Exterior cleaning for Lawrenceville and Gwinnett County, sequenced to Gwinnett County Water Quality Protection Guideline WQ-1, Surface Cleaning.
A Lawrenceville property owner can be cited for a contractor's discharge, and the instrument that does it is the City's own ordinance rather than the County's. City of Lawrenceville Development Regulations, Article XVII, Illicit Discharge and Illegal Connection Ordinance, section 17.3.1 states that "No person shall throw, drain, or otherwise discharge, cause, or allow others under its control to throw, drain, or otherwise discharge into the City of Lawrenceville's separate storm sewer system any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants, other than stormwater." The words "allow others under its control" are what reach the owner and the property manager, not only the crew holding the wand.
Gwinnett County makes the same point directly to buyers. The County's brochure, A Consumer's Guide to Hiring a Pressure Washing Contractor, published by Gwinnett County Water Resources, Stormwater, tells residents that "as the consumer, you may also be held responsible for illegal discharges that occur on your property." Guideline WQ-1 puts it a third way at section 3.1(11): "As the generator of the washwater the surface cleaner is considered jointly responsible with the property owner for its appropriate disposal."
The penalty is written into the ordinance rather than into marketing material, and Article XVII carries two of them. Section 17.7.7 provides that for intentional and flagrant violations, upon conviction a person "shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000 or imprisonment for 60 days or both", and that "Each act of violation and each day upon which any violation shall occur shall constitute a separate offense." Section 17.7.6 sets a separate civil penalty: where a violator fails to cure within 15 days of a notice of violation, the Director "may impose a penalty not to exceed $1,000 (depending on the severity of the violation) for each day the violation remains unremedied after receipt of the notice of violation." Section 17.7.9 adds that the City can recover attorney's fees, court costs, sampling and monitoring expenses.
Read those figures narrowly. The $1,000 and the 60 days belong to the City of Lawrenceville's Article XVII. Neither number is a federal Clean Water Act penalty. Gwinnett County's own Chapter 100 happens to carry the same two numbers at Section 100-27(f), but the County ordinance scopes itself to the unincorporated county and therefore is not the instrument at an address inside the city limits. Nothing here transfers to Cobb, DeKalb or Fulton, each of which runs its own document, which is why the metro-wide comparison lives on the metro Atlanta pressure washing page rather than being restated per city.
Gwinnett County publishes a written guideline for this exact trade, 13 numbered pages long, and the address it prints on every page is in Lawrenceville. Water Quality Protection Guideline WQ-1, Surface Cleaning, is issued by the Gwinnett County Storm Water Management Division at 684 Winder Highway, Lawrenceville, and is dated 04/05/2007. The guideline states that it "is intended to provide minimum requirements for compliance with Gwinnett County's Illicit Discharge and Illegal Connection (IDIC) Ordinance (Chapter 100, Gwinnett County Code of Ordinances)", and the guideline records that the document "was developed in cooperation with the Power Washers of North America", an industry association.
WQ-1 describes itself as implementing the County's IDIC ordinance, and that ordinance reaches the unincorporated county by its own terms at Section 100-21(e). WQ-1 is therefore best read as what it is at a city address: the method standard Gwinnett County publishes for this trade, written with the industry, and the containment recipe that satisfies the City of Lawrenceville's prohibition as readily as the County's. Gwinnett County states the expectation territorially in its consumer brochure: "Pressure washing contractors operating within Gwinnett County are expected to comply with the ordinance and follow the adopted industry guideline."
WQ-1 defines its own scope before it sets a single rule. Surface cleaning is defined as the cleaning of surfaces "such as parking lots, fuel bays, roads, sidewalks, roofs, walls, driveways and other similar surfaces, whether by mechanical or manual means, where washwater is generated and where such washwater does not contain any hazardous wastes." Vehicle and equipment cleaning falls outside that definition and is governed separately at section 3.3.2 of the same document.
Section 3.1(1) requires that reasonable efforts be made to remove all visible accumulations of pollutants by dry methods before cleaning begins, and it names four of them:
All waste collected that way must be disposed of appropriately. Skipping the dry pass is not a shortcut, because every pollutant left on the slab becomes a pollutant in the wash water, and the wash water is the thing the County regulates.
