Cleaning the house is always a must for any homeowner. This is an important order that keeps your house in shape, your health in the best condition, and your domestic life a bliss. However, you may forget that you also need to clean your exteriors and not just the inside of your house.
Homeowners tend to prioritize interiors more than garages, patios, or sidewalks, which may pose a significant problem as it stops mold, debris, and animal buildup from growing. It can result in significant upgrades and enormous costs if neglected for too long. Thus, it’s only essential for you to prioritize your exteriors as much as your interiors by avoiding these common cleaning mistakes:
Pressure Washing Your Roof
A pressure washer is best for cleaning stains and mold buildup over the years. Moreover, it’s utterly versatile since you can use it on any surface, whether stone, masonry, or brick. Due to this, you probably think it’s a good idea to use a pressure washer without prior experience or knowledge – and that’s where your mistake lies.
Using a pressure washer without experience will only damage your driveway and roof. Since the pressure washer stream is 50 times more powerful than a garden hose, homeowners could end up with cracks and holes in their roofs. If the nozzle is pointed at a vulnerable area, it could leave driveway surfaces loose and uneven. It could even damage your solar panels if you have them installed.
Additionally, using a pressure washer for the first time could lead to significant injuries. In the United States, 6,057 homeowners were sent to the hospital in 2017 due to injuries from pressure washer use. With the dangers pressure washers pose, safety kits in the US were released to inform homeowners.
The same goes with those down under as the Australian Government released a guide on using a pressure washer for cleaning – complete with performance criteria and recommended skills. With this, it’s best to use a pressure washer if you’re qualified. You could also contact the Pressure Cleaning Guys, experts in the field, to get the best results and avoid injuries.
Neglecting Your Gutters
If the rainwater in your roof is overflowing from your gutters, it probably means you’ve been neglecting your gutters by leaving dry leaves in the spring and fall. Moreover, this problem intensifies when the leak damages your shingles, windows, and doors.
To stop this problem, clean out your gutters during the spring and fall. An early spring cleaning would help remove all the debris and leaves in your gutters. Doing so ensures there’s no clogging during rainfall.
If you want to remove the dry leaves easily, doing it with a ladder is best. On the other hand, you may think that you can’t do it from the ground, but using a garden hose or vacuum with curved attachments is also viable since gutter-cleaning vacuum kits are now available to reach your gutters at ground level.
Nevertheless, ignoring your gutters is a significant problem that may worsen over time as dry leaves pile up and prevent rainwater from passing through the gutters.
Forgetting to Trim Trees
When cleaning, you must consider your greenery and plants, not just your main exterior. Since these are found in your front yard, neglecting these will still affect the condition of your property. Moreover, unkempt trees and bushes may look bad whenever visitors and guests are over since these are the first thing they see when they visit your house.
It would help if you considered removing hazardous or dying trees near your house. Those in poor locations where branches hang over the roof pose risks when the branches fall. Likewise, trees with extensive root systems can damage the foundation of your house since these roots can easily break through them.
In contrast, beautiful landscaping positively impacts the value of your house, raising your property value from 3% to 15%, according to research released by the Arbor Day Foundation in 2021. Thus, you should always be wary of any diseased or dying trees, remove them if necessary, and trim and maintain those you keep.
Using Bleach With Wood Patios or Siding
Although bleach works best for cleaning most of your interiors, they do the opposite for your exteriors. Bleach is a powerful agent that can damage house elements in your patios and siding when you only want to remove mold. Moreover, using it on painted wood surfaces will remove any color, much like it would remove the color from clothes.
Wearing the Wrong Attire
Wearing the wrong attire is a mistake any homeowner can make when cleaning their exteriors. You should have the proper clothing, including non-slip boots, safety glasses, gloves, and a rubber apron. If you plan on using a ladder, it’s best to avoid loose clothing, so it doesn’t get tangled or caught on the ladder.
More than 164,000 emergency room injuries are ladder-related in the United States. Moreover, those injuries cause 300 deaths by falls of ten feet or fewer. With that said, it’s best to keep your safety as the top priority and wear the proper attire and protective gear before starting to clean.
Final Thoughts
Your exteriors are just as important as your living or dining room, so cleaning them is often best to keep them in optimum condition. Moreover, avoid these five mistakes to prevent wasting time, effort, and money when the cleaning goes wrong.
