Those black streaks are a living algae, not dirt, and high pressure does not remove them. A soft wash kills the growth at the root, and careful foot placement on the lower third of the tile means nothing cracks and no shingle loses its granules.
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Or Call Us NowQuick answer. Roof cleaning is the soft wash treatment that clears black algae streaking, moss colonies and lichen crust off concrete tile, clay tile, asphalt shingle and metal roofs for homeowners across Fresno and the Central Valley. Lichen is the one that does real damage, because it roots into the tile surface and down between shingle granules, so blasting it off does not remove lichen so much as remove the roof material it is gripping, and a properly soft washed roof keeps lightening for weeks afterward as the dead growth releases. Roof size, pitch, material, stories and how far the growth has gotten are what the quote is built on, and every slope gets treated including the shaded north face, which is always the worst and is the one a cheap crew skips.
Valley Wash Pros soft washes concrete tile, clay tile, asphalt shingle and metal roofs across the Central Valley, clearing black algae streaking, moss and lichen without ever putting high pressure on the roof.
Roof cleaning done right is a soft wash, not a pressure wash. A cleaning solution goes on at low pressure, kills the algae, moss and lichen at the root, and rinses clear. Nothing cracks a tile, strips shingle granules or forces water up under the courses. Valley Wash Pros treats every slope including the shaded north face, pre-soaks the landscaping below, and guarantees the result. Free estimates across Fresno and the Central Valley, 24/7. Call (559) 975-8124.
Your roof is the largest single surface on the property and the most expensive one to replace. It is also the surface you cannot inspect from the ground, which is why it gets handed to whoever quoted cheapest and why Valley homeowners end up with cracked tiles, stripped granules and streaks that come back within a season. You will never see how the crew walked your roof. That is exactly why the method matters more here than anywhere else on the house.
Roof cleaning is one of more than a dozen residential exterior services we run across the Valley. Because we are already set up at the roofline, it pairs naturally with gutter cleaning and solar panel cleaning on the same visit.

Cleaning a roof is not decoration. Algae, moss and lichen physically degrade the material they live on, and removing them is the cheapest way to protect the most expensive surface you own.
Because soft washing is the only method that kills what is growing without damaging what it is growing on. Everything else is either scraping or blasting, and both of those cost you roof.
Soft washing a roof is thorough, and it is effective. The solution goes on at low pressure, closer to what comes out of a garden hose than what a concrete gun makes, and then it is given time to work. That dwell time is the part people miss. The chemistry has to sit on the algae, moss and lichen long enough to kill them at the root. Rinse early and all you have done is wet the roof. Dead growth then lets go and rinses away, and heavier moss and lichen keep lightening and shedding over the following weeks with wind and rain, rather than being torn off with roof material still attached.
That last part is worth saying plainly, because it sets your expectations honestly. On a roof carrying thick moss, it will not look finished the hour we drive away. The color keeps coming back over the next few weeks as the dead growth releases and washes off. Anyone promising a bare roof by dinnertime is planning to scrape it or blast it.
Pressure washing does the opposite on both counts. It damages the roof, meaning cracked tile, stripped granules, water forced under the courses and warranties put at risk, and it does not actually remove the organism. It shears the visible layer off and leaves the colony rooted, which is why a blasted roof looks clean for a season and then streaks again. That is the whole argument in one sentence: kill it and it stays gone, blast it and you have already booked the same job for next year.
The rest of what follows is how we actually work a roof, because roof cleaning is judged on what you cannot see from the ground.
We never put high pressure on tile or shingle. Not dialed down, not on a wide tip, not ever. Shingles are only shingles because of the mineral granules bonded to the surface, and a pressure washer takes them off by the handful. Tile cracks. Water driven uphill gets under the courses, past the laps, and onto the underlayment where it has no way out. High pressure also cleans badly: it shears the visible growth off the top and leaves the organism alive underneath, primed to regrow by the next fog season.
A tile is only supported where it laps the course below it. The middle of a tile is a bridge over open air, and a boot in the middle of that bridge is a concentrated point load, which is how tile cracks. So we walk the lower third of the tile, where it sits on the one underneath, and we step across the battens rather than between them. Walk pads spread the load further. Every pass is planned before we go up so the roof gets walked as little as the job allows. It is slower. It is also why broken tile is not part of how we work.
Shaded and north-facing slopes carry the worst growth for a plain reason: they get the least sun, so the tule fog moisture that settles overnight is still sitting there in the afternoon, long after the south slope dried off. That slope is also the one nobody can see from the curb, which makes it the first thing skipped by a crew working to a fixed number. Treating only the street-facing slopes is why streaks come back fast on a roof somebody already charged you to clean. We treat the whole roof.
Everything that comes off a roof lands on whatever is below it. Planting beds along the drip line are pre-soaked with fresh water first, so the soil is already full and cannot take anything else up. Sensitive plants get shielded, and we work out where the runoff goes before the first gallon falls. Beds get a final fresh-water rinse when the job is done.
Valley Wash Pros is family owned and operated out of Fresno, licensed and insured, open 24/7, and rated 4.9 stars across 644 Google reviews. The people who quote your roof are the people who stand on it, which is exactly how careful roof work should be staffed.