Section 3.1(2) is the sentence a buyer should ask a bidder to recite: except as allowed by section 3.2.1.4, wash water generated during surface cleaning "must never be allowed to enter into a storm drain. All washwater must be properly contained and disposed of in accordance with this guideline." Section 3.1(3) puts the choice of method on the person doing the work, and lists what the County considers workable equipment: vacuum pumps, booms and berms, portable containment areas, weighted storm drain covers, holding tanks, portable sump pumps, hoses and absorbents.
Three further clauses close the obvious workarounds. Section 3.1(5) states that leaving wash water on paved areas to dry by evaporation is not an acceptable method of disposal, because the residue left behind is washed into storm drains by the next rain. Section 3.1(9) requires contaminated surfaces to be rinsed with potable water, not recycled water, at the end of each day of operation or before a rain event, and treats that rinse water as wash water in its own right. Section 3.1(12) states that surface cleaning should not be completed during rain events where wash water could intermingle with stormwater runoff.
No, and Gwinnett County wrote the sentence in capital letters so nobody could miss it. WQ-1 section 3.1(10) reads: "There are NO 'environmentally friendly' or 'biodegradable' cleaning products that are approved for discharge to storm drains." A product label describing a detergent as biodegradable says something about how the product breaks down over time. A label says nothing about whether the County permits that product to enter a storm drain today, and Gwinnett's answer is that it does not.
The consumer brochure carries the same correction to the buying side. Gwinnett County Water Resources tells residents that if the area to be cleaned is polluted in any way, or the contractor plans to use a chemical, including "environmentally friendly" or "biodegradable" detergents, then the guideline requires that the resulting wash water be managed, which will likely involve surface flow controls, collection equipment, or both.
WQ-1 pushes further in the other direction on chemicals generally. Where cleaning products must be used at all, section 3.1(7) directs that the minimal amount of the least toxic cleaners and degreasers appropriate for the job be used, and only where adequate collection, containment and disposal methods are employed. The same clause states that where possible, cleaning should be completed without cleaning chemicals and with potable water only. On a Lawrenceville concrete slab that is often achievable with heat, dwell time and a surface cleaner, which is the first thing Thrare Contracting tests on a sample panel.
Wash water may enter a storm drain in Gwinnett County only when every single criterion in WQ-1 section 3.2.1.4 is satisfied at once. The guideline sets them out as a conjunctive list, and the numeric limits are these:
Section 3.2.1.4(4) then narrows the exception to what it was written for: "This disposal option is intended to allow for cosmetic cleaning of surfaces stained with leaves, mildew, or atmospherically deposited dusts and pollens only." A drive lane with tire marks, a dumpster pad, a fuel island and a restaurant rear door are outside that description before any testing begins.
Section 3.2.1.4(2) states the consequence in one line: discharge to the storm drain of wash water that contains pollutants constitutes a violation of the County's Illicit Discharge and Illegal Connection Ordinance, and all appropriate penalties can be applied. Where any doubt exists, section 3.2.1.4(3) instructs that the wash water be collected and disposed of by one of the more secure methods. Thrare Contracting treats that instruction as the default on commercial work in Lawrenceville, because a conductivity meter on a parking lot is a slower and less defensible answer than a drain cover and a recovery pump.
By default, WQ-1 section 3.2.1 requires collected wash water to be disposed of to the sanitary sewer or to an appropriately permitted on-site wastewater disposal system. Four routes exist, each with its own conditions, and the route is chosen at the site walk rather than on the truck.
Discharge to the sanitary sewer must meet standards administered by the Gwinnett County Department of Public Utilities. WQ-1 section 3.2.1.1 lists the common ones as temperature less than 150 degrees Fahrenheit, pH between 5.5 and 10.5, oils and grease less than 200 mg/L, total petroleum hydrocarbon 20 mg/L, lead 116 ug/L, copper 109 ug/L, biological oxygen demand 700 mg/L and total suspended solids 700 mg/L. The guideline states plainly that this is not a complete list, and it records tighter figures of 300 mg/L and 350 mg/L in the No Business Creek basin.
