Small businesses lose 24 days a year to financial admin — 13 months of work for 12 months of pay.
For a pressure washing crew, a good share of those days go to the same job done twice: quoting it out loud in the driveway, then writing it up again at the kitchen table that night. A price list you build once is what stops the second version happening at all — every quote after that is a few taps while you are still standing on the property.
Starter rates for house washing, driveways, roofs and decks, calibrated to WV/PA. Edit anything, add what is missing, and we will email you the spreadsheet.
The base numbers are calibrated to the WV/PA tristate area — which happens to be near the cheapest end of the national range. Pick your state and we adjust them using BLS wage data for the four occupations these trades actually employ.
Labor-led work moves most. Mowing in Massachusetts runs about a third above the baseline; a furnace install moves half as much, because the equipment costs the same everywhere and only the crew changes. The materials part of that is estimated, not measured — real per-state material indexes exist but are sold, not published.
It is a starting point, not advice. A state average says nothing about your costs, your crew or your reputation — so change every number before you quote real work, and tell us if we have got something badly wrong: we would rather know.
$150–200 for a typical residential driveway, or $0.25–0.40 per square foot if you price by area. A standard two-car driveway runs about 600 sqft, which lands around $165. Add $40–75 if you are spot-treating oil stains.
About $375 for a single-storey home up to roughly 2,500 sqft, covering siding, eaves and trim. Two-storey homes and heavy organic growth push that toward $450–550. Soft washing is priced by the house rather than the hour because the chemical dwell time is the same whoever is holding the wand.
60–75% gross margin on residential work is normal once chemicals, fuel and labor are subtracted. Commercial flatwork runs slightly thinner at 55–65% because the square footage is bid competitively. If you are below 50%, you are either underpricing or your chemical cost is out of control.
By the job, almost always. Hourly punishes you for getting faster, and customers hate open-ended numbers. Price the job from square footage and condition, keep an hourly rate — around $70 — only for additional crew labor and unusual add-ons.
Per square foot, in the $0.10–0.18 range for flatwork and $0.15–0.25 for building washes, with a job minimum. Commercial buyers compare bids on unit price, so quoting a flat number without showing the rate makes you look expensive even when you are not.
They are the starter lists built into Anvil when you pick a trade — not figures written for this page. Treat them as a starting point rather than advice: what you can charge depends on your market, your costs and your reputation, and you should change them before you quote anything.