novitativa
New member
Hey all,
This post will be detailing how I got my pressure washing business up and running, and the exact steps I took to do it. Last year, I opened up my first real business focusing on pressure washing. I worked part time on the weekends while working my full-time job. I brought in around $10k from pressure washing my first year, with about $4.5k in expenses (around $5.5k profit). This year, I've been taking a lot of vacation days from work and washing on those days (washing 3-4 times a week) making $2k/week consistently over the past month. Pressure washing is a relatively straight forward and simple business that is a great introduction to getting your hands dirty (or clean if you're a good pressure washer) in owning and operating a business.
1) - Equipment you'll need to purchase (what I started with)
Start putting your yard signs at busy intersections where people have to stop. Red lights or stop signs are the best, this gives someone a chance to snap a picture of your sign or call you up then and there. Focus on getting your first customers, learning how to communicate and set up jobs. When setting up jobs, don't tell them an exact time, tell them the time range of either between 8 AM to 12 PM or 12 PM to 4 PM (or whatever your business hours are). You'll never exactly be on time, so it's important to give them a time range at least a couple hours apart to give you time for delays. The day of the job, give the client a courtesy text that you'll be doing the cleaning that day.
3) - How to actually wash
Before washing anyone's property, make sure you're insured. You can get temporary insurance at a few places, I use thimble for daily insurance.
Before starting your pressure washer, make sure its hooked up to a water source or the pump will fry in seconds. Watch a few videos on how to start a pressure washer before getting started, and never leave a pressure washer running for more than a minute or so without shooting water out or you'll also fry the pump. If you're ever unsure of how to wash something, don't wash it and ask someone online, Facebook groups are useful for this you can just post a picture on a pressure washing group page and ask someone how to do it. The most common things you'll wash are concrete and vinyl siding. These are both very simple. Concrete you'll use a surface cleaner on at 3000 psi, then rinse any excess dirt off with a pressure tip. House/vinyl washing is a bit more complex, you'll need pool shock (bleach @ 12.5% strength), a surfactant (soap that makes something stick, I use e-lemonator). You'll put some pool shock in a 5 gallon bucket, and mix it with water and a VERY SMALL amount of surfactant (like one cap). Before you spray any chemical mix, water any plants or grass around the area you'll be washing (this protects the plants from dying if any chemical gets on it). Then you'll spray the chemical mix you made on the house with either a downstream injector - this is called down streaming (you'll need a j-rod tip) or an x-jet (all you'll need for this is an x-jet). You'll let it sit for 2-5 minutes, then rinse it off with all water and it'll look nice and sparkly, killing any mold and such.
4)- Establishing the business - insurance, getting paid, going legal, growth potential of the business
Once you've gotten 10 or so customers, and want to continue with the business, it's time to start thinking about the long-term potential of the business. Do you want to free your time from working? Do you just want to be an owner operator? Think about the wants and needs you have for your ideal life. There's nothing wrong with pressure washing on the weekends and just making this a side hustle, you just need to decide what you want out of your business.
Just get out there and do it. Starting this business was one of the best life decisions I've ever had, and it's helping me get my start in entrepreneurship. It seems scary, but you will be 100x happier taking action than sitting in your room waiting for something to come to you. Create a high pay for your time today, and consider your financial goals for tomorrow.
This post will be detailing how I got my pressure washing business up and running, and the exact steps I took to do it. Last year, I opened up my first real business focusing on pressure washing. I worked part time on the weekends while working my full-time job. I brought in around $10k from pressure washing my first year, with about $4.5k in expenses (around $5.5k profit). This year, I've been taking a lot of vacation days from work and washing on those days (washing 3-4 times a week) making $2k/week consistently over the past month. Pressure washing is a relatively straight forward and simple business that is a great introduction to getting your hands dirty (or clean if you're a good pressure washer) in owning and operating a business.
1) - Equipment you'll need to purchase (what I started with)
- $1600~ for equipment -- brand new OR used 4 gpm pressure washer (try to get one with a direct drive pump), surface cleaner (for concrete cleaning), hoses (1 100 ft garden hose, 1 100 ft pressure hose), reels, (2) 5 gallon gas cans, rubber boots for your feet, eye/ear protection and special equipment for house washing (j-rod and downstream injector)
- $50 for graphic design -- logo, marketing materials -- or just do it yourself for free
- $0 for website hosting (optional in the beginning)-- I was already hosting a web site for one of my side hustles so I used the $50/yr hosting on there to add my website for free
- $300 for physical marketing materials -- yard signs - use UZmarketing - then buy H stakes on Amazon.
- $100 for online marketing materials (optional in the beginning) -- FB ads, google ads.
- $30-$40/month for Jobber (optional in the beginning, I used Zoho CRM for my first year and it worked fine).
