How to Wash a New Build Home Before Painting | Pro Prep Tips for a Flawless Finish

So today I'm out here getting ready to paint this new construction house. We won't be painting it today because we're pressure washing. We got done doing the touch-up caulking after the cers. Yo did the initial caulking, which is uh pretty typical if you're following up cers. Uh they typically don't have the best skills caulking. So I did quite a bit of touch-up caulking. Now I'm pressure washing. And you might have the question, why in the world are you pressure washing a brand new house? Well, this house, they started building it right before wintertime. It went through winter time, didn't have gutters. Water was pouring off of it. It got all muddy all over the sides. They eventually put the gutters on, which is not ideal. Water mud got all over the place. But another thing is is the siding comes out here and it's all stacked. They um it's delivered. It's winter time. The job site when I was working here was all muddy and everything. And the siders actually walk on the siding to cut and stuff like that. So, you'll get mud on the siding. sighting gets pretty dirty. There's, you know, rain, snow, splashing on it. It gets dirty. You don't want to leave that on there. When they were uh caulking, they were cutting as they were caulking and um sawdust was stuck to the caulking everywhere. The garage doors, you know, all the cutting inside the garage with the garage doors being up created all kinds of dust and dirt on the garage doors. So, you definitely want to pressure wash it. It's a good idea just to quickly. You don't have to take nearly as much time pressure washing a new home as you do a repaint. And even like the the high exterior stuff, none of that is really exposed to dust and dirt. But just inherently new construction, you look around the job site, it's all dirt. It's a brand new site. Cars coming in and out, contractors coming out, it's just causes dust and dirt. That all eventually lights and lands on, you know, the surface, and you want to get it off before you uh do any type of cleaning. And I know in a lot of new construction, the contractors, the painting contractors don't do any type of cocking at the cers. They don't pressure wash. But it really is uh just to have your job look amazing, look good. Take the little time and effort to do both of those things. So, I'm out here pressure washing using a rotating nozzle. A rotating nozzle is the quickest and simplest way to clean. It agitates the surface, cleans a lot faster, it strips, but you don't need to do any stripping here. We're just doing a light wash. I'm not going to do anything heavy except down here, like this side didn't have gutters on it for the first probably, you know, 2 and 1/2 ft, you know, had dirt all over it. Stuck to the siding. I had to clean that, you know, hit it pretty aggressively. Not enough to like damage the siding. I'm not going to damage the siding, but just to clean it a little bit better. So, here we go. Let's get this thing cleaned, ready to go, and we can begin start painting, yo, after it dries today. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] All right. So, I'm continuing working right along pressure washing. Just going to explain a few other things we're doing. You know, I'm pressure washing the concrete right here because you can see like without the gutters and everything, the new roof, you get all kinds of sand, gravel, dirt. We're going to be masking underneath that, putting cardboard shields under that. We want our masking to stick around the door jam. So, I'm just cleaning off the concrete. It looks good, you know, to the builder, you know, if we clean it off for him. And it's just going to take me, you know, five minutes, 10 minutes to do that. The other thing is is the house where there was no gutters. Um, water was, you know, during the winter time splashing off is splashing not only up on the siding of the house sticking to the side of the house that I'm cleaning, but also the footings. So, the footings are extremely muddy and dirty in a lot of areas. And I'm cleaning that also because once I paint the house, I don't want the footings that are seen to uh look just dingy, dirty, muddy, and everything. So, I'm cleaning those too. Eventually the landscaper is going to run, you know, landscaping up, you know, but there's still going to be some footing exposed. So, you'll see me cleaning the footings, too. Um, I'm all not, you know, really worried about up high except where I see some mud and stuff on the siding. You may wonder how in the crap did, you know, mud get up that high. Once again, I was watching the siders, you know, side out here cuz I was working here at the time doing the interior and they were walking on and cutting the siding, just walking on it. So that's just part of new construction. So I don't want to paint over the mud. I want to clean the mud. But then most of the siding up here is pretty clean. So I don't need to worry about it. So working way way around to the front almost done pressure washing. Literally it would take me, you know, an hour from setup to clean up to do this thing. So it doesn't take a whole lot of time. So let's get back to work. You one tip I'll you'll give you too when starting your pressure washer. The pressure washer is going to be under pressure. If you noticed, it's a lot harder to pull the pressure washer because the uh and start it when the pump is under pressure. So, release the pressure, hold the trigger, and it's a lot easier to pull start. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]