 Here at Under Pressure, we love when our snowbird clients flock here to their second homes in Southwest Florida. November and December are typically the months when we get the bulk of our snowbirds back. Here are some of the reasons you should contact us to make sure everything is ready on your property before you even get on the road for the trip back here.
Some of the same reasons that snowbirds seek out Florida for the winter—such as the climate—also can affect the appearance of your home. The heat and humidity encourage the accumulation of algae, mold and mildew, which can form on the exterior of your home or in your driveway. Once mildew is allowed to gain a foothold, it can be hard to remove. Mildew also can lead to slips, trips, and falls if it forms on concrete or pavers. That’s why pressure washing in Fort Myers and throughout Southwest Florida is recommended, especially for snowbird homes that have been dormant for several months. The Advantages of Pressure Washing You should consider having your home pressure washed before arriving for snowbird season, for the following reasons: It saves money – Maintaining two homes is expensive. You want to find ways to cut costs any way you can. Having your home pressure washed by professionals will save you money in the long run. Proper cleaning prevents the accumulation of mold and mildew on your home’s exterior which, if allowed to go unchecked, will ruin the paint job on your home and eventually lead to dry rot. Repainting and replacing materials on the outside of your home in Southwest Florida will have a much higher price tag than paying for a pressure wash. It keeps you healthy – Mold and mildew can be carriers of allergens. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website explains, mold and mildew can trigger an allergic reaction people who already suffer from seasonal allergies, causing symptoms including nasal congestion, and itchy skin or eyes. If you have asthma, mold and mildew can worsen your condition. Anyone with a suppressed immune system, or some other chronic respiratory ailment is at the greatest risk of health problems associated with mold and mildew exposure. Pressure washing eliminates these threats. It protects the value of your home – You worked hard, scrimped, and saved to have the luxury of being able to come to Florida for the winter, and spend part of your “golden years” enjoying life in a sub-tropical climate. Having a clean, well-maintained exterior of your home enhances its “curb appeal” and, with it, maintains property value when the day comes that you may decide to sell. Regular pressure washings help preserve your paint job and siding, too. The Advantages of Using Under Pressure The best course of action is to add pressure washing to your regular schedule of maintenance on your snowbird home. Just like your body, your clothes, and your teeth, you need to have your home cleaned regularly, especially given the environmental factors of living in Southwest Florida. The frequency might fluctuate due to the amount of annual rainfall, but a good general rule of thumb is to have your home pressure washed once each year. Thanks to the pros at Under Pressure, you can have this completed at your snowbird home before you’ve even returned to Florida. At Under Pressure, we use our innovative soft wash technique, which entails lightly spraying the exterior, driveway, and walkways with a gentle cleanser and then rinsing it off by using a light spray. We avoid using any high pressure on the wash or rinse to avoid damaging your paint job or any other elements of your home’s exterior. Our surface cleaner is used on driveways, preventing any missed spots or “tiger striped” look. For homes with pavers, we can even re-sand them, making sure they remain solid and stable to mitigate any potential tripping hazards. You’ve invested in your snowbird home. Keep it looking great and minimize your risk of mold exposure by letting the team at Under Pressure perform a pressure washing even before you arrive. Schedule your appointment today by calling (239) 218-5085. Under Pressure proudly serves Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, and other communities in Southwest Florida.
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 You’ve got a home in an gated community because you love the amenities that community has, and you love that your home will hold it’s real estate value. One of the reasons those types of communities hold their value is the rules set forth by the Home Owner Association (HOA), which keeps certain standards that add to your curb appeal. Whether or not you are an HOA board member, if you are a good community member, you’ll pay close attention to be sure that community is kept up properly. Because no matter how much time you spend making your own home look beautiful, when you live in a gated community, it’s the community as a whole that any potential buyer is buying into.