Start putting your yard signs at busy intersections where people have to stop. Red lights or stop signs are the best, this gives someone a chance to snap a picture of your sign or call you up then and there. Focus on getting your first customers, learning how to communicate and set up jobs. When setting up jobs, don't tell them an exact time, tell them the time range of either between 8 AM to 12 PM or 12 PM to 4 PM (or whatever your business hours are). You'll never exactly be on time, so it's important to give them a time range at least a couple hours apart to give you time for delays. The day of the job, give the client a courtesy text that you'll be doing the cleaning that day.
3) - How to actually wash
Before washing anyone's property, make sure you're insured. You can get temporary insurance at a few places, I use thimble for daily insurance.
Before starting your pressure washer, make sure its hooked up to a water source or the pump will fry in seconds. Watch a few videos on how to start a pressure washer before getting started, and never leave a pressure washer running for more than a minute or so without shooting water out or you'll also fry the pump. If you're ever unsure of how to wash something, don't wash it and ask someone online, Facebook groups are useful for this you can just post a picture on a pressure washing group page and ask someone how to do it. The most common things you'll wash are concrete and vinyl siding. These are both very simple. Concrete you'll use a surface cleaner on at 3000 psi, then rinse any excess dirt off with a pressure tip. House/vinyl washing is a bit more complex, you'll need pool shock (bleach @ 12.5% strength), a surfactant (soap that makes something stick, I use e-lemonator). You'll put some pool shock in a 5 gallon bucket, and mix it with water and a VERY SMALL amount of surfactant (like one cap). Before you spray any chemical mix, water any plants or grass around the area you'll be washing (this protects the plants from dying if any chemical gets on it). Then you'll spray the chemical mix you made on the house with either a downstream injector - this is called down streaming (you'll need a j-rod tip) or an x-jet (all you'll need for this is an x-jet). You'll let it sit for 2-5 minutes, then rinse it off with all water and it'll look nice and sparkly, killing any mold and such.
4)- Establishing the business - insurance, getting paid, going legal, growth potential of the business
Once you've gotten 10 or so customers, and want to continue with the business, it's time to start thinking about the long-term potential of the business. Do you want to free your time from working? Do you just want to be an owner operator? Think about the wants and needs you have for your ideal life. There's nothing wrong with pressure washing on the weekends and just making this a side hustle, you just need to decide what you want out of your business.
- Insurance- I use thimble for insurance. I believe I pay $150-$200 a month for insurance when I pay monthly, or around $20-$30 when I pay daily.
- Going legal- If you want to set up a legitimate business, start with an LLC - very simple to setup, and has a lot more protection than a sole propeitorship
- Pricing- I price everything over the phone. I price concrete by having the customer just sending me pictures of it, and for house washing I get their address, google it, then multiply their homes square footage by 14 cents. So: Home square footage \ .14 = quote price.* Ex: 2200 sq ft * .14 = $308
- Getting paid- Obviously cash is king, but checks and Zelle work whenever cash doesn't. You can utilize Jobber to set up credit card payments, but 99% of the time my customers pay with cash, check or Zelle.
- Establishing a minimum- Once you start having work come in, you're going to want to establish a minimum. A minimum is the lowest price your willing to go to a customers house for. Essentially if a customer wants a very small amount of work done, this is your minimum price you quote them at. For example, if someone wanted a small concrete patio done that would take me 20 minutes, they'd be paying my minimum. When I first started, my minimum was $130, this year I jumped it to $150, now with how busy I am my minimum is $200.
- Growth potential of business- In my opinion, pressure washing is quite hard to scale, and lots of liability to add workers. You need to be in a region of high mold growth that warrants lots of soft washing (house/vinyl washing). I'm personally using pressure washing as a way to jumpstart my lawn care business which has far higher scalability in my area. Personally, my company is LLC'd under a lawn care/landscaping business (I offer those services as well) since that's where I see large scaling opportunity.
- Don't overwhelm yourself. Get started today, keep it simple, and get out there and start working. Worst thing that happens is you decide this isn't for you and you try something else.
- Online marketing is extremely competitive, you have to sink in a lot of time figuring out what ads work and what doesn't. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, you'll learn a lot about copy writing and what works for each platform, but not the best for testing out the business model.
- For service-based businesses, yard signs will bring in a LOT of high-paying work.
- Don't be afraid to talk to people or market physically, people love a hard-working, polite, customer service-oriented business owner. I've been in neighborhoods where I did 2 jobs and left doing an extra job and quoting 4 other jobs in the $200-$500 area.
- Join forums and Facebook groups dedicated to pressure washing. This helped me tremendously and I gained a mentor within a few days of being in these places.
Just get out there and do it. Starting this business was one of the best life decisions I've ever had, and it's helping me get my start in entrepreneurship. It seems scary, but you will be 100x happier taking action than sitting in your room waiting for something to come to you. Create a high pay for your time today, and consider your financial goals for tomorrow.