Roof Cleaning Los Angeles
Squeegee Pro has been cleaning many types of tile roofs all over Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Bernardino. Our well trained employees use our proven technique while cleaning the roof to perfection. Our unique methods and customer service allow us to safely provide a very high quality service and have been the roof cleaners of choice for many residents. As for experience we have been in business since 1998, and have pressure washed almost every type of surface imaginable, and have literally thousands of satisfied customers. Due to our fabulous weather here, for most of Los Angeles, roof cleaning only need to be performed about every 10 years or so (more or less depending on your circumstances). So why not have it done correctly? In this article we will explain our Squeegee Pro process, and if you like what you see you don’t hesitate to call Squeegee Pro. We are certain that we are your best and most professional choice for a Los Angeles roof cleaner.
Preliminary Consideration and Site Planning
The First Pass
We take various consideration into account when taking on a Los Angeles roof cleaning job:
1. Employee Safety: No cleaning job is worth injury and one of the ways we prevent injury is to always use a fall suppression system, often referred to as a roofer safety system. OSHA and ANIS approved kits are a must. Also we require everyone to wear safety glasses, nonslip boots and other safety gear.
2. Proximity of your neighbors: Southern California roofs get very dirty! From San Clemente, to Pacific Palisades to Redlands every roof just seems to get really dirty. The problem is this dirty, mold, mildew, and mud do not just disappear, they have to be removed. Sometimes if you hire a roof cleaner who does not take adequate precautions roof cleaning can create problems with your neighbors. These situations are run into where neighbors homes are so close together that some material might get on another person’s property. At our company we always want to ensure that we make your neighbors happy too, and always take precautions to avoid soiling their property. Before your service we would kindly ask that you tell near by home owners that you are going to have the service performed. Sometimes we need to calculate in the time to clean up your neighbor’s home too!
3. Pools: Sometimes we have to avoid getting material in a pool. This may require covering the pool, or altering our angle while cleaning.
4. Pitch of roof: Roof pitch is usually show in a ratio of height to horizontal run, so for example a common roof pitch is 5/12 for every 5 inches of height, there is 12 inches of horizontal run. Some Victorian style roofs are extreme angles that make working difficult. For roofs with extreme pitches we have to use articulated boom lifts. For normal roofs this is not required.
5. Clean-up: Los Angeles roof cleaning is dirty, filthy work (sounds fun right?). What we love about being roof cleaners is the drastic results that can be observed after roof cleaning is preformed, there is no doubt when we are done that you can see the difference! But as we see it, what good is a clean roof if everything is left dirty. We always provide a full clean-up service which means we wash down all the debris from the roof and ensure that we leave your property better than when we found it.
6. Water Reclamation and Sequestering: We discuss this topic more below, but given the strict laws in southern California we have to sequester the water that comes off your property and ensure it doesn’t get into the storm drains, the best bet is to pump it into the sewer system. More below!
Effective Pressure Cleaning
Pressure cleaning is an effective way of cleaning hard services such as concrete and clay tiles. We normally use .40 to .25 angle tips with 3,500 to 4,200 PSI depending on the type of service being cleaned. Hot steam is generally not advisable. Our experience has been that steam can remove too much dye from the concrete, as well as posses higher risks of paint removal, ancillary damage to the home.
One reason we use such high pressure is to make sure we remove the imbedded dirty and soiling. Generally Concrete tiles are more porous than clay tiles and this also effects the durability of the surface. More on that subject on this site. In any event high pressure cleaning is preferred because it is effective, requires little or no chemical application, does not require the use of sodium hypochlorite and works very well.
Safety
We are big on safety. Our company’s safety motto is “no window or roof is worth injury”. It cannot be stressed enough, safety is expensive, many people that do this type of work do not use proper safety equipment, we do! In furtherance of our goal of no injuries we have developed several proprietary safety systems. We always use fall suppression systems. Most of the time we do not need to perforate the roof structure itself, or removal tiles. No matter where in Los Angles we are cleaning roofs, we will always focus on safety.
Water Reclamation For Roof Cleaning
Cheap fly by night operators do not perform water reclamation. This leaves you exposed to having to pay the city or water district to clean up the mess which can run thousands of dollars. At Squeegee Pro we use state of the art reclamation pumps to sequester the water onto your property to avoid problems! This machinery is not cheap, and is a expense many competitors try to avoid, but we would rather do it right then risk problems.
Types of Tiles:
[picture of types of tiles]
Spanish Style traditional clay are very beautiful but also expensive. Many homes go with more modern concrete instead of clay. Concrete has several advantages as a material for tiles. Concrete is cheaper, and able to be formed into many shapes. A disadvantage is that some manufactures do not impregnate the color dye deeply in the concrete, instead almost painting it on the surface. This creates big problems for the home owner. In our experience there are lichen that actual suck the dye out of the tile, slowing causing the color of the roof to fade. Better quality roofs use materials where the dye is distributed throughout the concrete. Another consideration is the profile of the tile. common profiles we run into when cleaning roofs in los Angeles include the Spanish S-tile, Low-Profile Double Roman, and flat shake style. We have found that the most durable tile is the Spanish S style, while lightweight flat shake are the most prone to damage.
Types of roofs we clean in Los Angeles
There are various types of roofs. Cleaning roofs requires a understanding of the type of roof so that the cleaning is both efficient and effective. Cross Hipped, and Cross Gabled roofs are very common. Cross hipped roofs create issues where the dirt from one side will get on the other. For Cross hipped and gabled structures we usually clean top down working out from the trough.Mansards are often found on commercial structures and restaurants but can be found on some houses too. Mansards are usually cleaned from the bottom up due to safety concerns as well as the steep nature of the upper portion.
[roof angle picture]
Examples of Roof cleaning in Los Angeles
West Los Angeles: This roof was so dirty it was hard to see it getting very clean. Also notice the yellow / green lichen as you will see in a moment it all comes out.
Another Shot of A Roof in The Early Morning before cleaning (in West Los Angeles). Wow….
After a long day: The roof is clean, it took then entire day! This S-type tile was very strong, but the dye was weak. Moss, mold, and lichen had eaten away some of it.
In Process: Here is a picture of a roof cleaning in process, notice the drastic difference! This type of shake tile is rather difficult to work with.
Great results: After a long day’s work, this type of tile is harder to work with, it isn’t not very strong.
True Spanish Tile Roof In Pasadena: Before cleaning, true clay spanish tile is very durable and beaitufl but it is hard to get clean!
Pasadena After: Very hard work, and the roof is like egg shells, luckily our guys know what they are doing!
A Slow Process: But the results are worth the effort!
We’d Love To Clean Your Roof Too!
Have a dirty roof in los angeles and want it professionally cleaned? Then give us a call. We hope this article was helpful to you , and helps you see that Squeegee pro is a very good choice to handle anyone roof cleaning needs in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. Do not forget that we service all of Southern California as well, we have been doing this for over 13 year an we can clean your roof no matter where in our area that you live. We also offer window cleaning, and other pressure washing services as well so check out or main roof cleaning page for more pictures and information. Thanks again for reading our article and checking out Squeegee Pro. Squeegee Pro would love to be your roof cleaner too, and add you as a happy customer and make sure your roof is cleaned correctly the first time. No bones about it, we are the Los Angeles roof cleaning company!