Take a good look at your community’s common areas. Are the club house, pool and gardens, benches and sidewalks being kept clean and tidy? Or is the roof of the club-house black with mold streaks and the pavers on the pool deck looking faded and tired? Because, if the common areas look dingy, the curb appeal will be gone for the potential buyer. Here in Southwest Florida, it only takes a few months of rain and heat and humidity before roofs, pavers, sidewalks and other concrete hardscapes get covered in mold and algae and mildew. Aside from looking unsightly, these living organisms eat away at whatever they are growing on, weakening roof tiles and staining concrete. This can cause costly repairs, and decrease property values when not taken care of. Algae and mold is also slippery when wet, so if you’ve got it growing in parking lots, driveways or pavers around the community pool, it also becomes a slip and fall hazard for community residents. HOAs are important, not only for keeping the value of your home as high as possible, but also to keep your community safe. Residential communities that feature common areas need regular maintenance to keep these areas safe and clean. Slippery sidewalk algae needs to be removed as quickly as possible to keep the community safe. Maintaining safe public spaces can help avoid potential legal action so no one gets injured due to the neglected maintenance of common areas. Signing a maintenance contract with Under Pressure to pressure wash community areas and amenities every few months is one of the most effective way to keep these areas safe and clean. Pressure washing combats oil buildup, graffiti, mildew, algae, grime, and rust while restoring the hard surfaces on parking lots, boat docks, and sidewalks. Regular commercial pressure washing is a small investment that can help the bottom line of your community in many positive ways. Having a clean, welcoming community will attract new residents, and keep current residents safe and happy. At Under Pressure, we understand that large-scale community cleanings require even more attention to detail, and our techs are on top of that. We are available for one-time cleanings, but we highly recommend a maintenance contract that provides periodic scheduled cleanings. Once we have agreed on a time interval for your community’s cleanings, Under Pressure will take care of the rest. Our pressure washing treatments are sure to get your sidewalks, gutters, exterior buildings, pool decks or patios, guard houses and playgrounds clean and looking like new. We are all about offering you quality service at reasonable prices. Give us a call today for a free estimate on our large community cleanings. Call UnderPressure at 239-218-5085!  When you purchase a townhouse or home in a planned development or gated community here in Southwest Florida, you are often obligated to join that community’s homeowner’s association (HOA), pay monthly or annual fees for the upkeep of common areas, and maintain your home within the HOA'.
In addition to maintaining common areas, HOAs also set out certain rules that all residents must follow called convenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs). Rules may include what color front door you may have, whether you are allowed to line dry your laundry outside, whether you can have a satellite dish, the size and type of pets permitted, and so on. In a subdivision with individual homes, regulations may include what color you can paint your home, the exterior landscaping you can do, the types of vehicles you can park on the street or in your driveway (no RVs, for example), permissible type and height of fences, and restrictions on window coverings for windows facing the street. HOA’s will also govern how well you maintain your residence and will often enforce how well you maintain your property, which can include everything from lawn maintenance to keeping your roof clear of mildew and your driveway and lanai clean as well. While all of this can be a pain, remember the covenants are there to help maintain the quality of life for the entire community and to protect property values for all of the owners. No one likes to get a letter saying they’ve broken the rules and may be being charged a fine by the HOA if they don’t maintain their property properly. However, the HOA is obligated to fairly and consistently enforce governing documents. If it didn’t, chaos would ensue. Here at Under Pressure, we call those HOA maintenance letters “nastygrams.” This is the time of year in SWFL, when many HOA’s send out their maintenance “nastygrams.” And if you’ve gotten a “nastygram” about mold and mildew on your roof, your driveway, your lanai or your sidewalk, we want you to know that we are here to help you avoid getting a fine from your HOA. Call us now and we will get that dirt and mildew handled immediately, getting you out of hot water with your association, and making your home looking fantastic  Realtors often talk about “curb appeal” when selling your home, but the truth is, you want your home to look gorgeous while you’re living in it even if you have no intention of selling, right? The problem is, when people talk about curb appeal, they overlook one of the most obvious parts of it, which is their concrete driveway, front walk ways, sidewalks, and actual curb! The concrete areas around your home get stained by many things, meanwhile they are literally the first place your guest’s shoes hit the ground. Acting like a sponge, concrete driveways absorb contaminants, dirt, and grime. There are several kinds of stains your concrete hardscapes can get.
Left untreated, these kinds of stains actually weaken your driveway, making it more susceptible to cracking and deterioration. Having a new driveway installed is expensive, so why not simply be sure to maintain it by getting it pressure washed twice a year? Concrete looks like it’s a solid and invincible surface that you could easily power wash yourself, however this is one of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to pressure washing. People often underestimate the power of a jet of water, use the wrong nozzle or the wrong level of pressure and damage their hardscapes easily. Most people don’t understand how powerful a pressurized stream of water can be. It is possible to cause significant, visible damage in the form of pitting, etched lines and general surface degradation if you don’t know what you’re doing. Etching is slightly blasting tiny bits of concrete off, engraving lines in the concrete which show up especially when the concrete is wet. One of the other issues with trying to pressure wash your own driveway is that quite often the non-commercial level pressure washers are weaker than what we use as professionals. So rather than cleaning off biologicals, they merely spread the mold spores around, making your driveway even more susceptible to a widespread mold problem just a few months down the line. Concrete hardscapes beautify your home’s landscaping, save water, and provide solid surfaces for parking, walking and entertaining. Let us help you improve their durability and longevity with a maintenance contract that will have us pressure wash your home twice a year, which will allow you to enjoy the beauty of your patios, walkways, sidewalks and driveways long after they are installed. Give us a call at Under Pressure at 239-218-5085.  You already know that you should get your roof and pavers power washed on a regular basis to have it looking fantastic, but believe it or not, there are some other great reasons to hire Underpressure. Here are just a few reasons to consider getting power washing done.