Four operational conditions ride alongside those numbers, and each one is a question a property manager should expect:
WQ-1 section 3.2.1.3 permits discharge to a grassy or vegetated area only where that area provides a minimum separation of 50 feet between the discharge point and the nearest storm drain or waterway, where the ground absorbs the volume, where the discharge is distributed as sheet flow with no runoff, during dry weather, with visible gross pollutants collected afterward, and only where the wash water contains insignificant levels of pollutants that biodegrade naturally. Petroleum-based products and sewage are excluded by name. The guideline also warns that operators take on a greater level of risk by choosing this route.
Most septic systems, including systems serving commercial establishments, are permitted to receive only domestic wastewater. WQ-1 section 3.2.1.2 states that additional permits through the Georgia Environmental Protection Division would be needed to discharge non-domestic wastewater to a septic system, and that surface cleaning wash water is likely to be non-domestic. On a Gwinnett property served by septic, the practical answer is collection and off-site disposal.
Where on-site routes are unavailable, WQ-1 section 3.2.2 requires all generated wash water to be collected and hauled to a location holding the permits needed to accept it, transported so that no discharge occurs in between. Two County forms govern the paperwork. Form WQ-1a is filed with the Gwinnett County Department of Public Utilities as notice of intent when an operator discharges collected wash water to a private sanitary sewer connection at a remote location, and the sanitary sewer standards still apply. Form WQ-1b, plus a purchased permit and a separate application for each delivery vehicle, covers disposal at the County's Crooked Creek Treatment Plant in Norcross.
The sequence below is the WQ-1 order of operations turned into a field routine. A buyer who cannot see this sequence in a bid is looking at a price for washing, not a price for compliant washing.
The voucher is worth more to a property manager than it looks. A voucher in the property file is the document that answers a stormwater inspector's question about a stain near an inlet, and it costs nothing to produce.
Thrare Contracting quotes a Lawrenceville property after a site walk, because the containment and disposal route drives the number more than the square footage does. A slab that drains to a single inlet and sits beside a private clean-out prices differently from the same slab with four inlets and no sewer access, and no honest number can be produced from an address alone.
Recurring commercial terms, service intervals and the metro-wide jurisdiction comparison are set once on the metro Atlanta pressure washing hub and are not restated per city. The split is deliberate: a buyer should be able to check one page for company policy and one page for what changes at their address.
Seven items decide whether a Gwinnett job runs clean, and five of them come straight out of WQ-1:
A pool deck brings a second and entirely separate document into the job, and the barrier is the part crews get wrong. The Gwinnett County Swimming Pool Ordinance is a Board of Health regulation, adopted by the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners and enforced by the Gwinnett County Board of Health under Section 9-7072, and any pool holding a Board of Health operating permit is governed by it. Section 9-7014, 14.3 requires "an effective fence or barrier, not less than 4 feet high" on the outer side of the walk area, with no more than four inches of clearance between the bottom of the barrier and the deck, and gates that are self-closing with a lockable self-latching device. The section heading states that 14.3 applies to all pools rather than only public ones. The pool ordinance carries its own penalty at Section 9-7072, a fine not to exceed $500.00 or up to 60 days, which is a different figure from either stormwater ordinance and a good illustration of why "the Gwinnett fine" is not one number.
The practical consequence for exterior cleaning is short. A gate is not propped, a barrier panel is not removed for hose access, and the enclosure is restored before the crew leaves the deck, even mid-job. Hoses are routed over or under the barrier rather than through an opened gate.
One difference between the two ordinances is worth knowing before anyone assumes pool water is exempt. Gwinnett County Code Section 100-23(a)(2)a, which governs the unincorporated county, exempts "dechlorinated and unpolluted swimming pool discharges" by name. The City of Lawrenceville's exemption list at Article XVII section 17.3.1(1) does not name swimming pool discharges at all: it lists water line flushing performed by a government agency, other potable water sources, landscape irrigation or lawn watering, ground water infiltration, crawl space pumps, air conditioning condensation and springs, closing with the catch-all "any other water source not containing pollutants." Whichever list applies, deck wash water is not pool water, and a crew that reads a pool exemption as covering the deck wash has misread it.
Gwinnett County answered this question before any contractor did, and the County's own warning is blunt. The consumer brochure states that "The management of polluted wash water often requires the use of specialized equipment. Not all contractors have this equipment and may not be able to comply with the law." WQ-1 section 3.1(4) tells buyers that individuals who contract with a surface cleaning company "should ensure that the selected contractor is capable of completing surface cleaning in accordance with this guideline."
