Inside Our Soft-Wash Recipe Book: How We Mix House-Wash Solution for ITB Brick, Stucco & North Raleigh Hardie

The Three Ingredients That Anchor Every Recipe

Before we get to the substrate-specific recipes, the chemistry backbone. Every soft-wash mix that leaves our truck is built from three things:

1. Sodium hypochlorite (SH). The biocide. Same chemistry as household bleach, but we buy it at 12.5% concentration and dilute down to working strength at the wall. It's what kills the Gloeocapsa magma algae, the mildew, the lichen, the moss.
2. Polymer surfactant. The soap that sticks the SH to the substrate long enough to work, and breaks the surface tension on the dirt so the rinse takes it cleanly. Not dish soap, and not anything from the home-improvement aisle — a commercial-grade surfactant rated for SH compatibility.
3. Water. Sounds trivial. It isn't. The water hardness, the temperature, and whether we're running soft water through the truck softener all change how the mix behaves on dark substrates.

That's the backbone. What changes between a Country Club Hills brick wash and a Wakefield Hardie wash is the ratio of those three, the dwell time, and what we do at the rinse.

Recipe 1: ITB Painted Brick (Hayes Barton, Five Points, Country Club Hills)

Painted brick is the dominant exterior on the older homes Inside the Beltline. Walk through Hayes Barton, Country Club Hills, Budleigh, the Five Points side streets, and a lot of Bloomsbury and the older blocks off Whitaker Mill Road, and you'll see the same envelope — original red clay brick under one or more coats of latex paint, usually in cream, gray, or a pale green or blue. The paint is doing the visible work; the brick underneath is what we have to be careful with.

On the painted brick recipe we lean on dwell, not strength. The cleaner-but-slower mix sits on the wall for ten minutes and the algae and mildew lift off without ever needing pressure at the rinse. The mortar joints come through untouched.

Recipe 2: Cameron Park / Bloomsbury Stucco & Lime Coat

Real stucco — not the EIFS synthetic stucco common on newer builds — shows up on a meaningful share of Cameron Park, Bloomsbury, parts of Anderson Heights, and the older West Raleigh blocks off Hillsborough Street and Western Boulevard near the NC State campus edge. Lime-finish coats on stucco are softer than people realize, and the wrong mix can chalk the finish off in a few square feet of damage that costs thousands to patch.

Stucco gets the gentlest recipe in the book. Patience wins. If the algae is heavy, we'll do two light passes with a 15-minute wait between, rather than one stronger pass.

Recipe 3: Unpainted Red Brick (Bartonside, Glenwood South, Older ITB)

Plenty of homes Inside the Beltline are still original brick — mortar joint visible, no paint — mostly along the older blocks of Glenwood South, the older parts of Anderson Heights, and around the back streets of Five Points and Mordecai. The recipe shifts again.

Recipe 4: North Raleigh Hardie & Fiber-Cement (Wakefield, Falls River, Bedford)

The dominant exterior on every post-2000 build in Wakefield, Falls River, Bedford at Falls River, Greystone Village, Stonehenge, Hasentree, Heritage, and most of the newer pockets of North Ridge. Fiber-cement is engineered for moisture and is mechanically tougher than vinyl, but the painted finish is the only thing protecting the substrate — and the wrong mix will haze or chalk the paint film.

Recipe 5: Vinyl Siding (Older Builds & Townhomes)

Vinyl is the older-era cousin of fiber-cement. We see it on the townhomes and patio homes in Midtown East, Brennan Station, parts of Wakefield's older sections, the townhome stretches of Crabtree Valley, and a meaningful share of the homes around Six Forks Road built in the 80s and 90s.

Recipe 6: Mixed-Substrate Homes (the Real World)

Most of the executive homes in North Ridge, Heritage, and Hasentree are mixed. A typical layout: brick water-table around the foundation, Hardie field above, painted-wood trim and porch ceilings, board-and-batten or shake gables. The recipe isn't one recipe — it's three or four, sequenced.

The art of a clean Heritage or North Ridge house wash is the sequencing. Wet the lower brick first to neutralize any drips that fall onto it during the Hardie pass. Hit the Hardie field with the workhorse recipe. Drop concentration for the wood trim. Save the dirtiest substrate for last so the rinse takes everything down at once.

