Soft Wash Roof Cleaning: How to Soft Wash Roofs

What is soft wash roof cleaning?

As a business service contractor, facilities manager, or roof washing company, there’s no doubt that you are aware of how quickly roofs soil over time, placing them in need of a good cleaning.

For this reason, you likely leverage roof soft washing to address any unattended growths on the roof and to add a needed sparkle.

Soft wash roof cleaning is a low-pressure washing procedure that combines chemicals to clean the roof surface. Unlike using a pressure washer, where water is passed under high pressure, the soft wash system relies on low pressure to get rid of the organic growth on the roof and scour the black streaks they leave.

In this article, we’ll explore everything that BSCs, facilities teams, and roof washing companies need to know about the most safe and efficient form of soft wash roof cleaning—utilizing a drone—as well as why pressure washing can be a damaging solution.

Soft Wash Roof Cleaning with a Drone

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Opting to soft wash roofs manually, BSCs, facilities managers, and roof washing companies have to invest in labor and additional charges. Needless to say, you’ll never be sure if a project can be completed on time or if your workers are completely safe.

Soft wash roof cleaning with the help of drones can drastically improve your team’s productivity, efficiency, and safety. Your workers won’t need to climb ladders or bother with safety harnesses and lifeline ropes. They can man the drones from the ground and clean large areas of the roof in a very small amount of time.

For example, the Lucid Bots cleaning drone can clean up to 300 square feet in under a minute. That means, if you’ve got a 1,500 square-foot roof, you can clean the entirety of the roof in about five minutes with a drone. Just imagine how many roofs your team can clean in significantly less time!

This way, you get more jobs done, can guarantee your worker’s safety, and minimize your liability rates. When comparing the risks associated with sending your workers to climb on the roofs every day and giving them the option to clean roofs from the ground with a drone, the answer is clear.

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Why shouldn’t you pressure wash your customers’ roofs?

A traditional roof washing myth lies around the idea that pressure washing a roof is the best solution. There are important factors to keep in mind, however, that deter professionals from choosing this route (and are actively moving more roof washing companies to soft wash cleaning with a drone).

It doesn’t get to the root of the problem.

Pressure washing can give the impression that it is cleaning a particular surface area, but as a whole, the method is completely ineffective. A pressure-washed driveway may look clean, but it is not actually clean.

It is the equivalent of merely washing an area with water until you don’t see the dirt or grime any longer. It does not address the bacteria and potential fungal growth that could be taking over a roof.

Soft washing, on the other hand, gets down to the root of the grime using bleach to get down past surface level cleaning (unlike pressure washing, which does little to actually clean the roof, and often causes even more damage).

It can cause damage to the roof structure.

When pressure washing is used for roof cleaning, workers often apply up to 4,500 PSI of water to the roof. This very easily causes tiles to shift and ultimately shorten the lifespan of a roof altogether.

Soft wash roof cleaning with a drone, on the other hand, is far more precise without the added water pressure that could do irreversible damage to a roof.

It is still extremely unsafe for workers.

Use of a pressure washer on a roof requires workers to climb up the roof with a ladder. Using that amount of pressure while standing on a raised surface is very dangerous.

To start off, a small slip from the ladder can result in injuries, and in the worst cases, death. This can prove challenging for BSCs, facilities managers, and roof washing companies alike.

A safer alternative, however, is the Lucid Bots cleaning drone that not only protects the integrity of the roof, but also the safety of your team.

Choose a Safer Roof Cleaning Route with Lucid Drones

While it is enticing for cleaning service-providing teams to grab a ladder and a power wash for cleaning roofs, we highly suggest otherwise. They are neither safe nor efficient. 

BSCs, facilities managers, and roof washing companies will greatly benefit by leveraging the Lucid Bots cleaning drones. These are industry-recognized drones built exclusively to make your cleaning jobs easy, safe, and cost-efficient. With reliable and consistent customer support, Lucid Bots will help your team fly the drones in no time.

To see it for yourself, get in touch. Let’s ensure a safety-first culture across all your cleaning services.