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Everything you clean gets dirty again. Say so, and say when.

Published 2026-08-22 5 min read

The short answer

Your work reverses. What you clean is dirty again in a year or three, depending on trees and shade. Saying that out loud, with a date, is more convincing than any before-and-after — and it books the next visit.

Your trade has one fact about itself that nobody in it will print, and it is the most commercially useful thing you own: the work comes undone. The driveway you did in April is greening again by the second winter. The north wall goes first. The patio under the oak goes fastest of all. Every competitor writes as though the result is permanent, which the customer knows is not true, because he can see the last person’s work on his own neighbor’s path.

Treated as a weakness it makes you sound defensive. Treated as what it is — the shape of the service — it is the difference between a one-off job and a customer for a decade.

The interval is the product

So put it on the page as a plain statement, with the reasons attached: how long the work lasts at his house, and what makes it shorter. Trees overhead. North-facing. Shade all morning. Bad drainage. He recognises his own house in that list, and the moment he does, you have stopped being a commodity that cleans and become somebody who understands why his patio is worse than his neighbor’s.

Then the arithmetic, which is our own and stated as an assumption you should replace with yours: a driveway clean at [amount] every two years for twelve years is six visits. Winning that customer once is worth six times what the first job pays, and the only thing standing between you and the other five is whether he remembers who did the first one. Which he will not, unless you tell him when to expect the next one and then actually write to him then.

And the photographs, which are almost all worthless

This is a visual trade and it has the worst photography of any trade on this list. The standard post is a before shot from the doorstep and an after shot from halfway down the path, in different light, half the surface still wet so it looks darker than it is. It proves nothing. Worse, it reads as a trick, and a customer who suspects a trick discounts everything else on the page.

One camera position, the same hour of day. It is the cheapest change in the trade and almost nobody makes it.

The fix costs nothing. Stand in one place. Photograph before you start. Do the work. Stand in exactly the same place, at roughly the same time of day, and photograph again — dry, not wet. Mark the spot with a bit of tape if you have to. Two frames that line up perfectly are not a claim, they are evidence, and the difference between the two kinds of photograph is the difference between advertising and proof.

What you refuse, and why it sells

There is a second thing this trade does not say out loud: high pressure damages things. Soft wood furs up. Mortar joints wash out. Some roof surfaces are ruined by it and the manufacturer’s warranty goes with them. Render can be driven full of water. The cheap operator with a trailer does not know or does not care, and the customer cannot tell the difference until spring.

So say what you do NOT put pressure on, and what you use instead. It takes four lines, it is true, and it converts the one thing the customer cannot evaluate — technique — into something he can read. Nobody who is about to blast a hundred-year-old brick wall writes that paragraph.

The two blocks — the honest interval, and the proof rule your crew follows on every job

Heading: “How long it stays clean, and what makes it come back sooner”.
The interval, with the reasons: “On most drives around [town] this lasts about [range]. It comes back faster if you have trees overhead, if the surface faces north, if it is shaded before noon, or if water sits after rain. If two of those apply to you, expect the shorter end.”
The reminder, offered rather than imposed: “We will write to you once when it is about due — one message, and no if you say no. Most people would rather be told than notice it themselves in a photograph of their own house.”
What we will not put pressure on: “Soft timber, lime mortar and older pointing, most roof coverings, and render that has cracked. On those we use [soft washing / low pressure and dwell time] instead — slower, and it does not leave you with a repair.”
The proof rule, published so customers can hold you to it: “Every job gets a before and an after from the same spot, at roughly the same time of day, both dry. If we ever send you two photographs that do not line up, ask us why.”
The small print that is really a promise: “If a patch does not come up, we photograph it and tell you what it is — some staining is in the stone and no pressure on earth will move it. We would rather say that than take your money twice.”

The last line is the one worth keeping. Every pressure washer has stood over a patch that will not shift and had the choice between explaining and blasting. Saying in advance which way you go is worth more than any guarantee badge, because a badge is a claim and this is a description of behavior.

What this does to the year

Nothing about the first job changes. What changes is the second, fourth and sixth — the ones that arrive without advertising, from a list you already have, at a time of year you choose rather than the week everybody calls at once. That is the whole difference between a seasonal trade and a business, and it starts with printing the one sentence everybody else is too nervous to write.