Office, hotel, retail, restaurant, medical and multifamily exteriors inside the Dunwoody city limits, quoted against City of Dunwoody Code Chapter 32 rather than against a county document that does not reach the parcel
Thrare Contracting washes exterior surfaces for building owners, asset managers, facility directors, general contractors and retail operators at addresses inside the City of Dunwoody: the high rise office and hotel stock around Perimeter Center, the retail and restaurant frontage on Ashford Dunwoody Road and at Dunwoody Village, medical and professional office space on Mount Vernon Road and Chamblee Dunwoody Road, structured parking under and beside those towers, and the mid rise and garden apartment communities built out along the MARTA corridor. Dunwoody is a service area rather than a location. Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, works from the Atlanta address printed at the foot of this page, and Rare Earth Ltd has operated since January 19, 2020.
Every section below leads with the instrument, because exterior cleaning in Dunwoody is a water disposal job wearing a cleaning job's clothes. A wand and a surface cleaner are commodities. Knowing whose ordinance governs the parcel, what that ordinance calls the liquid coming off the wall, and what the enforcement sequence looks like after somebody complains, is the part a property manager cannot buy from a price sheet.
A commercial address inside the Dunwoody city limits is governed by the City of Dunwoody Code of Ordinances, Chapter 32, Article IV, Division 9, because Section 32-477(b) states its own reach in one line: "The provisions of this division shall apply throughout the incorporated area of the city." Dunwoody sits geographically within DeKalb County, and Dunwoody nonetheless runs its own illicit discharge ordinance, its own stormwater utility under Chapter 32 Article V, and its own permit with the state.
DeKalb County publishes a separate program under a different permit class. The County's Stormwater Management page describes a utility "Established in 2004" and states that DeKalb County "operates under NPDES Phase I MS4 permit". Dunwoody is not in that class. The City of Dunwoody Public Works stormwater page states that "The City of Dunwoody is permitted under the EPD's General NPDES Permit for Phase II MS4s", and the cover sheet of the City's own Stormwater Management Program filed with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division names the permit outright: "General NPDES Permit No. GAG610000 for Small Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4)", with "Name of small MS4: City of Dunwoody, Georgia".
One consequence follows for a portfolio held across the north DeKalb line. A management company holding a Perimeter Center tower in Dunwoody and a flex building in unincorporated DeKalb is holding two properties under two governments, two ordinances, two permit classes and two enforcement staffs. A vendor procedure written against the county alone leaves the Dunwoody asset uncovered, and a quote that cites the county on a Dunwoody parcel tells a careful buyer that the vendor never checked.
The City of Dunwoody Code mentions washwater inside its definition of an illegal connection, which is an unusually direct place for a municipal code to put it. Section 32-474 defines an illegal connection as, in part, "Any pipe, open channel, drain or conveyance, whether on the surface or subsurface, which allows an illicit discharge to enter the storm drain system including, but not limited to, any conveyances which allow any nonstormwater discharge including sewage, process wastewater, and washwater to enter the storm drain system, regardless of whether such pipe, open channel, drain or conveyance has been previously allowed, permitted, or approved by an authorized enforcement agency." Sewage and washwater sit in the same clause, in the same sentence, at the same level.
Section 32-474 also settles the argument a contractor most often tries to have on a loading dock. The Code's definition of a pollutant lists, among others, "petroleum hydrocarbons; automotive fluids; cooking grease; detergents (biodegradable or otherwise); degreasers; cleaning chemicals". Read the parenthetical again: detergents count whether or not the label says biodegradable. A soap sold as plant based, green, or safe for landscaping is a detergent under Section 32-474, and a detergent is a pollutant under Section 32-474 regardless of marketing.
The same section defines the system that liquid must not reach, and the definition is deliberately wide. Section 32-474 describes the municipal separate storm sewer system as "any facility designed or used for collecting and/or conveying stormwater, including, but not limited to, any roads with drainage systems, highways, municipal streets, curbs, gutters, inlets, catch basins, piped storm drains, pumping facilities, structural stormwater controls, ditches, swales, natural and manmade or altered drainage channels, reservoirs, and other drainage structures" that is "Owned or maintained by the city". A curb gutter on Perimeter Center Parkway is in scope. A swale behind a dumpster enclosure is in scope. A yard inlet in an island in the parking field is in scope.
