Community-wide exterior cleaning programs for homeowners associations, condominium associations, and community association managers across metro Atlanta.
An HOA board approving exterior cleaning is buying a maintenance record the association can defend, not a single wash. The common areas being cleaned are the same common areas an owner points at in a complaint, an adjuster looks at after a fall, and a buyer's agent walks past on the way to a listing.
The Foundation for Community Association Research counts 11,400 community associations in Georgia in its 2025 U.S. National and State Statistical Review, housing an estimated 2,326,000 residents across 889,000 units (read 2026-09-02). The same review estimates that 30 to 40 percent of associations nationally are self-managed, meaning a volunteer board selects vendors with no professional manager in between.
That split decides what a proposal has to contain. A community association manager reads scopes of work and certificates of insurance for a living; a self-managed board reads the same proposal cold, at a monthly meeting, with a copy going into the minutes. Thrare Contracting writes one document for both readers: surfaces named, method named, schedule dated, exclusions listed.
A community exterior cleaning program covers the surfaces the association maintains, grouped so a board can approve or defer each group on its own budget cycle.
Clubhouse siding, stucco, brick, soffits, fascia and entry canopies are cleaned by soft washing, which applies solution at low pressure and lets dwell time do the work pressure would otherwise do to paint and sealant. Painted hardboard and synthetic stucco fail under direct high pressure, so the pressure at the surface, not at the pump, decides whether an amenity building survives its own cleaning.
Entrance monuments stain faster than anything else in a community because irrigation heads throw water onto them daily and mature landscaping keeps them shaded. Monument work covers the masonry face, the cap, the mortar joints, the sign panel, the concrete apron and the curbing, because a clean monument above a stained apron reads from the road as a job left half finished.
Pool deck concrete, coping, the pool house exterior and the surrounding walkway are cleaned before opening, at mid season, and at closing, because growth on a pool deck is a traction problem before it is an appearance problem. Tennis, pickleball and basketball surfaces are cleaned at pressure low enough to lift growth without lifting acrylic color coat or line paint, and court work is scheduled outside league and reservation hours.
Community sidewalks, mail kiosk pads, stair treads, landings, parking bays, drive aisles, curbing, wheel stops and the concrete pad inside the refuse enclosure are cleaned on a block rotation, so no walking route is out of service for more than part of one day. The refuse pad is the surface most communities defer and the one residents complain about first, because grease on a dumpster pad produces odor in July that no amount of landscaping covers.
Paver walkways, seating areas and pool surrounds are cleaned inside the range the Concrete Masonry and Hardscapes Association publishes for interlocking concrete pavement, which states that a high pressure sprayer applies cleaner and water between 1,000 and 4,000 psi and at a rate between 2 and 6 gallons per minute (CMHA, PAV-TEC-005-22, read 2026-08-31). CMHA also calls for a wide spray at a low angle of attack, because a narrow jet held square to a joint washes out the joint sand. That guidance is written for pavers and is not a statement about what a poured slab will tolerate.
Work in an occupied community runs building by building, so only one drop zone is out of service at any moment. The seven steps below are the sequence written into the block calendar the board receives before the first visit.
An HOA pressure washing price includes labor, equipment, water conveyance, cleaning solution, containment, resident signage and the visit report. A community-wide quote is built from six inputs: measured square footage by surface type, the material of each surface, the number of buildings and stories, water access across the property, the number of visits in the service year, and how tightly the work has to be sequenced around residents and amenity hours.
Exterior cleaning belongs in the operating budget, and the reserve schedule covers the components that cleaning protects rather than the cleaning itself. A reserve schedule tracks components with a measurable remaining useful life and a replacement cost, and a wash has neither.
Fannie Mae's Selling Guide sets out what a reserve study must address for a condominium project to clear a Full Review: "all major components and elements of the project's common areas for which repair, maintenance, or replacement is expected", "the condition and remaining useful life of each major component", and "a suggested reserve funding plan" (Selling Guide section B4-2.2-01, effective 2026-08-05, read 2026-09-02). The same section states the budget test a project can meet instead: a budget that "provides for the funding of replacement reserves for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance that is at least 10% of the budget", calculated by dividing the annual budgeted replacement reserve allocation by the association's annual budgeted assessment income.
A board that lets recurring maintenance drift into the reserve line creates two problems at once: an operating budget that understates the annual cost of the property, and a reserve figure that no longer reads the way a lender reviewing a unit sale expects. Cleaning a pool deck is an operating expense; resurfacing that pool deck is a reserve component, and regular cleaning is what pushes the resurfacing date further out.
