Deck Cleaning Cost Calculator

How to price deck cleaning and sealing

Decks split into two jobs that don't price the same, and the material is what decides which one you're on. Wood — pressure-treated pine, cedar, redwood, and dense hardwoods like IPE — needs low pressure, careful technique, and often a brightener to even out the cleaned surface, so it's slower and more chemical-intensive. Composite is forgiving and cleans fast. Price wood decks around $0.35–$0.45 per square foot and composite at $0.30–$0.38, and let the material selector above nudge the rate for the extra care a premium or fragile board demands.

Read the boards before you quote. Grey, UV-tired wood and lifted grain mean the clean will raise fibers and almost certainly wants a brightener and a seal to look finished — that's a bigger scope than a maintenance wash on a deck sealed last year. Note railings, steps, and lattice separately; they're slow, fiddly square footage that a footprint-only measurement misses entirely.

Matching pressure and nozzle to the material

Pressure is not a dial you turn to "clean" — it's set by the board. Pressure-treated pine handles roughly 800–1,200 PSI with a 25° green tip. Cedar and redwood are soft and want only 500–600 PSI with a wider 40° tip; push past that and you furr and gouge wood that's expensive to make right. Dense hardwoods like IPE stay at or under 1,500 PSI. Composite is the most forgiving — Trex allows up to 3,100 PSI with a 40° fan tip held at least eight inches off the surface — but early-generation composite shouldn't be pressure washed at all. Whatever the material, keep the wand moving and never drop below a 25° tip. The material selector above sets the safe range for each board and flags you the moment your working PSI crosses it.

Pricing the clean vs the seal

Cleaning and sealing are two separate quote lines, never one bundled number. The wash is priced by area and condition; the seal is priced by gallon and hour. Coverage runs about 150–250 sq ft per gallon for oil-based stain, 150–200 for water-based, and 200–250 for solid — and a second coat covers up to 50% more because the wood is already partly saturated. Add railing linear footage at roughly 3–4 sq ft of surface per foot, multiply by coats, and you have your gallons. The stain & seal coverage calculator above turns that into a product cost and a marked-up line price, so the seal earns margin instead of getting given away as a "while we're here."

Scheduling a two-visit clean-and-seal

A clean-and-seal is a two-visit job, and the dry window between them drives your schedule. Sealing a damp deck traps moisture and causes early peeling — the fastest way to a warranty callback. Plan on 24–48 hours of dry time in warm, dry weather and up to 72 hours in humid or cool conditions before any coating goes down; a moisture meter reading under 15% is the reliable green light. Build both visits into the quote and tell the customer the timeline up front, so the return trip is expected rather than a surprise. The clean-and-seal timeline above adjusts the dry window for the climate so you can book the seal day accurately instead of hoping.

Common deck pricing mistakes

The deck jobs that lose money usually lose it the same few ways. Blasting soft cedar or redwood at pine pressure gouges the boards and turns a clean into a repair. Bundling the seal into the wash as one number gives away the highest-margin part of the work. Measuring only the deck field and ignoring railings, steps, and lattice under-quotes the slowest square footage on the job. And under-buying product because you guessed at coverage means a mid-job supply run on your own time. Price the material for what it actually needs, keep the seal on its own line, count every surface, and let the coverage math tell you how much to buy.