Pressure Washing Pricing Calculator
Price a pressure washing job from the surfaces, square footage, condition and your costs, with the price per square foot and the job total. Built for the owner quoting the job: type the rate you charge for each surface, or price from your hours, crew, chemicals, fuel and overhead at a target margin, and see the margin either way. No going rates: the rates filled in are examples to replace with yours.
Your numbers
Example rate: type yours.
Perimeter × wall height.
Length × height, × 2 for both sides.
Footprint × pitch factor (see below).
1 is a normal job. Use more for heavy mildew, oil stains or years of buildup, for example 1.25. Your call, not a standard.
Gutter brightening, stain treatment, sealing.
Clock hours, drive included.
What each hour of each person costs you, payroll taxes included. Count your own time too.
Truck and machine.
This job's share of insurance, equipment, the truck, software and marketing.
Job price
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- From your rates, before the minimum
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- Price per sq ft
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- Total area
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- Job cost
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- Profit
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- Margin
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The rates per square foot already filled in are examples to show how the page works, not market rates. Type the rates you charge.
The calculation runs in your browser and ParrotNotes does not store your numbers. They sit in the page address so you can bookmark or share the result.
How the job price is worked out
By the square foot: each surface's area times your rate for it gives that surface's price. The surfaces are added up and multiplied by the condition multiplier, where 1 is a normal job and a higher number covers heavy mildew, oil stains or years of buildup. Add-ons such as gutter brightening, rust or oil stain treatment and sealing are added as one amount, then the travel charge. If the total is under your minimum job charge, the minimum is the price.
Cost-plus: the hours on the job times the crew size times the wage per person is the labor. Add chemicals, fuel and the job's share of overhead to get the job cost, then divide by one minus your target margin. The square footage still matters in this mode: it gives the price per square foot, so you can see what your costs say you should be charging per foot.
In both modes, type your costs to see the margin. Margin = (price − job cost) ÷ price. Markup = (price − job cost) ÷ job cost.
Worked example: a driveway and a house wash
A 20 by 40 ft driveway is 800 sq ft. The house has a 180 ft perimeter and 10 ft walls, 1,800 sq ft of siding. At example rates of $0.20 for the driveway and $0.25 for the siding, that is $160 and $450, $610 for the surfaces. With a $25 travel charge the job is $635, or $0.24 per square foot over the 2,600 sq ft.
Now the costs: a crew of two for 4 hours at $25 an hour each is $200 of labor. Add $35 of chemicals, $20 of fuel and $60 as this job's share of insurance, equipment and the truck, and the job costs $315. At $635 the profit is $320: a 50.4% margin and a 101.6% markup.
Priced from cost instead at a 40% target margin, the same job is $315 ÷ 0.60 = $525, or $0.20 per square foot. The gap between the two prices tells you how much room the square-foot rates leave on this job.
Measuring each surface
Driveways, patios and walkways: length times width, adding up each rectangle on an odd shape. Decks: the floor area, plus the stairs and the railings if you wash them (railing length times height, both sides). Fences: length times height, and times two if you wash both sides.
Siding: perimeter times wall height, plus the gable triangles. Roofs for a soft wash: the slope makes the roof larger than the footprint. Multiply the footprint by √(1 + (rise ÷ 12)²) for the pitch: about 1.054 for a 4/12 pitch, 1.118 for 6/12 and 1.202 for 8/12. A 1,500 sq ft footprint under a 6/12 roof is about 1,677 sq ft of roof.
The square footage calculator measures rectangles, circles and triangles if a surface has an odd shape.
What the calculator leaves out
Overhead is one number you type per job. To set it, add up a year of insurance, equipment payments and repairs, the truck, software and marketing, and divide by the number of jobs you expect, or by your hours and multiply by the job's hours.
It does not know your local market, your competitors' prices or the sales tax rules where you work. It also cannot tell you how fast your crew washes a surface: time a few jobs and use those hours in the cost fields.
Need the area of an odd-shaped surface? The square footage calculator measures it. Working out what an hour of each person really costs? The labor cost calculator adds the employer costs on top of the wage. Mowing too? The lawn mowing price calculator prices each cut from your time.
More on selling home services: Door-to-door sales, Quote follow-up email, Landscaping sales.
The oil stain, the plants to cover, the gate code
Customers point them out on the walk-around before you quote. Record that walk-around in ParrotNotes and get a transcript, a summary and the action items, so the crew washes the job the way it was sold. Free for 100 minutes of recording a month.
Get Started FreeRelated tools
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- Square Footage CalculatorWork out square footage for rectangles, L-shaped rooms, triangles and circles, add rooms together, and convert to square yards, square meters and acres.Open the tool
- Labor Cost CalculatorWork out what the labor on a job costs: crew, hours, wage and burden, overtime and the price to quote for your target margin.Open the tool