Gwinnett County also maintains a register for this purpose. WQ-1 section 4(2) records that the County "has established a 'List of Businesses Capable of Collecting Surface Cleaning Washwater'", that operators apply for inclusion using Form WQ-1c, that applicants "will be required to demonstrate the capabilities of their equipment", that the list is supplied to the public, and that inclusion "does not constitute an endorsement of the operator by the county." A buyer can ask the Stormwater Management Division for the current list at 678.376.6700.
One duty falls on the property side rather than the contractor side, and property managers routinely miss it. City of Lawrenceville Article XVII section 17.6 requires the person responsible for a facility or operation to notify the authorized enforcement agency within 24 hours of a known or suspected release, to confirm that notice in writing to the Director within three business days, and, where the discharge comes from a commercial or industrial establishment, to keep an on-site written record of the discharge and the actions taken to prevent recurrence for at least three years. Failure to give that notification is itself a violation of the ordinance.
If a bidder answers the first question with a hose and a hope, the next call the property manager takes could be about a discharge on their own property. Gwinnett County asks residents to report an uncontrolled discharge of polluted wash water to a storm drain by calling 678.376.7000, which the brochure lists as staffed 24 hours a day, with a description of the individual, the vehicle, the discharge location and photographs where available.
Method follows substrate, and containment follows method. Published pressure limits by material are set out once on the metro Atlanta pressure washing page and are not repeated here.
On residential soft wash packages Thrare Contracting also cleans gutter faces as an add-on to the house wash, since the exterior gutter line is washed from the same setup and the same containment.
Lawrenceville's building stock makes the substrate question a real one rather than a formality. Established neighborhoods off Old Peachtree Road and around Rhodes Jordan Park carry brick and painted masonry from the 1980s and 1990s, the Sugarloaf Parkway and Georgia 316 corridor is dominated by newer fiber cement and EIFS commercial elevations, and the Collins Hill and Five Forks areas mix both. Each material has a published cleaning limit set by its own manufacturer or trade body, and none of those limits is the pressure on the machine's dial.
Every identifier below is checkable by the buyer without asking Thrare Contracting for anything. Rare Earth Ltd, doing business as Thrare Contracting, operates from 8735 Dunwoody Pl, Ste R, Atlanta, GA 30350, and serves Lawrenceville and Gwinnett County as a service area.
On 2026-08-31, Gwinnett County Public Schools awarded Bid B-2622LM, On Demand Pressure Washing, Softwash and Window Cleaning, with a term running 2026-09-01 to 2027-06-30, and Rare Earth Ltd is one of the awarded firms. B-2622LM is a multi-award on-demand vendor pool rather than an exclusive contract: all 12 responsive bidders were awarded, the district published no dollar value, and the award letter states that "Participation in this contract does not guarantee any minimum amount of work." An awarded firm is eligible to be asked for a quote by a school, and that is the whole of the claim.
The only public sector past-performance figure Thrare Contracting publishes is $198,000 in recycled aggregate supplied to Fulton County Public Works, and it belongs to that single engagement. The $198,000 is a materials supply record rather than a cleaning record, and Rare Earth Ltd publishes no pressure washing contract value at all.
The City of Lawrenceville's ordinance applies inside the city limits, and Gwinnett County's does not. Both documents say so in their own words, and the two clauses sit one line apart in substance:
Lawrenceville is an incorporated city, so an address inside the city limits is governed by Article XVII and enforced by the City. Section 17.1.5 places administration with the City of Lawrenceville's Director of Planning and Zoning and gives the City of Lawrenceville Water Department authority to oversee and enforce the ordinance as well. Section 100-21(e) does leave room for the County to enter agreements with cities to carry out the purpose of its own article, so a buyer who needs the enforcement chain in writing should confirm the current arrangement with the City rather than assume either way.
The practical difference is smaller than the legal one, because the prohibition is materially the same on both sides of the line, and the City's wording is the broader of the two. Article XVII section 17.3.1 reaches "any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants, other than stormwater", where the County's Section 100-23(a)(1) reaches "anything other than stormwater". Article XVII section 17.1.3 then provides that where two rules differ, "whichever provision is more restrictive or imposes higher protective standards for human health or the environment shall control." Containment and off-drain disposal satisfy both, which is why the WQ-1 method described above is the right method at either address.
