Before the crew leaves a job, the customer gets a look at it. “We have the homeowner or our clients check the work before we leave, and we tell them give us a call back if they have any issues later on,” Scott says.
That inspection is the last step in a sequence he lays out in order. Someone calls, and the company calls back right away. Then comes the estimate. “We schedule the estimate, we go out in person and do the estimate,” Scott says. On the day of the work, “we go in, we say hello, we introduce ourselves, we wear uniforms, we show up on time, we do the work.” The homeowner’s walk-around comes last.
The routine has a source, and it is in the company’s name. Scott and his partner, George, are retired police officers. “If you notice the name is Off Duty Power Washing, we’re retired police officers, so we are kind of regimented and formatted, so we just keep plugging away,” Scott says. The business describes itself as founded by off-duty officers and has been washing houses and buildings in Chester County for more than 30 years. Scott started it part time and eventually went full time. His approach to running the work is short. “Lead by example,” he says.
Most of the work is exterior cleaning for homes and commercial buildings. Scott says the company is especially good at stucco, and that it does a lot of commercial work alongside residential soft washing. “We’re a soft wash company for residential,” he says. Soft washing relies on low pressure and detergents rather than a hard blast of water. The company lists vinyl, aluminum, cedar, brick and stone among the siding it cleans that way, along with shingle roofs marked by black streaks or green moss. For commercial jobs it runs trailer-mounted hot-water machines that can be set anywhere from cold water to steam, and it uses them on grease and chewing gum at building entrances and sidewalks. The service area is Chester County, with Delaware and Montgomery counties also listed.
The care extends past the walls. One homeowner who had a deck scrubbed ahead of resealing wrote afterward that the crew minded the garden and the plants came through fine.
Scott backs the work with a satisfaction guarantee and a two-year warranty. His recommendation is to have a house cleaned every two years, so the warranty covers the gap between visits.
“If something comes up before the two years, we’d come back,” he says. “We never get called back.”