April on Vancouver Island. After months of rain, mist, and the particular kind of damp that settles over everything from October to March, the hard surfaces around your property show it. Driveways go grey-green with algae. Decks get slick with a thin film of organic growth. Siding shows the dark streaking that runs down from gutters and eavestroughs. This is power washing season — and it's worth understanding what separates a job done with the right equipment from one done with a consumer machine.
More Than Just Pressure
When most people think about pressure washers, they think about one number: PSI. But PSI alone doesn't tell the whole story. A typical consumer machine runs 1,500–2,000 PSI with a flow rate around 1.5 GPM (gallons per minute). Commercial equipment runs 3,000–4,000 PSI with flow rates of 4 GPM or higher. The extra flow is what changes the work.
Higher volume means you're moving water across the surface faster and more completely. With a commercial surface cleaner — a spinning bar nozzle inside a disc that rides along the surface — you can clean three to four times the area per hour compared to a single-nozzle wand pass. More importantly, the rotating head delivers even pressure across the full width of each pass. That evenness is what eliminates the tiger-striping that's the telltale sign of an underpowered wash.
Driveways and Concrete
Concrete is porous. Over a Vancouver Island winter, it accumulates moss spores, algae, tire residue, and the iron staining that comes from water running off garden beds. By April, most driveways in Nanaimo and Lantzville look dull and blotchy — even properties that were clean six months ago.
A commercial surface cleaner covers the full width of a driveway lane in one or two passes. The even pressure flushes loosened grime off the surface rather than just redistributing it. When the job is done, concrete looks almost new — that bright, uniformly light colour that's easy to forget it's supposed to have. Walkways, patios, and steps all get the same treatment.
Algae left on concrete over multiple seasons can begin to etch into the surface sealer. An annual spring clean isn't just cosmetic — it's a maintenance task that extends the life of the surface.
Decks
Wood and composite decking needs a different approach. Too much pressure on softwood cedar — common on Nanaimo and Lantzville properties built in the 1980s and 1990s — can raise the grain or drive water into end cuts. The right technique uses lower pressure with higher volume, often paired with a deck-cleaning solution that breaks down organic material (mildew, algae, tannin discolouration) before the rinse.
On Vancouver Island, decks are a prime target for moss and algae specifically because the climate is so accommodating — shaded, persistently damp, rarely in full sun for long. A proper wash removes all of it. If the deck is heading toward staining or sealing this spring, a professional clean is the correct first step: coatings bond to clean, open-grain wood, not to a film of biological growth.
Siding
Vinyl, fibre cement, and wood siding all clean up well with the right technique. The key is matching the approach to the material. Vinyl tolerates direct pressure if the angle and distance are correct. Fibre cement siding (common on newer builds in Nanaimo and out toward Ladysmith) cleans well as long as you're not forcing water under the horizontal laps. Wood siding gets the same careful, lower-pressure treatment as decking.
Most of the siding work on Vancouver Island homes comes down to the dark streaking from roof runoff — iron and organic matter carried down from gutters and downspouts. A pre-wash cleaning solution cuts through this efficiently. The difference between a treated and untreated section of siding is dramatic.
What Technique Looks Like in Practice
There's a sequencing logic to a proper power wash job. You start high — roofline, gutters, siding — and work down to driveways and walkways, so you're not blasting grime onto already-clean surfaces. Pre-treating with cleaning solutions before the rinse does most of the chemical work so the pressure does less mechanical work. This protects surfaces and gets better results.
The cleanup is part of the job. After a driveway and deck wash, water, loosened grime, and organic debris are running off the property. A professional job means managing where that goes — not across a neighbour's driveway or into garden beds — and leaving the site clean and dry when the crew leaves.
Combining Power Washing with Other Spring Work
When WCL works through properties in Nanaimo, Lantzville, and Ladysmith in spring, we often combine power washing with gutter cleaning in the same visit. It makes sense to clear gutters while the equipment is already on site — gutter debris contributes directly to the siding staining we're washing off anyway, so cleaning both at once breaks the cycle.
For properties on a Complete Exterior Care or Estate plan, spring power washing is a natural part of the April schedule. The serious rain has mostly passed, everything is ready to be reset, and the warmer months ahead mean surfaces stay cleaner longer once they're done.
Is This Worth Doing Every Year?
On Vancouver Island specifically: yes. The biological growth — moss, algae, lichen — returns because the climate invites it. An annual spring clean resets surfaces to baseline before growth gets re-established. Think of it like other seasonal maintenance: you wouldn't skip oil changes because the engine looks fine from the outside.
The results are also one of the most immediately visible improvements you can make to a property's appearance without any renovation. Neighbours notice. Driveways that looked stained and neglected for years can look genuinely new after a thorough commercial wash. If you've been putting it off, this is the right time of year to do it.