They are a living algae called Gloeocapsa magma, not dirt and not shingle wear. Airborne spores land on the roof, feed on the surface, and the colony spreads downslope with gravity and rainfall, which is exactly why the streaks always run vertically and always start high.
There is a tell that proves it is algae rather than dirt, and you can check it from the driveway. Look at the roof directly below any galvanized flashing, a metal chimney cap or a swamp cooler. That strip will be clean while everything to either side of it is streaked, because trace zinc and copper washing off the metal kills algae before it can establish. Clean bands under the metal, dark streaks between them, is the signature of a living organism, not of dust.
The Central Valley gives that algae everything it wants. Dense winter tule fog loads shaded slopes with moisture and keeps them damp for days at a stretch, then long 100 degree summers turn the same roof into a warm incubator. North-facing slopes stay damp longest, which is why they always look worst. Once algae establishes, moss and lichen follow, and lichen is the one that does real damage: it anchors into the surface of tile and down between shingle granules, so when it dries and tears free it takes roof material with it.

Waiting costs money in two directions. First, growth left in place keeps degrading the material underneath it. Moisture is held against the surface around the clock, lichen stays anchored into granules and tile, and the working life of the most expensive surface on the house gets shorter. Replacing a roof early costs many times what cleaning it on schedule does.
Second, heavy growth simply costs more to remove than light growth. A roof with a light film of algae treats quickly. A roof with five years of established moss and lichen needs heavier application, longer dwell time and more passes. The job you are putting off is cheaper today than it will be next year.
The reason most people wait is not the money though. It is worry, and it is usually one of these two questions.
No. Soft washing is designed to keep water on top of the roof, running downslope the way the roof was built to shed it. High pressure is what forces water sideways and uphill, under the courses and past the laps, onto underlayment that has no way to dry. It is also what cracks tile and strips the mineral granules off asphalt shingle. Take the pressure out and the risk goes with it.
No, because of what happens before we go up. Everything that comes off a roof lands on whatever is below it, so beds along the drip line are pre-soaked with fresh water first. Soil that is already full cannot take anything else up. Sensitive plants get shielded, runoff is planned before the first gallon falls, and every bed gets a fresh-water rinse when the job is finished.
One honest exception to all of this. If your roof is within a year or two of replacement, or a roofer has already told you it is failing, do not spend money cleaning it. Tell us that on the phone and we will say so. Cleaning a roof that is about to come off is money you will never see again.
Otherwise, if you can already see distinct streaks from the street, or any green fuzz on the north slope, the roof is telling you it is time. We clean roofs in Fresno, Clovis, Madera, Chowchilla, Visalia, Tulare and the surrounding Valley. Call or text (559) 975-8124. The estimate is free and there is no obligation.
Concrete tile, clay barrel tile, composition shingle and metal all get soft washed, but they are walked differently, they hold growth differently, and they recover at different speeds. A crew that treats all four the same is going to break something.
The Central Valley is mostly concrete tile and composition shingle, with clay barrel tile on the older and higher-end homes. Here is what actually changes between them.
Most tract homes built here from the eighties on have concrete tile, usually a flat or low-profile S-tile. Concrete is porous, which is the whole problem. It drinks moisture and holds it, so once the tule fog season starts, a north-facing concrete tile slope stays damp for weeks at a time and lichen gets a foothold in the surface itself. That is why lichen on concrete tile leaves a pale ghost mark after treatment. The organism is dead and gone, but it etched the surface while it was alive. We will tell you that before we start rather than after, because a ghost mark is not a missed spot and you should not be paying anyone to chase it.