Section 32-478(a) prohibits the discharge outright: "No person shall throw, drain, or otherwise discharge, cause, or allow others under its control to throw, drain, or otherwise discharge into the municipal separate storm sewer system any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants, other than stormwater." Two phrases in that sentence carry weight for a commercial buyer. "No person" reaches the crew holding the wand and the owner who hired the crew, because Section 32-474 defines a person to include a partnership, a firm, an association, a corporation and a trust. "Cause, or allow others under its control" reaches the property that let the work happen.
Section 32-478(a) then prints its exemption list, and the list is worth reading in full precisely because of what is missing from it. Exempt discharges are "Water line flushing performed by a government agency, other potable water sources, landscape irrigation or lawn watering, diverted stream flows, rising ground water, ground water infiltration to storm drains, uncontaminated pumped groundwater, foundation or footing drains (not including active groundwater dewatering systems), crawl space pumps, air conditioning condensation, springs, natural riparian habitat or wetland flows, and any other water source not containing pollutants", plus "Discharges or flows from firefighting, and other discharges specified in writing by the city as being necessary to protect public health and safety."
Pressure washing wash water appears nowhere on that list. Landscape irrigation is exempt and a surface wash is not. The closing catch-all covers "any other water source not containing pollutants", and Section 32-474 has already placed detergents, degreasers, cleaning chemicals, cooking grease and petroleum hydrocarbons inside the definition of a pollutant, so wash water off a dumpster pad or a drive lane cannot enter through that door either. The practical rule on a Dunwoody commercial site is therefore simple to state and expensive to ignore: the water goes into containment, onto a pervious area agreed in advance, or into a recovery tank, and never into a curb gutter.
Enforcement in Dunwoody runs through a written notice of violation before any money is at stake, and understanding the sequence is worth more to a property manager than memorizing a number. Section 32-475(b) provides that "Whenever the city community development department finds that a violation of this division has occurred, the city community development department may order compliance by written notice of violation." Note the department. In Dunwoody the illicit discharge notice comes from community development, not from public works.
Section 32-475(b) requires the notice to name the alleged violator, describe the property, state the nature of the violation, and set out "A description of the remedial measures necessary to restore compliance with this division and a time schedule for the completion of such remedial action". Section 32-475(c) gives the recipient 30 days to appeal to the city municipal court, and requires the court to hear the appeal "within 15 days from the date of receipt of the notice of appeal".
Penalties attach after that, and only in the terms the Code sets. Section 32-475(f) provides that where the violator "fails to take the remedial measures set forth in the notice of violation or otherwise fails to cure the violations described therein within ten days", the city municipal court "may impose a penalty not to exceed $1,000.00 (depending on the severity of the violation) for each day the violation remains unremedied after receipt of the notice of violation." Read that structure carefully, because it is commonly misdescribed. The daily exposure under Section 32-475(f) runs on days the violation stays uncorrected after a notice and a ten day cure window, not on days a crew happened to wash.
Section 32-475(g) is a separate instrument with a separate standard. For "intentional and flagrant violations of this division", the City may cite the violator into municipal court, and "Upon conviction, such person shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000.00 or imprisonment for 60 days or both. Each act of violation and each day upon which any violation shall occur shall constitute a separate offense." Subsections (f) and (g) are not one penalty stated twice, and a page that merges them is misreporting the Code.
Every figure in the two paragraphs above belongs to the City of Dunwoody and to no other government. Thrare Contracting publishes no penalty number sourced to a neighboring city, to DeKalb County, or to the federal Clean Water Act on this page. The large per-day federal figures repeated across the pressure washing trade web trace to secondary blogs rather than to a statute, and a scare number a buyer can disprove in one search destroys the credibility of every accurate sentence beside it.
One more clause deserves a facility manager's attention because it reaches the asset rather than the contractor. Section 32-475(e) provides that an unpaid abatement cost "shall become a special assessment against the property and shall constitute a lien on the property for the amount of the assessment." A contractor can leave the county. A lien attaches to the building.
Section 32-481(a) sets a reporting clock that most exterior cleaning quotes never mention. Anyone responsible for a facility or operation with information of a known or suspected release "shall take all necessary steps to ensure the discovery, containment, and cleanup of such release so as to minimize the effects of the discharge", and "shall notify the authorized enforcement agency by phone, facsimile or in person no later than 24 hours of the nature, quantity and time of occurrence of the discharge." Section 32-481(a) then requires that phone notice to be "confirmed by written notice addressed and mailed to the city within three business days".
