Pressure washing price calculator by surface and square foot

Charge the job cost divided by one minus your target margin.

Job cost = hours paid × crew cost per hour + chemicals

Job price = job cost ÷ (1 − target margin)

Hours paid are the washing time, setup and pack up, and the drive. Crew cost per hour is crew size × burdened wage, plus your rig and truck, plus overhead.

Example: a 2,400 sq ft vinyl house wash at 1,200 sq ft an hour is 2 hours. Add 30 minutes of setup and 25 minutes of driving for 2.92 hours. A crew of two at 25 dollars, plus 20 dollars for the rig and 15 for overhead, is 85 dollars an hour, so the crew time costs 247.92 dollars. Add 14.40 dollars of chemicals for a cost of 262.32 dollars. A 35% margin needs 403.56 dollars, quoted at 405.

Get the burdened wage from our labor burden calculator and the rig cost from the equipment hourly rate calculator.

Work out the hours for each surface from its own production rate, add them up, then price the whole job once.

Hours for a surface = sq ft ÷ sq ft per hour

Chemicals for a surface = sq ft ÷ 1,000 × chemical cost per 1,000 sq ft

Siding, flatwork, decks and roofs clean at different speeds and use different mixes, so one rate for the whole house hides the slow parts.

Example: the house wash above plus a 900 sq ft driveway and a 200 sq ft walk at 600 sq ft an hour, and a 350 sq ft deck at 250 sq ft an hour. That is 5.23 hours of washing, 6.15 hours paid and 19.40 dollars of chemicals. The cost is 542.15 dollars and the quote 835 dollars.

Divide each surface’s share of the price by its square feet.

Price per sq ft = surface price ÷ surface sq ft

The calculator gives each surface its own washing time and chemicals, and splits setup and drive time by each surface’s share of the washing time.

Example: in the 835 dollar job, the house wash comes to 329.87 dollars, or about 14 cents a square foot. The driveway is about 26 cents and the deck about 63 cents, because the deck is slow and uses more chemical.

They come out lower per square foot, because setup and drive are spread over far more area and big flatwork cleans faster.

Price per sq ft = job price ÷ total sq ft

Use your own production rate for the surface cleaner you run on large flatwork.

Example: a 20,000 sq ft parking lot at 1,500 sq ft an hour is 13.3 hours of washing and 14.25 hours paid. At 85 dollars an hour plus 20 dollars of chemicals, the cost is 1,231.25 dollars and the quote 1,895 dollars, about 9.5 cents a square foot. A 900 sq ft driveway alone comes to 320 dollars, about 36 cents.

A minimum makes sure a small job still pays for the trip, the setup and the pack up.

Job price = the larger of (job cost ÷ (1 − margin)) and your minimum

Drive time between jobs is paid crew time. Under federal wage law, travel that is part of the day’s work, such as going from one job site to the next, “must be counted as hours worked” (29 CFR 785.38). State wage rules can add to this.

Example: a 200 sq ft walk on its own is 20 minutes of washing but 1.25 hours paid. The math gives 165 dollars, so a 250 dollar minimum raises the quote to 250.