How to Quote Pressure Washing Jobs (Without Guessing) - 2026

Updated September 7, 2026

Most pressure washing quotes are a guess dressed up as a price: somebody heard a per-square-foot number in a Facebook group and hoped it covers the rig. The reliable way is backwards from that - work out the hourly rate your business actually needs (for a realistic solo rig, about $90 an hour), time your own production on real jobs, and only then turn it into the per-square-foot and per-job numbers you quote from the truck. Here is the whole method.

Step 1: Find your hourly floor

Your rig has real overhead whether the machine is running or not: the truck, the machine and pump rebuilds, surface cleaners, hoses, a tank, insurance, and more marketing than most trades because the work is seasonal and customers forget you between years.

Worked example for a solo operation: $23,500 of overhead, a $60,000 salary target plus 20 percent burden ($72,000), and 48 weeks x 50 hours with about 55 percent billable once driving, setup, tear-down and quoting are counted = 1,320 billable hours. True cost: ($23,500 + $72,000) / 1,320 = $72.35 an hour. Add a 15 percent margin: $85.12 - round up to $90 an hour. That is the floor; every quote must clear it.

Your numbers will differ - run them free in the pressure washing hourly rate calculator, no signup wall, two minutes. People go looking for a commercial pressure washing calculator that spits out market prices; the honest version is this one, because the only numbers that can keep you profitable are yours.

Step 2: Time your production, then convert

Per-square-foot pricing is just your hourly rate divided by your measured speed. Time three or four real jobs - including setup and tear-down, not just trigger time - and build your own table. Suppose your timing comes out like this (these are illustrative; substitute your own):

Then a 600 sq ft driveway quotes at 600 x $0.12 = $72… which fails Step 3.

Step 3: The minimum job charge does the heavy lifting

Small surfaces quoted purely per-square-foot lose money, because the drive, the hose-out and the pack-up cost the same on every stop. Set a minimum job charge - $150 is a defensible floor for a mobile rig ($90 rate x the roughly 1.5 hours a “quick” stop really consumes door to door) - and let it override the math on small jobs. The $72 driveway becomes a $150 visit, or it rides along with the house wash as an add-on at the per-square-foot price. Add-ons priced next to a big job are nearly pure margin; standalone smalls are quoted at the minimum or politely declined.

Chemicals and water are materials, not rate: job-cost them with a markup, the way the table above adds them per square foot. Bulk surfactant is cheap per job; post-treatment on concrete is not - price the job you are actually doing.

Step 4: Quote like a professional outfit

• One number, in writing, before you start. “House wash, $285, includes soft-wash chemicals, done Thursday.” Certainty is what separates you from the guy with the box-store machine.
• Name what is excluded. Second-story hand work, rust removal, gum, sealed surfaces - excluded or line-itemed, never absorbed silently.
• Grade the ugly ones up front. Years of never-washed algae is not the same job as annual maintenance; walking the surface for sixty seconds before quoting is your version of an electrician checking the panel.
• Book the repeat while you are winning. “Same wash next spring, locked at this price” turns a one-time quote into a route - and route density is what quietly raises your billable percentage and drops your true cost.

For a feel of what structured flat-rate output looks like, the one-page Flat-Rate Cheat Sheet (PDF) shows 20 jobs priced at three shop rates - grab it free. (It is built on our electrical task list, but the rate-times-hours structure is identical to what your washing menu should look like.)

A worked quote, start to finish

Put the whole method together on a typical stop: a 2,200 sq ft house wash with a 600 sq ft driveway, using the illustrative paces above (again - substitute your own timings):

Sanity-check it against the clock: roughly 3.7 hours of house wash plus 0.7 of driveway is about 4.4 hours; $495 / 4.4 = about $113 an hour - comfortably above the $90 floor, which is exactly what the per-square-foot conversion is supposed to guarantee. The driveway standing alone would have been a $150-minimum visit; as an add-on it is $75 of nearly pure margin because the rig was already hot. That asymmetry is the entire quoting strategy in one driveway: sell add-ons hard while you are on site, and defend the minimum when you are not.

FAQ

What is the going rate per square foot for pressure washing? Wrong question, honestly - “going rates” you hear online come from rigs with different overhead, different speed and different insurance than yours. The right question is your rate divided by your measured pace, plus chemicals. Two operators can both be correct at prices 40 percent apart.

How do I compete with the $99 house wash guy? You do not. He is either uninsured, unprofitable or both, and either condition is self-correcting. Quote your number, explain what it includes - insurance, proper chemicals, a finish you will stand behind - and let the customers who only want cheap have him.

Should commercial work be priced differently than residential? Same engine, different inputs: commercial jobs usually mean bigger areas (faster per-square-foot pace), but also night hours, insurance certificates, and slower payment - which is margin, billable-percentage and rate pressure. Run the calculator with commercial assumptions before bidding a contract, not after.

Is there a pressure washing quote calculator that does all this? The hourly rate calculator does the foundation - your floor rate. The production-rate table is deliberately yours to fill in: any tool that pretends to know how fast your rig cleans concrete is guessing. Leave your email in the calculator and tell us your trade - the most-requested trade gets the next full pricing book.