Do you need to be home for a house wash? Usually not
Usually not. A house soft wash happens entirely outside, so what we need is side access, an outdoor tap and a power point — not you. Leave the side gate unlocked, pets indoors, windows shut and cars off the driveway, and the job runs without you. You get photos and a written report, and the quoted price doesn't move.
The work never comes inside
A house soft wash is an outside job from start to finish. Ladders on the grass, hoses along the side path, a low-pressure fan of solution across render and cladding. Nothing needs to happen in your kitchen. The whole requirement list is short: a way past the side gate, an outdoor tap that actually runs, and a power point if the job calls for one. Meet those three and the presence of a human being is optional.
That surprises people, because other trades have trained us to take the day off. Plumbers and electricians need you there — they are working in your rooms and making calls you have to sign off on. Exterior care is not that. Plenty of our Mosman and Manly customers hand over a gate code and get on with their week. Some have never met their technician. The house still gets washed and the report still lands that afternoon.
Four arrangements, five minutes, done the night before
Unlock the side gate, or send us the code. A padlocked gate is the single most common reason a booked job stalls on the kerb, and it is the one thing we cannot solve from outside. Then keep pets indoors for the visit. A dog and a stranger with a hose is a poor combination, and even the friendly ones follow the water around and end up soaked. Neither takes more than a minute to sort.
Close every window, and any skylight or awning sash that opens. Soft washing is low pressure, but it is still water against glass and frames, and an open window means a wet sill. Move cars off the driveway and clear of the wash zone — overspray is harmless but nobody enjoys the drips. Last, test the outside tap. If it has been dead since the last plumber, we would much rather know beforehand than discover it standing in your side yard.
Rain changes the schedule, not the result
Rain is less of a disaster than people expect. A soft wash relies on dwell time: the solution sits on the surface, does its work on the mould and lichen, then gets rinsed off. Light rain after that rinse changes nothing at all. Heavy rain during the dwell dilutes the solution, so we stop and redo that section properly. Wind is the bigger enemy — a gusty day makes controlled application on upper walls impossible, and we will not pretend otherwise.
If the forecast turns before we arrive, we move you rather than gamble, and you hear about it by message rather than by wondering. Rescheduling costs nothing and does not change your price. What we will not do is push through bad weather to finish a job at an empty house and leave you with a half-result you cannot inspect. An absent owner deserves more caution about conditions, not less.
Photos and a written report do the looking for you
The obvious worry about not being home is that you cannot check the work. So we photograph it. Before and after, wall by wall, including the parts you would never see from the ground — the shaded southern wall, the run behind the pool fence, the render tucked under the eaves. Those photos come with a short written report: what was cleaned, what was used on it, and anything we noticed while we were up there.
That report is also where the unwelcome news goes. Lichen that has etched the render and left a shadow after cleaning. A gutter joint weeping at the seam. Paintwork that has chalked and will not come back to colour no matter what anyone sprays on it. Cleaning has limits, and hiding them only makes the next conversation worse. You get the honest version in writing, with pictures, and you decide what happens next in your own time.
A firm price up front is what makes an empty house workable
None of this holds together if the price is a moving target. The classic unattended-job story runs the same way every time: the operator arrives, decides the walls are worse than expected, and rings the owner mid-morning asking for a few hundred more. We price before we come. The instant quote takes your wall area and storeys and returns a firm, bookable number in about 60 seconds, and it holds unless the property turns out to be materially different from what you described.
A house soft wash starts at $300. Most single-storey washes land between $420 and $960 depending on wall area, and a second storey adds roughly 40 per cent. Knowing that figure before you agree to anything is exactly what makes handing over a gate code reasonable. Book it, unlock the gate, go to work. The photos will be waiting when you get home, and so will the house.