Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Milton, Crabapple, and Hickory Flat
Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
Meet David Douglas from Excellent Exteriors Power Washing, Softwash, & Lawncare
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The hidden science behind keeping your home's exterior spotless isn't what most homeowners expect. Meet David Douglas, owner of Excellent Exteriors, who transforms dirty siding, black-streaked roofs, and grimy driveways with specialized knowledge that goes far beyond simply blasting surfaces with water.
Starting as a side hustle while working at Lockheed Martin, David's pressure washing business has grown into a full-time operation serving both commercial and residential clients throughout Milton. What sets his approach apart? The understanding that different surfaces require completely different treatment methods. That vinyl siding needs a gentle touch with specific chemicals while concrete demands high pressure and specialized post-treatments to prevent rapid regrowth of mold and algae.
David breaks down common misconceptions about pressure washing, explaining why those massive water tanks on service trucks aren't actually for bringing water to your home, but rather for maintaining consistent flow rates during cleaning. He reveals why DIY pressure washing often disappoints – the average home improvement store machine puts out just 2.5 gallons per minute, while professional equipment delivers 8 gallons per minute, completing jobs in a fraction of the time with superior results.
Beyond pressure washing, David and his brother William offer comprehensive lawn care services and tackle specialty projects like retaining wall repairs and fence staining. Their approach is built on transparency, communication, and standing behind their work – perhaps why their business has thrived primarily through word-of-mouth referrals rather than advertising. Ready to see what professional exterior cleaning can do for your home? Contact Excellent Exteriors at 770-881-5053 or visit: https://www.excellentexteriorswash.com/ to discover the difference proper equipment and expertise can make.
Introducing David Douglas of Excellent Exteriors
Speaker 1This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Poehler.
Speaker 2Hey everybody, I'm excited to be chatting today with David Douglas. He's the local owner of Excellent Exteriors, Power Washing, Soft Wash and Lawn Care. Welcome, David.
Speaker 3Hello, how's it going?
Speaker 2Good, good. And I also wanted to mention to folks that your brother, william, works with you.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 2In case they see him around town. Good deal. Why don't you start off by telling us about excellent exteriors?
Pressure Washing vs. Soft Wash Explained
Speaker 3I started probably around five, six years ago. I also work at Lockheed Martin and wanted a side business and it's grew where we're running it pretty much full time, even in the winter of us. We do commercial accounts like restaurants, but the bulk of our accounts are houses like residential. The bulk of our accounts are houses like residential. Just wanted to start my own thing and I've always had the entrepreneurship in me and did a lot of research and used to do a little pressure washing in high school. But there's a lot more to it than just grabbing a pressure washer. It's about knowing chemicals using soft pressure with a salt wash system versus pressure. She can mess up a lot of things by using the wrong equipment or chemical. So that's how I got into it and a little bit about what I do. But I'm sure we'll get those questions soon.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. So maybe we'll dive into a little bit more about the different services you offer. So you're like a one-stop shopper getting the exterior of your house spruced up. So, whether that's the pressure washing or the soft wash or even lawn care, maybe you can start talking to us a little bit about the pressure washing and soft wash and what you guys do and how what you're doing is a little bit different and more sophisticated maybe than some of the other folks out there yeah, pressure washing, power washing, those are pretty much the same ones with hot water, ones with cold water, and we have both.
Speaker 3You don't use the power washing for houses more pressure because it's more for grease and stuff like at restaurants and which, as a soft wash, is what we use for the house because you don't want damaged paint.
Speaker 3We have a valve system that we have our chemical and soaps in. So we know exactly, say, if you have a brick house versus stucco, verse, party plank or vinyl, you have to know how much mixture to put in there to do the job without damaging the house. Also, with the soft wire system we clean roofs. All the black streaking on the roofs. We can get that off without damaging shingles. We do that. The pressure we basically only use that for concrete work walls like retaining walls and things like that, which, as we sometimes, will use pressure washer for rinsing the house. If I'm out soft washing, we have a different tip system to not put heavy pressure on the house but just rinsing. That's the only time we'll ever use a pressure washer on your house is for rinsing only.
