Locations

Each town below has its own page, and they are not copies of each other, because the houses are not. Older brick ranches close in to town, newer vinyl subdivisions farther out, lake houses with docks and decks along the water. What needs washing, and how gently, depends a lot on which of those you live in.

Both sides of the river

The Tennessee River splits the Shoals in two, Lauderdale County on the north bank and Colbert County on the south. For a washing crew the river is less a border than a weather machine. Between it and Wilson Lake the air stays damp most of the year, and that damp feeds the green film on shaded siding and the black streaks on roofs on both banks alike.

South of the water, our Muscle Shoals page covers the neighborhoods there, and Sheffield and Tuscumbia each get their own write-up. North of it, the newer subdivisions past Florence are where vinyl siding and long driveways show up most, and what we see out in Killen is a good example of that kind of street.

Pollen does not care about county lines either. From March into May the whole area wears the same yellow coat, which is why spring books up first. We wash houses, roofs and concrete across the Shoals: Florence, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, Tuscumbia, Killen and Rogersville. Lexington, Leighton, Cherokee, St. Florian and Underwood-Petersville are on the schedule as well.

Summers here run hot and sticky, and shaded concrete and north walls tend to green back up within a year or two no matter which side of the river they sit on. Trees, drainage and how much sun a spot gets matter more than the zip code. A lake lot on Wilson Lake with oaks overhead will need more attention than a bare lot in a new subdivision, even a few miles apart, and the town pages get into those differences street by street.