What Changes by Season

The recipe book doesn't just shift by substrate — it shifts by season:

March, April, May (Pollen Season)

Pollen film sits on top of mildew growth. We add 10–15% more surfactant to break the pollen tension and lift it before the SH starts working on the mildew underneath. Dwell stays the same; the surfactant change is what does it.

June, July, August (Heat & Humidity)

SH activity accelerates in heat. We cut concentration about 10% on a 90+ degree day to avoid over-treating, and we wet the wall with clean water before the SH application to keep the chemistry from flashing off. On the hottest mid-summer days in Wakefield or Bedford we'll switch the sequence so the south- and west-facing walls are washed first thing in the morning, before the sun is on them.

September, October, November (Cooler Temps)

The opposite problem: SH works slower in cooler air. We extend the dwell by 30–50% and may add a half-gallon of additional 12.5% SH to a 50-gallon batch. The fall house-wash result is often the best of the year because the algae has had a full summer to grow and a properly dwelled fall wash strips it cleanly.

December, January, February (Cold Weather Wash)

We rarely do whole-house washes below 40°F because the chemistry slows to the point of being inefficient. Late winter calls in Hayes Barton or North Hills for a pre-spring wash are usually scheduled for the back end of February when daytime highs cross 50°F.

The Rinse Is Half the Job

A proper soft-wash rinse takes longer than the chemistry application. On a 2,800 sq ft Hardie home in Bedford we'll spend roughly 12 minutes applying and 18 minutes rinsing. The rinse is done at low pressure, from the top down, with overlapping passes, and we don't stop until the water running off the wall reads clean and the siding sheets dry rather than spotting.

The Three-Question Diagnostic We Run on Every House

When our truck pulls up at a new property — whether it's a 1929 brick foursquare on Anderson Drive in Hayes Barton or a 2019 Hardie in Bedford at Falls River — we walk the perimeter and answer three questions before we touch the soft-wash gun:

1. What's the substrate, and is it consistent across the elevation? Mixed substrates need the sequenced approach above. Even a "Hardie home" might have wood trim that needs the recipe dropped down.
2. What's the biology on this wall — mildew, algae, lichen, or all three? Lichen takes more dwell. Pollen-fed mildew lifts fast. Black algae on north-facing walls needs SH at the upper end of the residential band.
3. What's the rinse plan? Where does the water go? Where are the plants we have to protect? Where will the runoff land — on a gravel driveway, a lawn, a flower bed, the neighbor's hedge?

By the time the gun is on the wall, the recipe is set, the dwell window is on a watch, the rinse path is known, and the landscaping is wet down. That's what "soft wash" actually looks like behind the truck.

What Homeowners Should Ask

If you're getting quotes for a wash on a Hayes Barton, Five Points, Cameron Park, North Hills, Wakefield or Heritage home, here are three questions that separate a careful crew from a cheap one:

• "What working concentration of SH are you putting on my walls?" A real answer is a number in the 0.6–1.2% band depending on substrate. A vague answer (or "we use commercial cleaner") is a red flag.
• "How long will you dwell, and how do you time it?" Real answer: 6–18 minutes depending on substrate and temperature, on a watch or a timer. Vague answer means they're guessing.
• "What's your plan for my plants, and for the rinse runoff?" Real answer: pre-wet the landscaping, post-rinse with clean water, route runoff to lawn rather than beds. Vague answer means damage is more likely than not.

Why the Recipe Book Matters

The reason we publish this isn't that we expect homeowners to start mixing soft-wash chemistry. It's that the gap between a well-tuned soft wash and a poorly tuned one is invisible the day of the job — the house looks clean either way — and shows up six weeks or six months later. Paint haze on Hardie. Mortar chalking on old brick. Algae returning faster than it should. Streaking on dark siding.

If you live in 27605, 27607, 27608, 27609, 27612, 27614, or 27615 and you want a quote from a team that's been running these recipes long enough to have them in muscle memory, call or text (919) 951-9225 or grab an instant quote. We'll match the recipe to your house.

Frequently Asked Questions