Specialized Services for Different Surfaces
Speaker 3There's a lot of things with houses doing the soft wash because if your paint's oxidized you run your finger over your paint, you got the chalkiness on your fingers. If you hit it with pressure pressure it's going to be like swirl marks everywhere, like Zorro or something was at your house, making all over your house. So that's why soft wash is a better tool to use, equipment to use for your house, and like the pressure or power washing. We do that on concrete pool decks. And even if you have a pool deck that has pavers, that has the sand between them, you gotta be careful because the grout can come up. So that's another thing that we do is if you have pavers, we can either pressure wash it and re-sand and grout it or we can just do a soft wash that day and it gets it pretty clean like that. Also have many customers just like a soft wash and they're happy with the result. If it's really dirty it might have to be pressure washed and re-sanded and grouted.
Speaker 3That's for the houses. And of course we do restaurants. We do a lot of local restaurants in Milton and surrounding areas. We do the patios where the cooks go in and out the back of the walkways. Of course we do the roofs and soft wash the building too when it needs it. So that's what we use that for.
Speaker 3So that's about what sums up the pressure wash and soft wash. It's just knowing the right chemicals for the job, knowing walk around with the customer telling them all right, we have mud splatter on your house here that's not going to come up with soft wash or pressure, so we have a mud treatment to get that off. But you also, when we come to your house, we'll test spot a spot on your house to make sure our chemicals don't ruin it. Because some paint companies put organic stuff in paint which is, if we touch it with chemical it will damage the paint. So that's why we do a little test spot and then we can do decks. We get to watch out because if it's a painted stain like a solid color, we can use chemical on it. If it's a translucent, you have to be careful because you can strip the stain off. So just being knowledgeable of all the chemicals and material that you're cleaning so you can get a good job and not damage anything.
Lawn Care and Additional Services
Speaker 2Yeah, and you guys definitely know what you're doing on that side of the business. And then I know that you and William also take care of lawns and clean up yard, clean up all that kind of stuff. Can you talk a little bit about what you all do with that?
Speaker 3Yeah, so back it's been probably 20 years ago. My brother had a lawn care business in Orlando but now he lives up here and I started doing lawn care also, probably when I started this business five years ago and had many accounts and got busy with pressure washing. So I stopped doing that and my brother wanted me to start back the lawn care business. We mow, we do like your basic mow, blow, edge, trim bushes, mulch and there's some other projects. If customers ask, we repair, retain and wall. The other week we have a lot of customers ask for different things that we don't really advertise for. But there's a lot of stuff that we can do. So we even stained fences to to just prepare things at house houses. We're Jack of all trades, I believe us. We can do almost anything, but if we have the time, that's a problem.
Common Misconceptions About Pressure Washing
Speaker 2Definitely can do almost anything, but if we have the time that's a problem. Definitely. Are there any myths or misconceptions that are out there about the maybe the pressure washing, power washing stuff that you guys do?
Speaker 3the biggest thing in our field is like I have a lot of money invested in my equipment. I have commercial equipment. I have like my soft wire system. Another thing while I'm talking about this, you see the big tanks on the back of the trucks or the trailers. A lot of customers think, oh, can you bring your own water? Yes, we can bring our own water, but it's going to probably cost you more than what the job costs.
Speaker 3Because if I had to come back to my house and fill it up, what the big tanks are for is like my soft wash system. It puts out 11 gallons per minute. A house puts out around four gallons per minute of water, so it's a buffer tank to keep it filling up so I don't run out of water. So it's a buffer tank to keep it filling up so I don't run out of water. Like my pressure washers put out eight gallons per minute, which has, even though the pressure washer is eight gallons per minute, the soft wash is 11 gallons per minute. You know the soft wash, you can still put your hand in front of it, not cut your fingers.
Speaker 3Versus a pressure washer, it's going to be a lot more. It's going to be a lot more. It's going to be high pressure, so the tanks are more for just a buffer to keep on filling up while we're using our machines. I know that's a big thing. I always could ask do you bring your own water? No, to be honest with you probably three to four bucks worth of water while we're there we're going to use. It's not worth you paying for me to travel back and forth to my house or my shop to get loaded up with water.
Speaker 3That's biggest misconception yeah, I know and another misconception is I'm not saying like a high school kid or someone like that's starting their own pressure washing business can't do a good job A lot of times just the knowledge of what to use. Like when we do a driveway, we post, treat it with chemicals. It kills all the organic matter that's been growing on the concrete so it takes it longer to grow back. So it takes it longer to grow back versus if you just go over it with pressure. Those organisms are still living on your driveway so it's going to grow back faster. So that's another misconception. And using, say, a Home Depot pressure washer that puts out two and a half gallons per minute versus an eight gallon per minute machine.