Clay is fired, so it is far less porous than concrete and it sheds growth better. The catch is that clay is brittle and old clay is very brittle. On a barrel tile roof the load path is narrow, the pans are a trap, and a misplaced boot does not chip a corner, it splits the whole tile. We work barrel tile from the pans and the battens, off ladders and from the edges where we can, and we accept covering less ground per hour in exchange for not leaving you a repair bill.

A shingle is asphalt with mineral granules bonded to the face, and those granules are the shingle. They are the UV protection and the fire rating. Anything that removes granules takes life off the roof, which is why pressure washing a shingle roof is closer to sanding it than cleaning it. Shingle also shows black streaking worse than any other material, because the streaking is a cyanobacteria that feeds partly on the limestone filler in the shingle itself. Good news on shingle: it usually looks dramatically better faster than heavy moss on concrete tile does.


Metal cleans up easily and the risk is not the panel, it is the fastener and the coating. We keep chemistry off the exposed fastener gaskets and rinse thoroughly, because anything left sitting on a metal roof will find the one place you did not want it. Low-slope and flat sections are their own job: water does not run off, it sits, so growth is heavier and the rinse has to be managed toward the drains rather than just pushed downhill.
Roughly speaking, if there is an array up there the roof job gets planned around it. We do not run chemistry under a panel and leave it, we do not stand on rails, and we work out the rinse path so runoff is not travelling under the array into the standoffs. If the underside of your array is also full of nest debris, that is a bird prevention job and it is worth doing at the same visit while the access is already set up.
Black streaks are algae. Green clumps are moss. Crusty grey-green patches that look painted on are lichen. They take the same treatment but they clear on very different timelines, and knowing which you have tells you what to expect.
Flat, dark, streaky, and it runs downhill from the ridge. This is the most common thing we get called about and the easiest to fix. It sits on the surface, it treats out, and it usually looks finished within days. If your roof reads as "just old and dark" from the street, this is almost always what you are looking at.
Moss is a plant. It has a root system holding into the seams, the keyways and the shingle laps, and it holds water like a sponge, which is the actual damage. A damp seam under moss stays damp, and on a shingle roof it lifts the courses and wicks water sideways. Moss is also the slowest to look finished, because dead moss has to dry out, shrink and release before wind and rain carry it off. That takes weeks, not hours. A roof with heavy moss will look better the month after we leave than the day we leave.
Lichen is the stubborn one. It is an algae and a fungus living together, and it bonds into porous surfaces rather than sitting on them. On concrete tile it will leave the pale ghost mark mentioned above. It dies on the first treatment, but the physical crust breaks down gradually. Anyone telling you lichen comes off a concrete tile roof in an afternoon without damage is either scraping it or blasting it.

Tule fog. From roughly November through February the Valley sits under fog that does not burn off on a shaded slope, so a north-facing roof can stay wet more or less continuously for weeks. Add orchard and field dust settling on it all summer, which gives spores something to hold onto, and you have close to ideal growing conditions on a surface that never gets scrubbed by anything. That is the honest reason a roof here needs attention more often than the same roof would in a drier part of the state, and it is why roof maintenance exists as a separate, cheaper service to the full cleaning.
Cleaning removes growth and stains. It does not repair a roof, and if someone is selling it as roof repair, walk away.
These are the things people hope a wash will solve, and it will not. We would rather say so at the quote than have you disappointed at the end of the job.
There is also a case where the cheaper answer is the right one. If your roof has light algae streaking only, and you are planning to sell or repaint within the year, a single soft wash is all you need and you should not be sold a plan. If the growth is heavy and established, cleaning first and then keeping it is genuinely cheaper over a few years than cleaning it again from scratch every time it gets bad.
Shingle manufacturers generally exclude damage caused by pressure washing, and home insurers increasingly look at roof condition. Soft washing keeps you on the right side of both.
Check your own shingle warranty and you will usually find language excluding damage from high pressure. That is not a scare tactic, it is a normal exclusion, and it exists because the manufacturer knows exactly what pressure does to a granule bond. A roof that has visibly been blasted is a hard warranty claim to win. Soft washing does not put you in that position, because there is no mechanical force on the surface at all.
On the insurance side, roof condition has become something carriers actually inspect, whether at renewal or after a claim. Heavy moss is the kind of thing that gets photographed and noted, because a moss-covered roof is holding water it was not designed to hold. Keeping the roof clean is not a guarantee of anything with your carrier, and we are not going to pretend otherwise, but a roof in obviously good condition is a much easier conversation than one that is green.
We are licensed and insured, we carry our own liability, and we are happy to send proof before we are on your property. If a roof cleaner will not send you a certificate, that tells you what you need to know about who is climbing on your house.


