Owning a home comes with its fair share of hidden expenses. Even when you hire a professional, you can still incur some unplanned costs. One of the best things you can do to increase your home’s curbside appeal is to have it professionally cleaned through a soft wash process. Typically, a technician will come out, assess the house, and provide you with a quote to get the job done, and more often than not, the final cost is within an acceptable range of that quote. It’s common practice for home exterior cleaning specialists to tap into your water supply. And some professionals will even require that they fill their water tank to ensure the water supply can keep up with their machines. The tech completes the work, you’ve paid the invoice, and then a few weeks later, you get your water bill. What does that look like? Are you shocked? Do you even notice a difference? The answer can be determined mathematically.
Pressure washers all output water at a given unit of measurement, Gallons Per Minute. So multiplying the machine’s GPM times the amount of time the technician is onsite can give you an approximation of how much water has been used. Keep in mind; there is a lot of time when the technician is not using water, like when the machine is sitting idle, navigating the home, or packing up. So, a good rule of thumb is to think about it in halves. If the technician is on site for 2 hours, they are probably dispensing water consistently for only about 1 hour of that time.
Pressure washers purchased at big box stores like Home Depot or Lowes will typically output between 2.5-3 Gallons Per Minute. If the technician is there for 3 hours, then we can take 180 Minutes (or 3 Hours) divided by 2 (to account for time not actively using water) times 3 (for the gallons per minute of the machine). That comes to about 270 gallons of water. More powerful machines will use more water but cut down the time dramatically. Seasoned professionals will use 8-10 GPM machines but will only need about 1.5 hours to do the same work. So 90 minutes divided by 2 times 8 GPM comes to about 360 gallons of water. It’s safe to assume that smaller setups will use about 100 gallons per hour that the technician is on the job, and larger mounted equipment will consume about 270 gallons per hour. Now that we know how much water is being used, how does this affect your bill?
Between getting a glass of water, flushing the toilet, taking a shower, and all the other ways we consume water, Statista.com reports that the average household of 4 uses about 100 gallons of water per person per day. That’s over 12,000 gallons per month. At that rate, the average water bill is approximately $72.93 per month. That’s about $0.006 per gallon. So, when calculating how much your water bill will increase for the average home wash, we are talking about $1.62 - $2.16. If a technician were to be there for an entire 8 hour workday with heavy-duty equipment, your bill would only increase $28.80.
I think it’s safe to say that $1-3 won’t break the bank. It is a far cry from what it would cost to have a technician bring a water supply which can be hundreds of dollars. If you are considering getting your home professionally cleaned, you can have peace of mind knowing that you will not have a surprise water bill.