Section 32-481(a) adds a record keeping duty that lands on the property rather than on the vendor: "If the discharge of prohibited materials emanates from a commercial or industrial establishment, the owner or operator of such establishment shall also retain an on-site written record of the discharge and the actions taken to prevent its recurrence. Such records shall be retained for at least three years." Section 32-481(c) makes failure to notify its own violation.
Thrare Contracting builds the paperwork for that clock into normal work rather than after an incident. Inlet protection photographs, a written containment method naming the receiving point for the day, and a same-day completion record give a Dunwoody property the contemporaneous evidence Section 32-481 would otherwise have to be reconstructed from memory. Section 32-480 gives the City the right to "enter and inspect properties and facilities at reasonable times as often as may be necessary to determine compliance with this division", so the file is worth having before anyone asks for it.
The City of Dunwoody screens storm sewer outfalls in dry weather, on a rolling schedule, and dry weather is precisely when a wash water discharge is visible. The City's Stormwater Management Program describes the method under its illicit discharge detection and elimination plan: "Screening of stormwater outfalls for illicit discharges is performed during periods of dry weather to avoid the screening of flows that may have resulted from wet weather events. The City screens a minimum of 5% of all outfalls annually, with all outfalls being screened within a 5-year period."
Consider what that program means for a wash performed on a clear Tuesday in August. Rainfall is the only lawful reason for flow at an outfall on a dry day, so a flow observed on a dry day is a finding by construction, and the same Stormwater Management Program commits the City to trace it: "Trace and eliminate all dry weather flows as soon as they are discovered." A contractor who runs a surface cleaner into a curb gutter in fair weather is not gambling that nobody notices; that contractor is producing the exact signal the City's screening program is built to detect.
Complaints move faster than screening. The Stormwater Management Program sets the City's measurable goal for complaint response as "Respond to 100% of illicit discharge complaints received within 3 business days", names the Community Development Department as the responsible position, and describes what follows a confirmed finding: "the responding officer from Code Enforcement and/or Land Development records the findings in case notes and with photo documentation." Complaints arrive by email, phone, mobile application or in person, so any tenant, neighboring owner or passer-by with a phone can start the clock.
Two streams inside the City of Dunwoody sit on the state's impaired waters list, and both are monitored by the City. The City's Impaired Waters Monitoring and Implementation Plan 2022 to 2027 states that "Two streams located in the City are listed as impaired on the 2024 303(d) list, approved by the USEPA on September 3, 2024: Marsh Creek and Nancy Creek." The Plan's Table 1 places both in the Chattahoochee river basin, gives the designated use not being supported as "Fishing", assigns assessment category "4a", and prints the cause as "Bacteria, Bio F" with the source recorded as "UR". Those cause and source entries are codes as the Plan prints them, and the Plan does not expand either code on the pages read, so Thrare Contracting quotes the codes rather than translating them.
The Plan also records a sampling change that shows how live the program is. The Plan states that updated standards approved by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources board on January 28, 2022 "replaced fecal coliform with E. coli as the indicator organism for waters listed as impaired for bacteria", and that the City "began sampling for E. coli in place of fecal coliform in November 2022". The City also collects an instream total suspended solids sample at least once a year from the Marsh Creek location and from each of the two Nancy Creek locations.
Total suspended solids is the parameter a facility manager should connect to an exterior wash. Sediment, dumpster pad residue and drive lane grit are exactly what a rinse mobilizes, and a stream already carrying a listed impairment is monitored by the City on a schedule that does not pause for a vendor's convenience. The City of Dunwoody describes the wider setting on its own stormwater page: "The City of Dunwoody is located in the Upper Chattahoochee Watershed and has 9 individual drainage basins."
The Dunwoody stormwater utility bills on impervious area, and the impervious area figure behind that bill is the fastest sanity check on an exterior cleaning quote. Section 32-503 of the City Code defines the unit: "An ERU shall be the median impervious coverage of a statistical sampling of single detached dwelling lots in the city, which has been determined to be 3,000 square feet of impervious area." A commercial parcel is measured against that unit rather than counted as one.
Section 32-508 leaves the dollar rate to the mayor and city council rather than printing it in the Code, so this page states no Dunwoody stormwater rate. Section 32-509 does print the exemptions, and one of them is unusually relevant to exterior cleaning: a property is exempt where "100 percent of the stormwater runoff is contained on the premises and no runoff enter into the stormwater management system", which is the Code's own phrasing. Undeveloped land, public rights of way and railroad tracks are the other exempt classes.
