Pressure Washing, Franklin MA

Today I was out looking at a prospective pressure washing job that had small little black dots all over the vinyl siding.  Those small little dots are called artillery fungus (Sphaerobolus spp) that lives on decaying wood, or your problem is more than likely that its living in your mulch bed that is around your foundation.  What they are is a little fungus that shoots its spores out like a shotgun.  This shotgun fungus can easily shoot its spores 20 feet in the air and tends to shoot it towards the light or a bright colored surface like your nice white siding.

So what can you do to remove it? Well… Unfortunately, pressure washing doesn’t really cut it.  When it attaches to your siding it forms a hard “crust” which is pretty hard in itself to remove.  You can sort of scrape it off but underneath it leaves what can compared to as a brown ink spot.  Some say that the ïnk Spot”can be removed with an ink eraser.  That would be a daunting task as there are could be hundreds.  The downside to that method, pressure washing or any other method is that your siding has a chalky oxidation on it which is removed when attempting to clean, coincidentally leaving streaks and smudges.

How do you prevent it? Ok, now that you know that it feeds on your mulch and decaying wood… Get rid of it! You can replace it with stone, rubber mulch that is made from recycled tires (actually looks kinda like regular mulch), or other inorganic substrate.  If inorganic substrate doesn’t work for you then you could try removing the old mulch every year and replacing it with some fresh mulch