How to Price Pressure Washing Jobs

Set your minimum before you price anything else. A 300 square foot patio priced by the square foot pays less than the trip costs you. Work out what an hour has to earn you, set a minimum that covers the drive, setup and cleanup, and price bigger jobs from their hours plus chemicals. Then send a quote the customer signs.

What Should an Hour on Site Earn You?

Every price you quote comes from one number: what an hour of your work has to earn. It covers your pay, the truck and fuel, insurance, the chemicals you don't bill as their own line, the hours nobody pays you for (quoting, driving between jobs, marketing), and profit. Only you know those costs.

Keep that number off the quote. A handyman in an October thread on r/handyman described the method: “I estimate hours and multiply by my target hourly rate, and then add materials. But I give the customer a total amount, not my hourly.” The customer pays for a clean house, not for your time.

The examples below use $100 an hour. It's a round number, not a recommendation.

How Do You Set a Minimum Charge?

A small job still costs you a full trip: you drive there, set up, pack up and drive back, whatever the square footage. Even Angi, a cost guide for homeowners, says so: “a technician still pays for gas, insurance, and other overhead regardless of project size”, which is why the price per square foot drops on bigger jobs.

So work your minimum out from the smallest job you'd take:

Minimum = (drive there and back + setup + the job itself + cleanup) × your hourly target

Take a 300 square foot patio. At 20 cents a square foot, it's $60. But the visit takes about an hour and a half: 30 minutes of driving, 15 minutes to set up, 30 minutes of washing and 15 to pack up. At $100 an hour, that's $150. If you charge $60, you lose money on the visit. Price it at $150 instead.

Your number will differ from ours. In a thread on r/pressurewashing on October 22, an owner in their first month asked whether to focus on commercial work, because their house washes had been free or under $200. One reply set out a schedule: “Generally our minimum is 250 for a job one hour or less. A two hour job is 400, a 3 hour job is 525. This is based on if I send one employee and one trailer.” Past 15 minutes' drive, the same company's minimum is $500. Another reply said: “stop doing houses for free, even $150 tells you who actually values the work.”

On the quote, name the work and price it at your minimum, with a note that says so (“Our minimum visit charge”). Then ask what else needs doing while you're there. A walkway or the front steps fit into the same visit and cost you only the washing time.

For a job well outside your usual area, bill the extra drive time at your rate. Your rate already pays for the truck, so don't add mileage on top. If you'd rather charge by the mile, the IRS standard mileage rate is 76 cents a mile for business driving from July 1 to December 31, 2026. That covers the truck, not your time.

What Does a Full Quote Look Like?

Here's a house wash and driveway, priced the same way. The house is one story, about 2,000 square feet, with vinyl siding. The driveway is 900 square feet of brushed concrete. You walked the job, or measured the driveway on a satellite map, and estimated your hours:

Five hours at $100 is $500. Add $25 for the soft wash mix and surface cleaner chemicals, and the job is $525. To split it into lines, share the drive, setup and cleanup (1.5 hours) evenly between the two surfaces. The house gets 3.25 hours ($325) and $20 of the chemicals, so $345. The driveway gets 1.75 hours ($175) and $5, so $180. Here's what the customer sees:

Now check it by the square foot. Two operators in a 2021 thread on r/powerwashingporn price flat concrete at 15 to 20 cents a square foot, and one prices rough or exposed aggregate at 25 to 30 cents. That puts the 900 square foot driveway at $135 to $180, so $180 sits at the top. Angi puts a driveway at $100 to $250, and a house wash at $312 on average across 51,092 projects, with most homeowners paying $213 to $449. The house at $345 sits inside that.

If your total lands far outside these ranges, check your hours before you change your rate. A missed second story, a long hose run or a heavily stained driveway changes the hours, not what your hour is worth.

Which States Tax Pressure Washing?

States split on this exact service, so check with yours. Here's how three of them treat it:

• Texas taxes it. The Comptroller says “pressure washing buildings, sidewalks, and parking lots is taxable as building or grounds cleaning”, and you also pay tax on the soap, chemicals and equipment you use.
• Florida doesn't, for exteriors. Its rule says “pressure cleaning (power washing) of the exterior of a building, or of parking lots or parking structures, is not taxable as a cleaning service”. You still pay tax on the supplies you buy.
• Washington taxes the walls but not the windows. The Department of Revenue says cleaning a building's exterior walls isn't a janitorial service, so retail sales tax applies. Window washing is janitorial, with no retail sales tax.

A Washington job that includes the house and its windows has one taxable line and one that isn't. That's what the rules say, not tax advice for your business.

Where Can the Wash Water Go?

The storm drain is the problem. The EPA's guidance for cities says that hosing off a single driveway may not create much runoff, but routine power washing of parking lots and fueling areas can send an “unacceptable” amount of pollution into storm drains. Cities write their own rules. Check your city's stormwater rules before you quote commercial work. If they call for containment, put it on the quote as its own line.

What Changes on Commercial Jobs?

Mostly, when you get paid. In the same r/pressurewashing thread, a reply warned that school districts and bigger shops usually want “a W-9, a certificate of insurance and vendor setup before they pay, then pay net 30 or longer.” Price it knowing the money comes a month or more later. Put the due date on the invoice, send your W-9 with it, and keep track of who still owes you. If one goes quiet, here's what to do when a customer won't pay.

Doing This in Invoice Goat

Invoice Goat runs in any phone browser, so the quote can go out from the driveway. As of September 2026, 64% of quotes sent with Invoice Goat were approved in under 24 hours. A signed quote means the customer agreed to what you'll wash and what it costs before you start.

• Save your house wash, driveway and minimum visit lines in your Price Book, so each quote takes a minute.
• Attach before photos to the quote and after photos to the invoice. The customer sees them on their online quote and invoice.
• Sales tax is one rate per quote or invoice, switched on or off line by line, so a mix of taxable and untaxed work fits on one invoice.
• The customer taps Approve Quote and signs on their own phone. The PDF shows the signature with the date, time and IP address. Then Convert to Invoice fills the invoice from the quote.
• Write any deposit in the quote's notes. When it comes in, record it on the invoice with Add Payment. How to invoice as a contractor covers deposit terms.

Your first quote and first invoice are free, with every feature and no credit card. After that, one price covers everything: see Invoice Goat pricing. For a one-off PDF quote, use the free quote and estimate maker.