Speaker 3Someone might be doing a driveway that takes them five, six hours to do, but I can pull up sometimes and do it in 30 minutes, 45 minutes. We invested in the right equipment to be efficient and get the job done so we can go on to the next job and the customer can have the rest of their day and not think they have to stay at home for us. But we work with our customers A lot of times they'll schedule something and they won't even be home and we'll work on their job and we'll pack up and leave and they'll call and tell us that we did a good job. And we like to take before and after pictures if you're not home, to send it to you. So you see the job got completed.
Behind the Business and Future Ventures
Speaker 2That's good. Yeah it's a lot of science that you're using there to solve some problems for folks, and it definitely takes years of experience, which is what you guys have. What do you like to do for fun when you're not out pressure washing?
Speaker 3I got two boys, six and nine. They're big into baseball, so always at the baseball park I coach their teams and then do a lot of barbecuing. I have a food truck that's soon up and running. I do a lot of barbecuing Just hanging out with the kids. The wife in what we're to assume, is sports right now.
Speaker 2Yeah, what's your food truck going to be called?
Speaker 3The Prom Pig. We of course want to have full pork. We're going to do brisket, probably wings ribs, so that's actually got a charity event. I'm cooking for Sunday. I'm about to go downstairs and start cooking.
Speaker 2That's great. So it's a passion that's maybe turning into another entrepreneur venture.
Speaker 3Yes, if I have time.
Speaker 2In between coaching and everything else.
Speaker 3That's the problem. I don't have enough time for everything. I got big ambitions and not enough time.
Speaker 2Yeah, as a business owner, I'm sure there's been some hurdles and things you've had to overcome to kind of get this going and keep it going. Can you talk about maybe some challenges that you faced along the way and how you've gotten through them?
Speaker 3Yeah, challenges with what we're working with, like having equipment that pressure washers, soft wash machines is running for five, six hours a day. You have things that break on the job. You have to know how to fix it. That's the biggest hurdles for us is or truck breaks down, just getting it fixed in a timely manner so we can finish the job. And that's the biggest hurdles I have is things breaking on us because I was out on the job today and I had a piece that broke so I had to run back to the shop and fix it to go finish the job.
Business Challenges and Customer Communication
Speaker 3But we're really transparent with our customers. We let them know what's going on. Communication is key in any part of life business, personal I got to have that communication so I try to communicate with customers and just let them know so there's no mix-up or per se. If you're doing a a job, it's good for us to take a video of the house, because sometimes customers don't notice things that are wrong with their house or something that's damaged. So if I have a video I can go back and show them what was wrong with it, because once you're cleaning the dirt off of something, you can really notice something first. So they might not have noticed it, but always go back to the video so I can show them hey, this is what happened. But that keeps me safe and even though they think that we did it first, we can always go back and clear it up.
Speaker 3Just communication and protecting ourselves. But also where they don't feel like they're blaming us or anything, like I tell a customer if I mess up something, we stand by our work, because we're mostly word of mouth. I've been running for the last five years and built my business by referrals and repeat customers and this is the first time really advertising. I have a website and stuff like that, but that is not really advertising as much. So I'm excited to be in the Milton Magazine.
Speaker 2Yeah, we're excited to have you. Anything else that you haven't had a chance to share?
Speaker 3about the business that you want to make sure our listeners know? Not really. I think we covered most of it. I'll probably remember after we get on.
Speaker 2That's okay. Can you share where people can find you, your website, phone number, that kind of stuff?
Contact Information and Episode Closing
Speaker 3Yes, our phone number is 770-881-5053. And our website is excellentexteriorclean at gmailcom and I believe there's a link on there. If y'all click on it, it sends me a message, or I pick up my phone when people call, or if I miss a phone call, I try to get right back to it, or text message. It works awesome.
Speaker 2Thanks so much for joining us today, David. It was great getting to know you and getting to know the business a little better.
Speaker 3All right, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast Milton and More. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpmiltoncom. That's gnpmiltoncom, or call 470-664-4930.