One caution belongs beside the fee, and it is the caution most often missed. A stormwater utility charge is a fee rule and not a discharge license. A Dunwoody property billed for forty units of impervious area sits under exactly the same Section 32-478 prohibition as a property billed for one, and paying the bill authorizes nothing. The useful part of the bill is arithmetic: a site that knows its billed impervious area already knows roughly how much hard surface it owns, and a quote whose square footage is wildly out of step with that number deserves a question before it deserves a signature.
The scale of the City's own drainage spending explains why the program has staff behind it. The City of Dunwoody states on its stormwater page that "The city spends more than $1 million annually replacing or lining failing stormwater pipes connected to the public right-of-way" and that "Since 2009, repairs have been made to 6.4 miles of pipe in Dunwoody."
Thrare Contracting treats the Dunwoody construction noise window as the conservative default and confirms anything outside it in writing before dispatch. Section 18-19(b)(10)a of the City Code prohibits construction of any type "Before 7:30 a.m. or after 8:30 p.m. on weekdays", "Before 8:00 a.m. or after 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays", and "At any time on Sundays and/or the following legal holidays: New Year's Day (observed); Memorial Day (observed); Independence Day (observed); Labor Day (observed); Thanksgiving Day; and Christmas Day (observed)." Section 18-19(b)(10)b applies the identical hours to landscape contractors running motorized mowers, mechanical blowers "and other equipment which creates loud and excessive noise".
Here is the honest limit on those hours, stated rather than smoothed. Pressure washing is neither construction nor mowing, so subsection (b)(10) is not established to govern a wash crew, and Thrare Contracting has found no City of Dunwoody provision setting hours for exterior cleaning specifically. Section 18-19(a) is the clause that does reach a wash crew, and Section 18-19(a) is broader than a timetable: "It shall be unlawful for any person to make, continue, or cause to be made or continued any loud, unnecessary, or unusual noise, or any noise which annoys, disturbs, injures, or endangers the comfort, repose, health, peace, or safety of others in the city." Section 18-19(b) confirms that its list "shall not be deemed to be exclusive". A machine running at 2 a.m. beside a Dunwoody apartment building is reachable under subsection (a) whether or not a timetable names it.
Section 18-19(d) provides a route for scheduled work outside the window. An application for a noise ordinance exception goes "to the City of Dunwoody Community Development Director or his/her designee, and the chief of police", and "Within ten days of receipt, applications shall be either (1) approved or conditionally approved in part or whole or (2) denied." The heading scopes the route to commercial, office, institutional and industrial construction related activity, the application must state a listed set of items including "The time during which the proposed activity will occur" and "The duration of the proposed activity", and Section 18-19(d)(1) closes with "Incomplete applications will not be accepted." A ten day decision clock is the scheduling fact that matters: overnight work on a Dunwoody property is planned weeks out, not arranged on the night.
For a Perimeter Center office tower the practical schedule that results is a plaza and entry sequence run before the first tenant arrives and a service yard run mid morning. For a grocery anchored center on Ashford Dunwoody Road the customer facing frontage is cleaned before opening and the back of house after the delivery window closes.
Thrare Contracting quotes a Dunwoody scope as named surfaces, each with a method and a frequency, rather than as a list of services. The sub-scopes that appear on Perimeter area properties are these:
Sequence is the part of exterior cleaning a buyer cannot verify from a photograph, so Thrare Contracting publishes the order it runs on an occupied Dunwoody site:
Thrare Contracting publishes the price boundary in advance instead of discovering it halfway through the job. Carried inside a quoted commercial wash on a Dunwoody property:
Quoted as separate lines, because folding them into a wash rate hides them:
Thrare Contracting does not publish unit rates on this page. A north facing elevation under tree canopy and an open south facing elevation are different jobs at identical square footage, and a rate quoted without the surface condition behind it misleads the buyer who relies on it. Program structure and portfolio scheduling are set out on the commercial property management page and the commercial services page, which carry the company wide policy this page deliberately does not restate.
Organic growth returns on a Dunwoody wall because the wall rarely gets a chance to dry, and the figure that shows this is the count of wet days rather than the rainfall total. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information publishes 1991 to 2020 normals for station USW00013874 at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport showing an average of 116.3 days a year with precipitation of at least 0.01 inch and 76.5 days a year with at least 0.10 inch (read 2026-09-04). The City of Dunwoody puts the same load in round terms on its own stormwater page: "With roughly 50 inches of rain each year, the City proactively manages runoff from rain events".
