Zack Talmage spent four and a half years in Germany as an Army helicopter engine mechanic. Now he washes houses, roofs, driveways and storefronts across Southern Indiana and the Louisville area. He credits the military for the way he runs the business.
He grew up in a small Southern Indiana town, graduated from North Harrison High School in 2009 and joined the Army soon after. He started soft washing and pressure washing for friends and family in 2018. After the couple’s second daughter was born in 2022, he decided he wanted to build something for his family instead of working for someone else. He and his wife, Samantha, formed Hi-Flow Pressure Washing LLC in 2023. She is a registered nurse and still works as one.
“Me and my wife own it,” Talmage says. “It’s a family business.”
Ask him what sets one washing company apart from another and he answers in two words. “It’s customer service,” he says. “It’s not hard to have good customer service. You just got to answer the phone and you got to be there and show up on time.” Asked where that comes from, he points to his years in the military.
One homeowner described exactly that in a review. Talmage picked up when she called, arrived at the scheduled time and texted ahead when he was running 10 minutes late. He and a helper then cleaned her house and her aggregate driveway and walks.
The standards are also written down. On the company’s About page, the name doubles as an acronym, H.I.-F.L.O.W., for honesty, integrity, follow-through, leadership, ownership and workmanship. The ownership entry is the most specific: if something breaks, leaks or gets missed on a job, the crew reports it rather than hiding it. Talmage puts the leadership part more bluntly. “I’ll never ask anyone to do anything I haven’t done or won’t do myself,” he says.
The company applies the same caution to the work itself. For most siding and trim, Hi-Flow says soft washing is the right method: a cleaning solution loosens algae and mildew, and the rinse carries it off, so there is no need to blast the surface. High pressure stays off shingles entirely. Before washing a house, the crew looks at the siding’s material, age and oxidation, along with gaps, outdoor outlets, landscaping and drainage.
Hi-Flow also says it will tell customers when a job may not deliver what they hope. Washing a heavily oxidized or failing surface can expose the problem rather than fix it, and the company says it points that out before starting. If it thinks a roof shouldn’t be cleaned, it would rather say so than sell the job. Its concrete page is just as candid: some oil and rust stains lighten, and some stay because concrete is porous.
If Talmage could choose what Hi-Flow is known for, it would be commercial work. He mentions storefronts first, then concrete staining. On commercial jobs, the company settles the details ahead of time: timing, access, customer traffic, water availability, runoff and what “done” should look like.
He isn’t trying to build a regional operation. He wants to grow to “a couple of trucks, something manageable, reasonable,” and he has no interest in building it up only to sell to a private equity firm. “I plan to hold it,” he says. He is already thinking a generation or two out: “Maybe a grandkid, you never know.”