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Pricing fence cleaning. By the linear foot, or square foot?

17K views 4 replies 5 participants last post by  Everett Abrams 
#1 ·
Guys, I'd like your experience with computing a bid. Please, pardon my relative ignorance about pressure washing, but I recently got a client who desires to have several parks pressure washed.

How many linear feet of 6.5 foot wood fence can an average guy pressure wash per hour? I have a neighborhood with several thousand feet of wood fencing that needs to be pressure washed and don't know the first thing about how to price it.

I'll be renting a 500 gal water trailer and a skid mounted/truck bed hot water pressure washer.

Thanks, guys.
 
#3 ·
With out seeing how dirty the fence is and your experience cleaning wood, I would guess 100-140 lin ft a hour. Hot water is not needed to clean wood. Envirospec has a good powdered wood cleaner, I think it's called restore. As for pricing, I am in FL and prices are very low. Good luck
 
#5 ·
Foghorn,

Sorry I didn't see this before now. Hot water is not used on wood as it causes damage. When performing work on a fence make sure you use a cleaner or stripper to minimize the pressure needed, as alluded to above, to prevent scarring and to leave a more consistent result. Knotty cedar stockade fencing will turn out VERY blotchy if you do not do this right. In regards to pricing, especially for someone new it is best to work by linear or square footage. A job that an experienced contractor with the best, most efficient equipment may take 10 hours on a job where someone else may take 15 hours for the same job. If you both charge at $100/hr. guess who is going to get the job every time? After getting experience you will gain knowledge on time though. In regards to square footage I am assuming you are talking about 6x8 sections of fence. This is 48/sq.ft. per side or 96 sq.ft. per section. Include the post and call it 50 & 100. If it is stockade fencing and you charge $.50/sq.ft. that is $50/section. If it is Board-on-Board fencing(much more time consuming) and you charge $1/sq.ft that is $100 per section. As stated above do the research on posts from this and other bulletin boards and it will help. I hope I have been helpful and contact me if you need further assistance. Good luck with the job.
 
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