Overnight condensation finishes what rain starts. The same NOAA station's hourly normals for July 1 give a 6 a.m. temperature normal of 71.6 degrees F against a dew point normal of 67.2 degrees F, a gap of 4.4 degrees (read 2026-09-04). A surface sitting within a few degrees of the dew point through the small hours is a surface that stays damp long after the last rain, which is the condition biological growth needs and the reason a shaded north elevation in Dunwoody dirties faster than a south elevation on the same building. Both figures are station normals for Hartsfield-Jackson across a thirty year period rather than measurements of any Dunwoody year.
The practical consequence for a Dunwoody program is frequency rather than intensity. A property cleaned on a sensible interval is washed at low pressure with chemistry, while a property left until the growth is established invites the higher pressure that damages a finish. Frequency planning across a portfolio sits on the commercial property programs page.
Thrare Contracting prices adjacent scopes on one trip, because a second mobilization to the same Dunwoody address is a cost the property pays twice. Common pairings are parking lot and deck cleaning, gutter clearing run before the wash so roof leaders are not discharging debris onto a cleaned elevation, building washing on the elevations themselves, restaurant and food service exteriors, apartment community exteriors, and grounds maintenance. Deck specific staging is set out on the parking decks page.
Rare Earth Ltd holds DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, qualifies as a small disadvantaged business, uses E-Verify under company identification number 2748681, and is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE 9JAV8. Those registrations, with the agency that issued each one, are listed on the credentials and compliance page and on the DBE and MBE page. Neighboring city pages carry their own ordinances rather than this one: Sandy Springs, Brookhaven, and commercial work across metro Atlanta.
Thrare Contracting is based in Atlanta and serves Dunwoody as a service area. Rare Earth Ltd, trading as Thrare Contracting, works across Dunwoody, Perimeter Center and the northern DeKalb County submarkets, and the company address is 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350.
A commercial address inside the Dunwoody city limits is governed by the City of Dunwoody Code of Ordinances, Chapter 32, Article IV, Division 9, because Section 32-477(b) states that "The provisions of this division shall apply throughout the incorporated area of the city." DeKalb County runs a separate program under a Phase I MS4 permit, while the City of Dunwoody is permitted under General NPDES Permit No. GAG610000 for small MS4s, which the City names on the cover of its own Stormwater Management Program.
The City of Dunwoody Code names washwater inside Section 32-474, which defines an illegal connection to include any conveyance allowing "any nonstormwater discharge including sewage, process wastewater, and washwater to enter the storm drain system". Section 32-478(a) prohibits discharging any pollutant or water containing a pollutant into the city storm sewer system, and wash water appears nowhere in that section's list of exempt discharges.
A biodegradable detergent is still a pollutant under the City of Dunwoody Code. Section 32-474 defines a pollutant to include "detergents (biodegradable or otherwise); degreasers; cleaning chemicals", so the label on the container does not change the status of the water under Section 32-478(a). Wash water on a Dunwoody commercial site goes to containment, to an agreed pervious release point, or to a recovery tank.
City of Dunwoody Code Section 32-475(f) provides that where a violator fails to cure within ten days of a notice of violation, the city municipal court "may impose a penalty not to exceed $1,000.00 (depending on the severity of the violation) for each day the violation remains unremedied after receipt of the notice of violation." Section 32-475(g) separately provides that for "intentional and flagrant violations" a convicted person "shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000.00 or imprisonment for 60 days or both." Both figures belong to the City of Dunwoody, and Thrare Contracting publishes no penalty number from another jurisdiction on this page.
City of Dunwoody Code Section 18-19(b)(10) prohibits construction and landscape equipment noise before 7:30 a.m. or after 8:30 p.m. on weekdays, before 8:00 a.m. or after 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays, and at any time on Sundays and six listed holidays. Pressure washing is neither construction nor landscaping, so Thrare Contracting treats that window as the conservative default while recognizing that Section 18-19(a) reaches any loud or unnecessary noise at any hour. Work outside the window runs through the Section 18-19(d) noise ordinance exception, which the City decides within ten days of receipt.
Send the address, the tenant hours, the approximate square footage by surface type, and any known drainage constraint. Serving Dunwoody, Perimeter Center, northern DeKalb County and metro Atlanta from Atlanta.