The six lines a complete scope states
- Each surface, and what it is made of
- Photos of the worst areas, not the best
- The water source, and whether it works
- Where run-off drains, and onto what
- Access windows, gates, parking and notice
- What is explicitly excluded
Surface material is the line most scopes leave out, and it is the one that changes both the method and the price the most. Concrete flatwork wants pressure and heat. Limestone, stucco, painted siding and wood do not — pressure erodes soft stone and strips coatings, so those surfaces are soft washed at roughly garden-hose pressure with dwell time doing the work instead of force. A scope that says “wash the exterior” without naming the materials has not yet decided which of those two jobs it is buying, which is why estate exterior washing and limestone cleaning are quoted as separate scopes from washing commercial hardscape.
Why two bids on the same property can differ by three times
Two honest contractors can price the same lot very differently, because they are not bidding the same job. The gaps, in roughly the order they cost you money:
- Hot water or cold. Grease and oil do not lift with cold water — it spreads them outward into a gray halo and drives them into the pores. Hot water with a degreaser and dwell time is a different machine and a longer visit.
- One pass, or pre-treat and dwell. A surface cleaner run once over a stained pad looks better without being clean. Pre-treating, letting the solution work and then rinsing is the version that lasts.
- What is included at the edges. Dumpster pads, grease alleys, the back door and the curb line are the areas most often left out of a low bid, and most often the reason the property still looks dirty afterwards.
- Furniture, fixtures and signage. Moved and washed, or worked around. Those are different day lengths.
- Who supplies water, and how run-off is recovered. A site with no usable hose bib means a tank and refills, and recovering wash water is real time on the clock.
- How many visits it takes. The first wash of a surface that has never been cleaned is a restoration visit, not the maintenance visit after it. A bid pricing them identically has guessed wrong on one.
None of that makes the cheap bid dishonest — it makes it a different scope. Normalize the six lines above and the numbers usually converge.
Photograph the worst areas, not the best
The instinct is to send the photos the property looks good in. Those are exactly the photos that produce a bid which changes on arrival. Send the corner of the pad nobody looks at, the drive lane where the oil is, the stain you have stopped noticing, and anything you do not want touched — signage, up-lighting, planting beds, a threshold that already leaks. Include one wide shot per area: a close-up on its own gives no indication of whether a stain is four feet across or forty, and area is most of the estimate.
Water, and where it goes afterwards
These are two separate questions, and buyers usually ask only the first.
Where the water comes from. A hose bib on the building, whether it works, what pressure it delivers, and whether it is on a meter someone is watching. Some downtown sites have no usable exterior tap at all, which means a tank and a night planned around refills.
Where the water goes. Rain is allowed to enter a storm drain. Wash water carrying oil, grease or detergent is not rain, and a storm system discharges to a creek rather than to a treatment plant — so it has to be contained, blocked at the inlet and recovered, or routed to a landscaped area that can absorb it. The obligation follows the property rather than the contractor, which is a good reason to ask how a bidder handles it before they are on site. The commercial pressure washing pillar covers how that is managed on hardscape in full.
Access is the schedule
Almost all commercial washing happens when the property is not in use, so the access details are not administrative trivia — they decide which night the work can happen on. Write down the gate and lock codes and who holds them; the alarm contact and what happens if a panel trips at 3am; badge, escort or freight-elevator requirements downtown and the hours that window is genuinely open; where the truck and trailer park; who notifies tenants; and the certificate of insurance, agreed in advance rather than at a gate at 5am.
Then the deadline behind the deadline. A surface still wet when the doors open is a failed job rather than a finished one, so the real window is not “overnight” — it is the time between the last person leaving and the first arriving, minus drying. Weather takes a bite out of that too; you do not start a wash ahead of a front.
The line that prevents the argument: what is excluded
The most valuable line in an exterior scope is the one listing what is not included, and it is the line almost nobody writes down. These are stated up front on every scope we issue:
- No hoods, ducts or exhaust systems. That is certified NFPA 96 work and we refer it to certified partners. On a restaurant we wash what the exhaust lands on, not the exhaust.
- No sealing, striping, resurfacing or repair. Washing reveals cracking, spalling and faded striping. It does not fix any of them.
- No stain guaranteed before we have seen it. Oil soaked into porous concrete for years is below the surface, not on it, and can ghost back as it wicks up.
- Rust, efflorescence, etching, acid damage and failed sealer are not soil. They do not wash off, and they are separate problems with separate fixes.
- No published per-square-foot rate. Every property is quoted in writing after a walkthrough.