The driveways are done, the decks are done, and the calls for house washes are slowly stopping.
They have not stopped needing a cleaning. They are about to have thirty people over for the holidays.
Between now and the end of November, every house on your route gets looked at by somebody who does not live there. In laws, neighbors, a son in law with opinions. The homeowner knows it, and that is the whole argument for holiday house washing sales. Most contractors never make it, because they are waiting for the phone instead of picking it up. Here is why she buys right now, what she is actually paying for, the three surfaces worth putting in the quote, why the decorations set your deadline, and how to call a past customer without turning it into a discount.
Why holiday house washing sales happen in the six weeks before the holidays
Nobody buys a house wash in November because the siding got dirty in November. It got dirty in July.
What changed is that the homeowner is hosting Thanksgiving this year. Dirt that was going unnoticed becomes something a guest will notice, and the only question left is who cleans it and when.
That is the difference between this time of year versus the rest of the season. In June you are selling a clean house. In November you are selling a deadline for guests to be impressed.
So call early. The first week of November you are quoting against money thats also needed for a grocery run and a guest room. On the twentieth you are quoting against guests already standing in the driveway.
What the homeowner is actually buying
They are not buying just a soft wash. They are buying the praise while walking from the car to the front door.
That is thirty feet of what your work looks like, and it is the only part of the house most guests will ever see up close. The walkway, the front steps, the porch, the siding beside the door. If that stretch looks right, the house looks right.
Sell that, not the service. A homeowner who hears “I can soft wash the house” is pricing a chore. One who hears “when people pull in on Thanksgiving, the first thing they walk past is going to be clean” is picturing their clean house already.
Two sentences on the phone can help you sell this:
- Name the moment. “You have people coming in November, right?”
- Name what they will see. “The front of the house is what they walk past before they get to the door.”
Then quote it! You have not sold a pressure wash. You have sold the way her house looks the day it matters most.
The three surfaces worth putting in the quote
Keep the quote narrow. This is a six week window with fewer daylight hours in it, and a long quote is just something extra the homeowner has to think about.
First, the house wash.
The front and the two sides a guest can see from the driveway. If the back of the house is not visible from where people park and stand, it can wait for spring. Saying so out loud is what makes the rest of your quote credible.
Our own walkthrough on how to soft wash a house and roof covers the application. Wet the surface first, mix to the label, apply with a soft wash system or off a downstream injector, let it sit a few minutes, then rinse. A roof does not get pressure washed. The article is direct about that, and so should you be when a homeowner asks you to take the streaks off her shingles with a wand. That is a roof wash and it is priced like one.
Second, the walkway and the steps.
This is the surface guests actually touch with their feet. It is also the one that shows the difference most clearly, because a cleaned walkway sits right next to an uncleaned driveway and the line between them is visible from the street. A surface cleaner is what keeps that flat work even instead of striped, and it is faster than a wand on the same square footage. Size it to the machine you are running rather than the width you want. Our surface cleaner guide puts roughly 4 GPM as the minimum behind a 20 inch deck and 5 to 6 GPM behind a 24 inch.
Pre treat before you run it. Organic growth and the shade line along the walk come up with a flat work cleaner and dwell, not with another thousand PSI.
Third, anything the guest passes on the way in.
The porch, the railings, the mailbox post, the light by the door, the storm door glass, the gutter faces above the entry. None of these is a line item on its own. All of them together are twenty minutes on a job you are already set up for, and they are the part the homeowner points at when her sister comes in.
Two of them are worth having the right tool for, because they are the ones you will otherwise skip. Gutter faces are a gutter cleaner and a gutter wand rather than a ladder you did not plan to carry. The glass around the door is window cleaning work, and it is the one surface a guest looks through instead of at.
What you run matters more on this job than on a July job
A house wash done in late fall is a house wash the customer is standing in front of two weeks later with thirty people behind her. That raises the bar on everything, starting with the smell.
A house washed with straight bleach smells like bleach for the rest of the afternoon, and that is the one thing a homeowner notices without being told to look. Two products in the Fresh Wash line solve it, and the only difference between them is whether you want the mix to mark where it landed.
