Heat is the only real difference between pressure and power washing - here is which one Fort Myers stucco, tile roofs, pavers, and lanai cages actually call for.
Pressure washing and power washing are close to the same service, and the only genuine technical difference is heat: a power washer runs the water through a burner, usually to somewhere around 150 to 200 degrees, while a pressure washer sprays it cold. On a Fort Myers home, neither one belongs at full pressure on your walls or roof. Stucco, painted siding, concrete barrel tile, and screened pool cages here are cleaned by soft washing - low pressure plus a cleaning solution that kills the algae at the root. Heat and high pressure earn their keep on flat hard surfaces: concrete driveways, pavers, and commercial pads carrying grease or oil.
A heating element, and nothing else that matters. Both machines use the same pumps, hoses, nozzles, and rotating surface cleaners, and both operate in a similar pressure band. Nearly every established company in Lee County - us included - runs equipment capable of both, which is why the two words get used interchangeably in ads and on trucks. That interchangeability is fine. What is not fine is a contractor pitching power washing as a fundamentally superior service for your house and charging a premium for it. On residential siding, the water temperature is close to irrelevant, because the cleaning is being done by the solution rather than by force.
Usually neither, at least not the way most people picture it. The black streaking on Fort Myers roofs is Gloeocapsa magma, a cyanobacteria, and the green-grey film on north-facing stucco is algae and mildew fed by the June-through-October rainy season and constant Gulf humidity. Those are living organisms, not dirt. High pressure knocks the top layer off, the surface looks clean for a few weeks, and the growth returns from the roots still in the pores. A soft wash kills it, which is why the result lasts a year or more instead of a season. High pressure also has a real cost on our housing stock: it strips granules off shingles, drives water under lap siding and behind stucco control joints, and pits the aluminum frame of a lanai cage. That is the approach behind every exterior job we quote in Fort Myers and Lee County.
When there is grease or oil involved. Heat is what actually breaks down a petroleum stain - cold water tends to spread it and leave a halo. So hot water genuinely matters on a restaurant back-of-house pad or dumpster area in the River District, on gum welded to a sidewalk, and on the dark drip patch under where a vehicle parks. It also cuts cleaning time on heavily trafficked commercial concrete. On a shell-and-paver residential drive with algae and orange irrigation staining, cold water plus the correct pre-treatment does the same work, which is how most driveway and concrete cleaning here is handled.
For a house, it should not - and if a quote is higher purely because the word power appears on it, ask what the heat is doing for your siding. Commercial degreasing is the honest exception: hot-water work on a grease pad takes a burner, diesel to fire it, and more time on site, and it is fair for that to price above a standard flat-surface clean. Ask any company which surfaces they intend to soft wash and which they intend to hit with pressure. A clear answer to that question tells you far more about the outcome than which of the two words they put on the invoice.
Can I power wash my tile roof? No. Concrete barrel and flat tile in Fort Myers cracks under foot traffic and under direct high pressure, and pressure also flushes out mortar at the hips and ridges. Tile roofs are cleaned with a no-pressure chemical application applied from a ladder or a walkable path, never by blasting.
Is the machine I can rent enough? A rental or consumer unit typically produces enough pressure to permanently etch concrete and shred a screen panel, but does not include the tank, injector, or solution that make a soft wash work. That combination - plenty of force, no chemistry - is exactly how driveways end up with visible wand stripes.
Will hot water get rid of the black roof streaks faster? No. The streaks are a living organism, and a cleaning solution kills them; temperature does not. Heat on a roof only adds risk to shingle granules and to the sealant around flashing and vents.
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