Pressure washing estimate calculator
Most pressure washing quotes are a number the owner already has in their head. This works it out from how fast your crew actually cleans the surface and what an hour on site costs you.
Run your numbers
Square feet of the actual surface, not the lot.
Square feet your crew covers in an hour on this surface. Open flatwork runs fast, a stained driveway or a two story wash runs slow.
Wage plus payroll taxes, workers comp, and benefits.
Drive, hook up, break down. The hours nobody bills but everybody pays for.
Fuel, water, and wear while it is running.
- Quote this job at
- $577
- Price per square foot
- $0.288
- Revenue per hour on site
- $115.38
- Cleaning hours
- 4.00
- Total hours including setup
- 5.00
- Labor cost
- $280.00
- Machine cost
- $60.00
- Total cost
- $375.00
- Profit at this price
- $201.92
Travel and setup are 20 percent of the day on this one, which is a healthy ratio for a job this size.
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How do you estimate a pressure washing job?
Measure the surface, divide it by your production rate to get cleaning hours, then add the travel and setup hours you cannot bill separately. Multiply the total by your crew size and loaded hourly cost, add chemicals and machine running cost, then add your margin. Checking the result as a price per square foot is how you catch a quote that is out of step with the market before you send it.
Questions about pricing wash work
What production rate should I use?
Your own, measured from a job you have already done. Time a driveway you know the size of and you have a rate you can trust for similar surfaces. Flatwork runs far faster per square foot than a two story house wash, so one rate for everything will underprice the hard work.
Is my price per square foot reasonable?
Published pricing guides put residential flatwork roughly between fifteen and seventy five cents a square foot, with commercial flatwork lower because the areas are bigger. Those are ranges, not rules, and they move with your market and how heavy the buildup is. Use the figure as a sanity check rather than a target.
Why does travel and setup matter so much?
Because it is the same hour whether the job is two hundred square feet or two thousand. A small job a long drive away can spend half its day on things nobody pays for, which is why a minimum charge and grouping jobs by area matter more in this trade than in most.
Should I quote by the hour or by the square foot?
Work it out by the hour and present it by the job. Customers compare a total, not a rate, and quoting hourly invites a conversation about how fast you work. The square foot figure here is for checking your own number, not for putting on the quote.
Quote it, then find out if you were right
Pinstripe Fleet tracks the hours against the job while the crew is on site, so next season's production rate comes off your own finished work instead of a guess.
Pinstripe Fleet Management is built and supported by Pinstripe Business Services.