Here at Under Pressure, we recommend getting your entire exterior washed every few years as part of the regular maintenance for your home. Before you repaint, or perhaps instead of repainting your exterior, give us a call at Under Pressure at 239-218-5085.  It’s the perfect time of year to get your roof, pavers, driveway or house pressure washed, because here in Southwest Florida it’s fairly dry right now. There’s a lot to consider when you are hiring a company though, so we’ve put together a quick guide to help keep you from getting overwhelmed, or ripped off. So here’s a few things to look for.
By following these simple steps, we know you will be able to find the right company for you, and of course we are hoping Underpressure Cleaning and Sealing Services comes out at the top of your list. Give us a call today for a free estimate! 239-218-5085  The construction on your brand new home in your brand new community is finally complete and you are excited to be moving into it! It’s got a shiny brand spanking new roof on it, so the chances are good that you haven’t even thought about roof cleaning at all. But believe it or not, now is the best time for you to call us to get your roof treated with our BioWash treatment. Here are some reasons why.
So while it may not be at the top of your move-in list at the moment, we hope we’ve given you something to think about in terms of maintaining your new home’s curb appeal. Call us today to treat your roof with this environmentally and roof-friendly product. Give us a call at Under Pressure at 866-579-6942.   We are finally past our rainy season here in Southwest Florida. But you may find that your roof now looks terrible after all of our summertime heat and humidity. That’s the perfect climate for mold, mildew and bacteria to leave ugly streak marks on your roof. And those streaks are more than unsightly, they are also destructive to your roofing materials. Necessity is the mother of invention, and our heat and humidity in Florida is just one reason the roof cleaning industry was started right here.
Back when it was started in the 1980’s, roof-cleaning companies used pressure washers to clean roofs, and unfortunately, many of our competitors still do. However, at Under Pressure, we never pressure wash a roof, because pressure washing is really bad for all types of roofs. For years we’ve used a soft-wash technique. We love to run ahead of the pack though, and we do that through always keeping up with cutting edge technologies and techniques. To that end we recently added a new “green” cleaning solution and application process to clean roofs in a way that kills algae, but not your plants. Our green cleaning technique not only removes those black streaks but kills the mold, mildew and algae at the root, and continues to kill new growth. Let’s start by discussing those black streaks for a moment, because pressure washing may make it look like it’s gotten rid of them, but it will only be a few months before you start to see those ugly streaks again. That’s because the black streaks aren’t “dirt.” The main culprit of those black streaky roof stains is a bacteria called Gloeocapsa Magma. It’s a bacteria! That means it’s a living organism—it’s a plant that will put down roots. Other forms of microorganisms can be found in union with the bacteria, including mold, fungi, algae, mildew, lichen, and moss. When you pressure wash, you do not blow the roots off the roof, so the bacteria, mold and mildew grow back quickly. The filament root system of the fungi and algae are growing on, and digging in to your roof. Fungi and algae that are growing on a roof have root systems that can cause damage to shingles such as uplifting, spreading of shingles, and decomposition. The roots open up tiny cracks in the shingles, tiles or other roofing materials. Many of these organisms growing on roofing surfaces do much of the same thing. They spread the shingle like a fan. Because the shingle is attached on the back, the front ends of the shingle flare and roll. This is because the shingle is widened at the front more so than the back. Many roofing surfaces are made with materials that can be metabolized by these microorganisms. For example, shingles contain limestone, which contains phosphates, an excellent source of nutrients for algae, mildew, and bacteria to feed on. These microorganisms will break down a roofing surface and cause decomposition. This in turn, will also aid the process of erosion caused by running water such as rainfall. The good news is that through a new cutting edge solution we use here at Under Pressure called BioWash, these microorganism stains can be safely removed! The new solution is completely safe for all of your landscape plantings and grass because it’s biodegradable. It’s effective on all kinds of roof tiles. The formulation of the product and the application techniques the company trained us in allows the cleaning solution to have a longer dwell or linger time, which means less run off, and increased results from just one application. The product does not damage tiles and returns them to their original color over time. One of the best things about this product, is that it continues to work over time, deeply cleaning and preventing the stains from returning, when you schedule regular preventative services with us. Our BioWash service is an industry first, and we hope you’ll call us today to clean your roof with this environmentally and roof friendly product. If you’re interested in having the black stains on your roof removed safely and with long-lasting results, give us a call at Under Pressure at 866-579-6942.  When you buy a home in a development community, you’ve chosen that community for many reasons, one of which is the fact that those communities typically hold their real estate value, due to the guidelines set forth by the Home Owner Association (HOA). Most HOA’s have fairly strict guidelines about how buildings and houses need to look: these can include things like paint colors, landscaping requirements, and how you keep your home and yard looking in general. After all, it’s curb appeal that had you buy your home in the community and it’s a first impression that captures any buyer’s attention.