Fresh Wash Apple Blossom if you want a dye marker.
It carries a red dye that helps “reduce overspray” by showing you where you already applied, which is worth having on a two story front elevation in flat November light. The page calls it “gentle yet effective on siding, roofs, and delicate surfaces.” Siding runs 1 to 2 ounces per 5 gallons, roofs 2 to 3 ounces.
Fresh Wash Apple Blast for the same apple scent with no dye marking.
It is a “super foaming surfactant for bleach that will cover the smell with a fresh apple scent,” and it clings on vertical surfaces and holds dwell on a roof. Same ratios, 2 to 3 ounces per 5 gallons of mix on roofs and 1 to 2 on siding, up to 3 when you want more out of it.
Run Apple Blossom where overspray onto a neighbor’s car or a customer’s shrubs is a real risk and you want to see your pattern. Run Apple Blast where a dye is one more thing to rinse off light siding or a porch floor. The rest of the line is in soft wash detergents, and anything you want to foam harder is a surfactant question.
Carry a neutralizer too. Delux Defender PM is “designed to neutralize the harsh effects of bleach and sodium hypochlorite,” and 8 ounces in a hose end sprayer is what you rinse the landscaping, the walk and your own equipment with when the wash is done. On a house with beds across the whole front, that two minute rinse is the difference between a referral and a call about a dead hedge in March.
If what holds you back from quoting a whole front elevation is reach rather than chemistry, that is an equipment problem, and it is cheaper to solve in October than in the middle of the push. Our house and roof washing lineup covers it, from soft wash systems with the tank and proportioner together down to the X-Jet that puts mix on a second story gable without one.
The decorations are your deadline, not hers
Here is the part most contractors miss. Once the lights go up, the job gets harder and in some cases it stops being a job at all.
Clips along the gutter line, a wreath on the siding, timers and extension cords running across the porch, inflatables staked out on the lawn you were going to walk your hoses across. You can work around all of it. You will be slower, and you will be the one responsible if something comes down.
So put it in the conversation. It is the truest urgency you have, and it costs her nothing to agree with:
“Easiest for both of us if we get this done before your lights go up. After that I am working around clips and cords.”
That line does two things. It gives her a real reason to book this week instead of in three weeks, and it tells her you have done this before. No discount, no expiring price, no pressure you invented. Just the order the work goes in.
How to call a past customer without turning it into a discount
The list you need is the list you already have. Every homeowner you washed in the last two seasons knows your name, knows your truck, and has already decided you do good work.
Call them. Not a blast, not a coupon.
- Lead with the date, not the price. You are calling about November, not about a deal.
- Tell her what you saw. You have been to the house. “The north side had started coming back when I was there in May” is a reason to call that a discount cannot match.
- Give one date. “I have Thursday the twelfth open” is easier to answer than “let me know if you are interested.”
- Leave the ones who say no alone until spring. They will remember that you did.
A discount tells a customer your price was soft the whole time, and next spring she quotes you against it. A call about a date tells her you are booked up and thinking about her anyway. Same call, opposite effect on what you can charge in April.
One November push against zero
Run the number on your own list. Take what you charge for a front and two sides, and multiply it by the homeowners in your phone who had you out this year. Then take whatever share of them you think would say yes to a call about Thanksgiving. That is what this window is worth to you. The contractor who makes no calls gets none of it, and the equipment, the chemical and the skill were already identical.
So the push comes down to four things. She buys in November because she set a deadline you did not have to invent. What she is paying for is the walk from the car to the front door, so quote the front, the visible sides, and the flat work guests step on. The lights going up are the date that closes the sale. The list you call is the list of people who already know your truck.
What it takes on the truck is short. Apple Blossom or Apple Blast so the house smells like apples instead of bleach, Defender PM for the rinse, a surface cleaner sized to your machine, and enough reach for a second story. The rest of the chemistry is in soft wash detergents, the equipment is in house and roof washing, and our guide to soft washing a house and roof walks the application start to finish.
We have been family owned since 1973, and the people answering the phone have worked this exact window.
Call 1-800-433-2113 and we will make sure you have what this push needs on the truck.
