Shingle Roof Cleaning Results Calculator

Shingle Roof Cleaning Results Calculator

Ever wonder if Soft Wash Roof Cleaning will make your asphalt shingles look brand new?
In short, it won’t…

Nothing makes shingles look new other than new shingles…  The sun bleaches shingles every day as a result from the day you install a new roof, it starts to fade.  Cleaning the roof can’t undo months or years of the sun’s bleaching power.   But all is not lost, when you soft wash, your roof will look better.

How much better will my roof look?

Like all things, that depends….

Shingle Age

Shingles have a limited life span, indicated by the manufacturer warranty , some shingles are 20 year, others might be 40 year architectural shingles with algae prevention.  In either case, as the shingles age, the sun degrades the asphalt at the core of the shingle, and granules get a bit loose.  When heavy rains come you may even see granules in the gutters, or near down spouts.  It’s not a failure of the roof, it’s just shingle aging.   Just like people as a roof moves from toddler to teenager to adult parts wear out.

Because of shingle aging, uniform cleaning results just aren’t reality… The older the roof, the less it will respond to any roof cleaner.  So the sooner the roof gets cleaned the better off it will be.

Roof Stain Age

It’s not just the age of the roof that plays a factor in roof cleaning outcomes, the stains themselves play an equal part.   As stains form from single cells, into families, then villages and eventually mega-stain-cities, they protect themselves from the UV rays of the sun, with a black film… The algae’s black film offers solar protection but the black streaks ruin curb appeal.  Ideally, black streak prevention should start the first year after roof installation.

But once the stains have turned black, that black layer is also blocking the sun from bleaching the shingle underneath… As a result the shingles under stains don’t fade, but the rest of the roof is still fading.   When roof cleaners clean the algae and remove the black stains, the roof underneath is once again visible.   But it looks like it did the day the black streaks blocked the sun….   And there is NOTHING that can correct the solar fading that could Roof Stain Prevention could have stopped.   The longer the stains remain in place, the worse the black streak contrast seems.

Calculate the results

Combining the roof age and stain age provide best information to forecast the results of a soft wash roof cleaning.

For those interested in the formula:

100 – ( 2 X (roof age + stain age ) ) = Percent Improvement

For those who just want the results:

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