But HOAs are also in charge of keeping the common areas of the community looking their best. This may include the community pool and gardens, the club house, the sidewalks, and the benches and park areas, it may include areas for golf carts, or bus stops that are in the community. Because if those areas of the community don’t look nice, it won’t matter what your own home looks like, the curb appeal is gone for the potential buyer looking at the community. That’s why it’s so important that HOAs keep the common community areas clean and beautiful. Commercial pressure washing is effective for both municipalities and HOAs in keeping these amenities clean and inviting. Pressure washing combats oil buildup, graffiti, mildew, algae, grime, and rust while restoring the hard surfaces on parking lots, boat docks, and sidewalks. Having a clean, welcoming community will attract new commerce, new residents and also keeps your buildings and homes looking beautiful. But beauty is not the only reason to have regularly scheduled pressure washing treatments done to your common areas. Safety is also a factor. Here in Southwest Florida, there’s a good chance the copious amounts of rain we’ve been getting over the summer months left you with algae growth, which is both unsightly, but also slippery if on a sidewalk. HOAs are hired to not only keep the value of your home as high as possible, but also to keep your community safe. Residential communities that feature common areas need regular maintenance to keep these areas safe and clean. Slippery sidewalk algae needs to be removed as quickly as possible to keep the community safe. Maintaining safe public spaces can help avoid potential legal action so no one gets injured due to the neglected maintenance of common areas. At Under Pressure, we help HOA’s complete the cleaning requirements necessary for both safety and value in your community. Maintenance of common areas, community-owned structures, parks and parking lots is cheap compared to the costly repairs, blight, and decreasing property values that can happen if you don’t take care of them. Regular commercial pressure washing is a small investment that can help the bottom line of your community in many positive ways. Carefully choose your commercial power washing partner. At Under Pressure, we understand that large scale cleanings require large scale attention to detail. We are available for one-time cleanings, but we specialize in periodic scheduled cleanings. Once we have agreed on a time interval for your community’s cleanings, Under Pressure will take care of the rest. Our pressure washing treatments are sure to get your sidewalks, gutters, exterior buildings, pool decks or patios, guard houses and playgrounds clean and looking like new. We are all about offering you quality service at reasonable prices. Give us a call today at 239-218-5085 for a free estimate on our large community cleanings.  When you purchase a townhouse or home in a planned development or gated community here in Southwest Florida, you are often obligated to join that community’s homeowner’s association (HOA), pay monthly or annual fees for the upkeep of common areas, and maintain your home within the HOA'.
In addition to maintaining common areas, HOAs also set out certain rules that all residents must follow called convenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs). Rules may include what color front door you may have, whether you are allowed to line dry your laundry outside, whether you can have a satellite dish, the size and type of pets permitted, and so on. In a subdivision with individual homes, regulations may include what color you can paint your home, the exterior landscaping you can do, the types of vehicles you can park on the street or in your driveway (no RVs, for example), permissible type and height of fences, and restrictions on window coverings for windows facing the street. HOA’s will also govern how well you maintain your residence and will often enforce how well you maintain your property, which can include everything from lawn maintenance to keeping your roof clear of mildew and your driveway and lanai clean as well. While all of this can be a pain, remember the covenants are there to help maintain the quality of life for the entire community and to protect property values for all of the owners. No one likes to get a letter saying they’ve broken the rules and may be being charged a fine by the HOA if they don’t maintain their property properly. However, the HOA is obligated to fairly and consistently enforce governing documents. If it didn’t, chaos would ensue. Here at Under Pressure, we call those HOA maintenance letters “nastygrams.” This is the time of year in SWFL, when many HOA’s send out their maintenance “nastygrams.” And if you’ve gotten a “nastygram” about mold and mildew on your roof, your driveway, your lanai or your sidewalk, we want you to know that we are here to help you avoid getting a fine from your HOA. Call us now and we will get that dirt and mildew handled immediately, getting you out of hot water with your association, and making your home looking fantastic |
AuthorPeter LeBlanc Under Pressure Cleaning & Sealing Services LLC
Peter LeBlanc - Owner/Operator 239-218-5085 • peter@underpressurehomewashing.com Proudly Serving Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Naples, Estero, Bonita Springs, Port Charlotte, Alva © 2021 Copyright. All Rights Reserved. No Unauthorized use of materials on this site is permitted by law. Website maintained by Visitivity Inc.
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