric grime, mildew on the shaded side, pollen — can recover a long way from a wash. An exterior whose paint is failing will look worse afterwards, because washing reveals the failure rather than causing it. We will tell you which of the two you have.
Do you test for or remediate mold?
No. We do not perform mold or fungi testing, abatement, remediation or air sampling. Cleaning visible surface mildew off an exterior is ordinary washing; a mold problem inside the building envelope is a different trade, and you want a specialist rather than a painting contractor.
Need a wash before the paint goes on?
Call for a free estimate and a written summary quote on your first visit.