Pressure washing costs in Salt Lake City

A Salt Lake City house sits downwind of a shrinking lake. Utah's Division of Air Quality has written that the Wasatch Front, Salt Lake City included, is directly exposed to dust blown off the dry parts of the Great Salt Lake bed. As the water level fell, the division says, large stretches of loose ground were left open to the wind. It studied the dust events that hit the Front in the spring of 2022.

Dust that blows in settles on whatever is outside: screens, siding, the patio set, the driveway. Getting it off is the easy part. Where the rinse water goes is the part to think about.

Salt Lake City Public Utilities treats anything in a storm drain that isn't purely stormwater as an illicit discharge, apart from a short list its permit allows. Lawn watering runoff and a resident washing a car are on that list. Even those, the city says, can hurt water quality depending on how much flows, for how long, and how toxic the product is, so it's best to keep them small. If your crew brings detergent, ask how they'll keep the soapy rinse out of the gutter.

The gutter matters because of where it leads. Here, storm drains generally empty into the Jordan River or one of the canals around town, and all of them flow on to the Great Salt Lake with no treatment along the way.