Pressure Washing in Lakewood: Start With Your Water Bill
Lakewood has no single city water utility. The city's own water and sewer provider list, dated December 2024, names 27 separate entities serving addresses inside the city, and about 20 of them supply drinking water.
That is what makes washing a house here its own problem. The water in the hose is what dries on your glass and your trim, and in Lakewood it changes from street to street. A crew on Denver Water in Belmar at nine is on somebody else's supply by two.
The Water Changes From Street to Street
Denver Water serves part of Lakewood. So do the Consolidated Mutual Water Company, Green Mountain Water and Sanitation District, Bancroft-Clover, Alameda, Bear Creek, Bonvue, High View, Lochmoor, Lakehurst and, in one small pocket, the Fehlman Subdivision Water Association.
Go find your water bill. For most Lakewood addresses the name at the top is not the City of Lakewood, and that name is the most useful thing you can hand a crew.
Even one supplier is not one water. Consolidated Mutual serves roughly 95,000 people over 27 square miles and blends about 60 percent treated Denver Water with about 40 percent from its own Maple Grove plant, drawing surface water out of Clear Creek and Lena Gulch. Green Mountain Water and Sanitation District, wholly inside the city, buys from Denver Water instead.
What that does to a job is mineral spotting. Whatever is dissolved in the water stays on the glass and the trim once the water goes, and in dry Front Range air more than a mile up it goes fast.
So the method that holds up here is small sections, washed and rinsed in the same pass, with a filtered final rinse on the glass where the supply calls for it.
One more thing on water: do not accept a hardness number for Lakewood from anybody, because there is no single figure and no single supply. If you want the chemistry at your own tap, ask your provider for its consumer confidence report. They publish it for customers and it costs you nothing.
The second Lakewood specific is under your feet. The city sits on expansive clay from the Pierre Shale, and Jefferson County calls it moving soils. It swells when wet and shrinks when dry, with expansion reported up to about 20 percent by volume and swelling pressures as high as 30,000 pounds per square foot, and poor drainage is the leading catalyst for soil related foundation failure in the county.
A house wash puts a few hundred gallons on the ground in an afternoon. On this clay that is a load on the house, not a wet lawn. Wash water has to be carried away from the wall the same way roof water is.
Walk your downspouts before anyone washes
Ten minutes, no tools, no contractor. Follow every downspout to where it actually ends and mark the ones dumping within a foot or two of the foundation. Then find the corner where water already stands against the wall after a storm. Runoff goes where rain goes, so show the crew those spots and say where the water has to end up instead. Anyone who shrugs at that has not worked much Lakewood clay.
Third, the concrete. On the older east side, around Belmar, Eiber and Glennon Heights, the flatwork is original to a 1950s or 1960s house and has been riding those moving soils ever since. It is usually cracked, lifted at the joints and worn past the surface paste, and concrete in that condition spalls under a narrow tip at full pressure.
Try this before you book. Press your thumb down hard on a dry patch of the driveway and drag it. If it sheds sand, the top of that slab is already going. Say that to whoever quotes the job and ask what pressure and which tip they plan to use. If the answer is that they just turn it up, keep calling.
Lakewood is not one kind of house either. The eastern half against Denver is brick ranches and bi-levels from the 1950s and 1960s. The western half up Green Mountain went in through the 1970s and 1980s on graded hillside lots. Belmar, built from 2002 on the footprint of the old Villa Italia mall, is attached and mixed use with shared walls and often no outside spigot where a crew expects one.
Hail is what really ages an exterior here. The storm of May 8, 2017 is still the costliest insured catastrophe in Colorado history at about $2.3 billion, and Lakewood was among the hardest hit cities.
So take your phone outside the day before the crew arrives and photograph every gutter run, downspout and siding elevation while they are still dirty. Dents and split seams read better on a dirty surface than a clean one, and those pictures are free and they are yours.
How a Lakewood Wash Should Get Booked
Find out who sells you water
Read the bill. Denver Water, Consolidated Mutual, Green Mountain Water and Sanitation or one of the other districts. Tell the crew which one before they price the job, because it sets the rinse method.
Walk the perimeter with them, not behind them
Point at the downspouts, the low corner and any window well. On moving clay the runoff plan is part of the work, and it belongs in the conversation before the trailer is unhooked.
Get pressure and tip written down by surface
Soft wash for siding, painted wood and anything with a seam. Low pressure and a wide tip on sixty year old concrete. One setting for the whole property means nobody looked at the property.
Ask for the certificate of insurance from the agency
Have the agent email it to you direct with current dates on it. A photo of a card proves nothing, and insurance is the credential that genuinely exists for this trade in Colorado.
Treat a repair recommendation as a separate job
If the wash turns up a slab that needs replacing, that is concrete work, and concrete work inside city limits calls for a City of Lakewood Class 5-A contractor registration. Different credential, different bid, different day.
In Lakewood the Address Sets the Price
Square footage gets you a rough number in most towns. In Lakewood it gets you the wrong one. The water is different on the east side than it is up Green Mountain, a 1950s slab takes a different tip than a 2000s Belmar walkway, and the clay decides where the runoff is allowed to go.
A price quoted over the phone from square footage alone is a guess. The crews worth hiring ask what your lot backs onto, where your downspouts end and who bills you for water, before they say a number.
Pressure Washing Costs in Lakewood CO
Typical Lakewood ranges, here so you can sanity check a quote instead of replacing one. Green Mountain properties sit at the top of the house wash bands for grade and access, and old east side flatwork prices up because it needs low pressure and more time.
Common Questions About Pressure Washing in Lakewood CO
Is there such a thing as a licensed pressure washing contractor in Colorado?
No. Colorado licenses electricians and plumbers at the state level. It does not license pressure washing as a state trade, so anyone advertising a state pressure washing license is describing something that does not exist.
What is real is general liability insurance, plus the city registrations Lakewood does list for the trades it names, such as Class 5-A for concrete. Ask for the certificate direct from the agency and check the dates yourself.
Why does my glass spot when my neighbor's does not?
Very likely because you are on different water. Lakewood is served by around 20 separate drinking water providers, so hardness genuinely changes between addresses, and dissolved minerals are what get left behind when the rinse dries.
The fix is method, not product. Small sections washed and rinsed in one pass, and a filtered rinse on the glass at the end.
Can washing the house really hurt my foundation?
In Lakewood, yes. The city sits on expansive Pierre Shale clay that Jefferson County calls moving soils, and poor drainage is the leading catalyst for soil related foundation failure in the county. Soaking the ground along a wall pushes water into exactly the soil you least want swelling.
It is easy to avoid. Runoff gets directed away from the structure, downspout discharge stays extended past the foundation, and nobody parks a surface cleaner next to a wall for an hour.
What pressure is safe on my 1960s driveway?
Less than most people expect, and the slab tells you. Drag your thumb across a dry patch, and if it sheds sand the surface paste is already gone, so high pressure will strip more of it.
A crew that matches pressure and tip to failing sixty year old concrete gets it clean without opening it up. Get that on the quote before they start.
Do you do the washing yourselves?
No. Contractor Palace matches you with local Lakewood pressure washing pros and the crew you book does the work. There is no charge to you for the match.
Need pressure washing in Lakewood? Get matched free.
Tell us what needs washing and who supplies your water. We match you with a Lakewood crew that walks the downspouts first and picks pressure by surface. No charge to you.
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