Roof & Gutter Cleaning in Everett, WA

Why we soft wash instead of pressure wash

A pressure washer will absolutely remove moss from a roof. It will also remove a meaningful share of the granules holding the shingle together, and it drives water up underneath the courses where it has no business being. The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association is explicit about this, and most shingle manufacturers treat pressure washing as grounds to void the warranty outright.

Soft washing does the same job chemically rather than mechanically. We apply a low-pressure cleaning solution — roughly the pressure of a garden hose — that kills the moss and algae at the root, then let it work and rinse gently. The organism dies, loses its grip, and weathers off over the following weeks. It looks less dramatic on the day than a pressure wash. It is the reason your roof still has its granules in five years.

What the job actually involves

Every roof is a little different, but the sequence is consistent:

Walk the roof first

We check the condition before anything gets wet — soft decking, lifted or cracked shingles, failed flashing, previous repairs. If we find something structural we tell you before we start, not after.

Protect the landscaping

Cleaning solution that runs off a roof lands on whatever is under it. Beds get pre-wetted and covered, and downspouts get diverted away from anything sensitive.

Clear the bulk moss by hand

Thick moss mats come off with gentle hand tools before anything is applied. Trying to chemically treat a two-inch mat just wastes solution.

Apply and dwell

Low-pressure application across the whole plane — not just the visibly affected areas, because the algae is already established well before you can see the streak.

Gutters cleared and flushed

Debris out by hand, then flushed to confirm the downspouts actually run. We check that discharge is going where it should and not undermining the foundation.

Ground cleanup

Moss and debris off the walkways, beds, and driveway before we leave.

The gutters are half the job

Everett's tree cover is mostly big-leaf maple and Douglas fir, and the two of them fill a gutter on completely different schedules. The maples dump everything in a few weeks in late autumn. The firs shed needles more or less continuously, and fir needles are the ones that pack into a downspout elbow and set like felt.

A blocked gutter in a climate this wet stops being a gutter problem quickly. Water backs up over the fascia, saturates the board behind it, and finds the sheathing. We flush every run after clearing so we can confirm flow rather than assume it, and we will tell you if a section is pitched wrong or pulling away from the fascia — those are the things that quietly cost real money.

What drives the price

Roof cleaning is not priced by square footage alone. Pitch matters — a steep roof is slower and needs more fall protection. Height matters, single storey versus three. Access matters, whether we can get equipment near the structure or have to run hose a long way. And moss severity matters most of all, because a thin algae stain and a four-inch moss mat are genuinely different jobs.

That is exactly why the instant quote asks the questions it asks. Sixty seconds of answers gives you a real number rather than a range wide enough to be useless.

Questions we get asked