An association should require a certificate of insurance naming the association as certificate holder, a current W-9, and written confirmation of workers compensation status before any crew reaches the property. A certificate carries more weight when the carrier or the agency issues it directly to the association, because a certificate is only as good as the issuer's willingness to reissue it on request.
The Georgia State Board of Workers' Compensation states that "Every employer, individual, firm, association, or corporation, regularly employing three or more persons, part-time or full time, shall provide workers' compensation insurance coverage", and that "Exempted officers of corporations or exempted members of limited liability companies shall not reduce the number of employees for this purpose" (read 2026-09-02). Part-time crew members count toward the three.
A board reviewing a certificate should check four things: that the named insured matches the entity signing the contract, that the policy dates span the whole service period rather than the proposal date, that the association appears as certificate holder, and that the description of operations describes exterior cleaning rather than an unrelated trade. Thrare Contracting furnishes a certificate of insurance, a W-9 and a signed scope of work before the first visit.
The whole community does not have to vote in a Georgia property owners' association unless the association's own instrument requires it. The Georgia Property Owners' Association Act states at O.C.G.A. section 44-3-231(f) that "Except to the extent otherwise expressly required by this article, by Chapter 2 or 3 of Title 14, by the instrument, by the articles of incorporation, or by the bylaws of the association, the powers inherent in or expressly granted to the association may be exercised by the board of directors, acting through the officers, without any further consent or action on the part of the lot owners" (2025 Code of Georgia, read 2026-09-02).
Two limits sit on top of that. Subsection (a) of the same section opens with "Except to the extent prohibited by the instrument", so the declaration and bylaws control, and many declarations set a dollar threshold above which a competing bid count or an owner vote is required. The Property Owners' Association Act reaches a planned community whose declaration submits it to the Act, and a Georgia condominium association is governed by the Georgia Condominium Act instead, so a board's first check is which statute its own declaration invokes. Thrare Contracting therefore asks once, in writing, which statute governs and whether the declaration sets a spending threshold that changes who signs.
Wash water from exterior cleaning must not enter a storm drain, because wash water is not composed entirely of storm water. 40 CFR 122.26(b)(2) defines an illicit discharge as "any discharge to a municipal separate storm sewer that is not composed entirely of storm water except discharges pursuant to a NPDES permit (other than the NPDES permit for discharges from the municipal separate storm sewer) and discharges resulting from fire fighting activities" (Cornell Legal Information Institute, read 2026-08-31).
Part of that obligation lands on the community rather than only on the contractor. 40 CFR 122.26(d)(2)(iv)(B) requires a municipal separate storm sewer system permit application to describe "a program, including a schedule, to detect and remove" illicit discharges and improper disposal into the storm sewer. An association whose contractor sends detergent and sediment into a community storm drain is the discharger that municipal program exists to find.
The compliance path on a community property is containment rather than permitting. Drains inside the work zone are covered or bermed, water is directed to landscape or to a recovery point, and no wash water reaches the storm system, at which point the permit question never opens. The NPDES stormwater program in Georgia is administered by the Environmental Protection Division's Watershed Protection Branch (Georgia EPD, read 2026-08-31).
Before a board can say what pool compliance means, it has to know which code governs its pool, and in Georgia that answer is county level rather than statewide. The state chapter for public swimming pools excludes the pools most associations actually run. Rule 511-3-5-.02(3) states that "These rules shall not apply to private swimming pool and hot tubs or spas serving a single-family dwelling and used only by the residents of that dwelling and their guests, apartment complex pools, country club pools, subdivision pools which are open only to residents of the subdivision and their guests". Rule 511-3-5-.02(4) then limits the chapter's reach: "This Chapter shall apply to those counties where local rules and regulations governing public swimming pools were not in effect on 31 December 2000; provided, however, that the governing authority of a county or municipality may by ordinance or resolution elect to make apartment pools within their jurisdiction subject to this Chapter" (Chapter 511-3-5, 2017 edition, read 2026-09-02).
Metro Atlanta counties run their own pool codes, and those local codes are the ones that reach community pools. The Fulton County Board of Health adopted its own rules for public swimming pools in 2018; its definition of a public swimming pool covers "apartment complex pools" and "associations, including but not limited to Property Owners Associations and Homeowners Associations", and its scope section drops the state chapter's apartment, country club and subdivision exclusions and leaves subsection (4) reserved. For the pools those Fulton rules govern, the top of the barrier "shall be at least forty eight inches above grade measured on the side of the barrier which faces away from the swimming pool", vertical clearance over a solid surface is capped at four inches, and openings "shall not allow passage of a four inch diameter sphere" (Fulton County Board of Health pool rules, Section 1(71), Section 2 and Section 18(11), read 2026-09-02). Gwinnett County reaches community pools by a different route: its Board of Health regulation defines a public swimming pool as any pool other than a private residential pool limited to one family and its guests, and requires "an effective fence or barrier, not less than 4 feet high" with no more than four inches of clearance beneath it, a provision the regulation applies to all pools rather than only public ones (Gwinnett County Swimming Pool Ordinance, Sections 9-7002 and 9-7014, read 2026-09-02).