The City of Atlanta's ordinance reaches neither. Atlanta City Code Chapter 74 applies within the corporate limits of the City of Atlanta, which do not extend into Gwinnett County.
Thrare Contracting names the governing authority for each address before mobilizing and writes it into the quote, rather than assuming a county rule covers a city parcel. The jurisdiction check takes a few minutes and separates a defensible job file from a citation issued to the property owner. Which government's stormwater rule reaches a given address across the rest of the metro, and how Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Roswell, Marietta and Sandy Springs differ, is set out on the metro Atlanta pressure washing page.
Lawrenceville is the Gwinnett County seat, and the County's own Storm Water Management Division sits on Winder Highway inside the city. Thrare Contracting works the whole county from that center outward.
Elsewhere in metro Atlanta, Thrare Contracting also serves Stone Mountain, Decatur, Tucker, Dunwoody, Snellville and Peachtree Corners.
Almost never, and City of Lawrenceville Development Regulations Article XVII section 17.3.1 prohibits discharging any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants, other than stormwater, into the City storm sewer system. Gwinnett County Water Quality Protection Guideline WQ-1 section 3.1(2) states that wash water generated during surface cleaning must never be allowed to enter into a storm drain except under section 3.2.1.4, and section 3.2.1.4 permits it only for cosmetic cleaning of leaves, mildew and atmospheric dust where the water carries no detectable pollutants, holds a pH between 6.0 and 8.5, stays under 90 degrees Fahrenheit, reads under 300 microsiemens per centimeter of conductivity, shows fecal coliform under 150 cfu per 100 mL, and passes through an oil absorbent berm first.
City of Lawrenceville Development Regulations Article XVII section 17.7.7 provides that for intentional and flagrant violations, upon conviction a person shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000 or imprisonment for 60 days or both, with each act of violation and each day of violation a separate offense. Section 17.7.6 adds a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000 for each day a violation remains unremedied after a notice of violation. Both penalty figures belong to the City ordinance, which section 17.1.2 applies throughout the incorporated area of the City of Lawrenceville. Neither figure is a federal Clean Water Act penalty.
No. Gwinnett County Water Quality Protection Guideline WQ-1 section 3.1(10) states that there are NO environmentally friendly or biodegradable cleaning products that are approved for discharge to storm drains. A biodegradable label describes how a product breaks down over time and carries no permission to send that product into a Gwinnett storm drain.
Yes. City of Lawrenceville Development Regulations Article XVII section 17.3.1 makes it a violation for any person to discharge, cause, or allow others under its control to discharge any pollutants or waters containing any pollutants, other than stormwater, into the City of Lawrenceville's separate storm sewer system. Gwinnett County's consumer brochure warns residents that as the consumer they may also be held responsible for illegal discharges that occur on their property, and Gwinnett County guideline WQ-1 section 3.1(11) describes the surface cleaner as jointly responsible with the property owner for appropriate disposal.
Gwinnett County WQ-1 section 3.2.1 sets the sanitary sewer or an appropriately permitted on-site wastewater system as the default. Discharge to the sanitary sewer needs the property owner's permission, must go to a privately owned part of the sewer rather than a public manhole, must pass through an oil and water separator where oil or grease could be present, and must meet standards including oils and grease under 200 mg/L and pH between 5.5 and 10.5. A grassy area is allowed only with at least 50 feet of separation from the nearest storm drain or waterway and several other conditions, and off-site disposal is covered by County Forms WQ-1a and WQ-1b.
Yes. WQ-1 section 4(2) records that Gwinnett County has established a List of Businesses Capable of Collecting Surface Cleaning Washwater, that operators apply for inclusion on Form WQ-1c and are required to demonstrate the capabilities of their equipment, that the list is supplied to the public, and that inclusion does not constitute an endorsement of the operator by the county. A buyer can ask the Gwinnett County Stormwater Management Division for the current list at 678.376.6700.
Every figure above is quoted from the document named below, as that document states it, on the read date given.
Serving Lawrenceville and all of Gwinnett County. A site walk sets the containment and disposal route before any number is quoted.