Roof work is trust work, so we do not call a roof finished until you have seen the result and you are happy with it. Licensed, insured, family owned and open 24/7. If something is not right, we make it right before the truck leaves.
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Valley Wash Pros holds 4.9 stars across 644 Google reviews. Every word below was written by a real customer on our Google Business Profile, and we have not edited a syllable.
Great service! We had a serious bird problem under our solar panels. Danny and Adrian cleared them out, washed the whole roof with antibacterial rinse and installed critter guard. So far, it's working like a charm! Thank you!
Valley Wash Pros are very professional. They accommodated me to schedule an appointment to pressure wash my backyard, front yard, driveway, and garage. They did a great job, and were very pleasant to work with. I highly recommend them.
5 stars!! Helped us with pigeon issues on our solar and they were super professional, accommodating and courteous!!! Excellent experience, would highly recommend!!!
We are a Fresno company cleaning Fresno roofs: the concrete tile that covers most of Woodward Park, Fig Garden, Bullard and the northwest corridor, and the composition shingle on the older established streets, then out across the rest of the Valley from the same shop.
Roof cleaning in Fresno CA is our home market, and the crew covers five counties from here. Pick your city for the local detail.
Roof cleaning Fresno CA homes means dealing with a climate almost purpose-built for roof algae. Winter tule fog keeps shaded and north-facing slopes damp for days at a time, then the long hot summers turn that same moisture into an incubator, so growth establishes steadily instead of seasonally. Concrete tile dominates the newer developments in Clovis and northwest Fresno, and tile is exactly the material that punishes a crew who blasts instead of soft washing. The older neighborhoods run more toward composition shingle, where high pressure strips the protective granules that make a shingle a shingle. Foothill properties toward Oakhurst carry the heaviest moss and lichen thanks to elevation, tree cover and cooler damp air. Ag-town roofs in Kerman, Selma, Kingsburg and Reedley collect farm dust that feeds growth the moment the fog arrives. We quote every roof on what it actually carries, and the estimate is free anywhere in Fresno, Madera, Kings, Tulare or Merced County.
Book two or more services on one visit and the crew handles the whole property in a single trip, which is also the cheapest way to buy exterior cleaning.
Still have a question? Call or text (559) 975-8124 and talk straight to the crew that will do the work. We answer 24/7 and the estimate is always free.
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At Valley Wash Pros, we do careful, thorough pressure washing for both residential and commercial properties.
Our pressure washing team is committed to restoring the beauty of your home with advanced equipment and effective cleaning techniques. Whether it's a driveway, deck, siding, or roof, our high-pressure washing solutions remove dirt, grime, stains, and mildew, ensuring your property looks fresh and well-maintained.
We take pride in our attention to detail, quality service, and customer satisfaction, making us the trusted choice for all your pressure washing needs. With years of experience and a passion for excellence, we guarantee a job done right every time. Choose Valley Wash Pros for your pressure washing needs.
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Valley Wash Pros is a Fresno-based, family-run crew serving homes and businesses across Fresno & the Central Valley. We do one thing and we do it right , strip away years of Valley dust, hard-water stains and grime and leave your property looking brand new. No streaks, no shortcuts, no excuses.
Roof & gutter cleaning, solar panel cleaning, bird proofing, house & pressure washing, windows and concrete , we bring the right method and the right pressure to every surface. Fully licensed & insured, satisfaction guaranteed on every job. You point at the mess. We make it disappear.
Based in Fresno, Valley Wash Pros serves homes and businesses across Fresno, Madera, Kings, Tulare and Merced counties, from Clovis to Visalia to Merced. Find your city below.
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