So the barrier figure a board should work to is the one in its own county's code, and a board in DeKalb, Cobb or any other metro county should confirm with its county board of health which code its pool falls under before treating a number as the standard. Exterior cleaning is not a barrier inspection, and Thrare Contracting does not certify a pool for opening; a pre-season visit produces a cleaned deck and enclosure plus a dated photographic record from before opening day.
Most metro Atlanta communities run a base cycle of one full exterior wash a year, with a second and third visit on the pool deck and the highest traffic flatwork. Rainfall and shade set that cadence: NOAA's 1991-2020 US Climate Normals put the twelve monthly precipitation normals summing to 50.43 inches for station USW00013874, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, against a separately published annual normal of 49.71 inches (read 2026-08-31), and a north-facing wall under tree cover regrows visible algae inside a single season.
| Surface group | Base cycle | What moves it to a higher frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Clubhouse and amenity exteriors | Once a year | Heavy tree cover, irrigation overspray onto walls, north-facing elevations |
| Entrance monuments and signage | Twice a year | Irrigation heads throwing onto masonry, road film at a busy entrance |
| Pool deck and enclosure | Two to three times a season | Season length, tree litter, deck material and texture |
| Sidewalks, stair treads and landings | Once a year | Shade, slope, berry and leaf drop, resident traffic volume |
| Refuse enclosure pads | Two to four times a year | Summer heat, compactor use, standing odor complaints |
A community that has deferred cleaning for several years is quoted a restoration visit first and then moved onto the cycle, because a first pass over multi year growth takes longer than a maintenance pass and produces a different result.
Thrare Contracting is based in Atlanta at 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350, and serves community associations, condominium associations, townhome communities, active adult communities and master-planned communities across Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, Cherokee and Forsyth counties. Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, was founded on January 19, 2020, holds DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, qualifies as a small disadvantaged business, participates in E-Verify, and is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE 9JAV8. Rare Earth Ltd does not hold HUBZone, 8(a) or SOC 2 status and does not represent otherwise.
Related scopes: pool deck cleaning, commercial sidewalk cleaning, parking lot cleaning, apartment community pressure washing, and commercial pressure washing.
A Georgia property owners' association board does not need an owner vote unless the association's instrument requires one. O.C.G.A. section 44-3-231(f) provides that the powers of the association may be exercised by the board of directors, acting through the officers, without any further consent or action on the part of the lot owners, except where the article, Title 14, the instrument, the articles of incorporation or the bylaws expressly require otherwise. A condominium association follows the Georgia Condominium Act instead.
Recurring exterior cleaning is an operating expense rather than a reserve item, because a reserve schedule tracks components with a remaining useful life and a replacement cost. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide requires a reserve study to address the condition and remaining useful life of each major component, and a separate budget test asks whether a project funds replacement reserves of at least 10% of the budget. Cleaning extends the replacement date of a reserve component such as a pool deck.
An association should require a certificate of insurance naming the association as certificate holder, a current W-9, and written confirmation of workers compensation status before any crew reaches the property. The Georgia State Board of Workers' Compensation states that every employer regularly employing three or more persons, part-time or full time, shall provide workers' compensation insurance coverage, and that exempted corporate officers or exempted LLC members do not reduce that count.
Work runs building by building, so the only area out of service at any moment is the drop zone beside the building being cleaned. Signage goes up at the affected buildings 48 hours ahead naming the date, the hours and the bays that need to be clear, and each block is rinsed, released and returned to residents the same day it was taken.
Wash water is contained inside the work zone and directed to landscape or to a recovery point, never to a storm drain. 40 CFR 122.26(b)(2) defines an illicit discharge as any discharge to a municipal separate storm sewer that is not composed entirely of storm water, other than discharges under an NPDES permit or discharges resulting from fire fighting activities. Containment is the compliance path on a community property.
Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, holds DBE, ACDBE and MBE certification, qualifies as a small disadvantaged business, participates in E-Verify, and is registered in SAM under UEI Z4WKS4UE8NJ6 and CAGE 9JAV8. Rare Earth Ltd does not hold HUBZone, 8(a) or SOC 2 status and does not represent otherwise. Rare Earth Ltd was founded on January 19, 2020.
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