Most exterior cleaning damage in Jacksonville comes from one decision: someone owned a pressure washer and assumed it was the tool for every outdoor surface.

It is a reasonable assumption. It is also expensive, because the surfaces that suffer most are the ones that cost the most to put right — and in several cases the damage is genuinely permanent.

Here is the list, with what actually happens and what to use instead.

1. Asphalt shingle roofs

The most damaging and the most common. Shingles are protected by a layer of ceramic-coated granules bonded to the asphalt. Those granules are the entire UV defence, and they do not grow back.

The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association states plainly that a power washer should not be used to remove algae from shingles. A pressure-washed roof looks better for a season, then ages visibly faster than its neighbours.

Use instead: a low-pressure soft wash under 100 PSI.

2. Anything painted, especially if it is chalking

Run a hand down a painted wall. If it leaves a white powder, the binder in the paint has broken down and the surface is already failing. Pressure will take it off in sheets.

This catches out a lot of Arlington and Westside block homes, where painted masonry from the 1960s and 70s is common and decades-old paint chalks quietly.

Use instead: soft wash under 300 PSI, with a test patch first.

3. Stucco

Stucco looks tough and behaves like a sponge. Growth lives inside the texture rather than on it, so pressure cannot reach it anyway — and what pressure can do is chip the finish coat and drive water into the wall assembly behind.

Use instead: soft wash with a longer dwell, because dwell time is the only thing that reaches into the texture.

4. Screen enclosures and pool cages

Screen mesh tears or pulls off the spline at pressures a driveway would not register. A single blown panel costs more to replace than cleaning the whole cage.

Use instead: a soft rinse under 100 PSI, held perpendicular to the panel.

5. Cool deck and coated pool surfaces

A cool-deck coating is a few millimetres of textured material sprayed over concrete. Above roughly 1,200 PSI it comes off in patches, and there is no invisible spot repair — the whole deck has to be recoated.

Use instead: 800 to 1,200 PSI with a cleaning solution.

6. Older or soft wood

High pressure erodes the soft spring wood between the harder grain lines. That is what produces the furry, splintered texture people blame on age. It is not reversible without sanding, and it makes the wood absorb far more stain than it should.

Use instead: 500 to 1,200 PSI with a wood cleaner, worked along the grain. See deck cleaning and fence cleaning.

7. Historic masonry, coquina and tabby

Specific to this region and genuinely irreplaceable. Coquina and tabby are soft, porous shell-based materials found through St. Augustine and in older Northeast Florida structures. Pressure does not clean them; it erodes them. There is no repair, only replacement with material that will not match.

The same caution applies to lime mortar joints in Springfield and Riverside — the mortar erodes long before the brick does.

Use instead: the lowest pressure available, appropriate chemistry, and a documented test area first.

8. Solar panels

High-pressure water can breach the perimeter seal around the laminate and drive moisture into the cell layer. The failure is progressive, expensive, and normally excluded from the warranty.

Use instead: deionised water and a soft brush.

9. Window seals and glazing

Directing a high-pressure jet at the edge of a window forces water past the seal. On double glazing that means permanent fogging between the panes; on older single-glazed windows in historic homes it means displaced glazing putty.

Use instead: low pressure and keep the wand off the perimeter entirely. See window cleaning.

So what can be pressure washed?

Genuinely hard, unpainted, non-porous flatwork. Concrete driveways, sidewalks, curbs, brick paving and masonry in sound condition. That is roughly it.

Which means that on a typical Jacksonville property, the majority of the exterior should never see a pressure washer at all — and the parts that should are best done with a surface cleaner rather than a wand.