Wash water, plants and pre-1978 paint: a job sheet for exterior cleaners.

The wash-water rule a washer meets is the town's, written under state and federal requirements, and towns disagree. One city forbids anything reaching a storm drain; another allows clean, filtered water there under conditions; a third wants its own authorization before a washer uses the sanitary sewer. A pre-job sheet records which rule applies at this address, where the inlets are, where the water will be collected and sent, which plants need protecting and whether the house was built before 1978.

An assistant can research the rule, list the inlets from the photos and assemble the sheet. It does not decide the route, the mix, the plant protection or anything about old paint. The owner confirms each line, and a pre-1978 house goes to a person for the lead decision.

EPA's page on stormwater from municipal sources explains that polluted runoff usually travels through a municipal separate storm sewer system and is often discharged, untreated, into local water bodies. Certain operators of those systems must hold permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and run stormwater management programs (as checked on 16 October 2026). EPA's summary of the Clean Water Act describes the permit system behind those programs: discharging a pollutant from a point source into navigable waters is unlawful without a permit. Neither EPA page addresses pressure washing as such.

Portland, Oregon puts the connection plainly on its pressure washing page: the federal Clean Water Act requires cities to set rules protecting their sewer and stormwater systems. For a washer, the practical result is a local rule, and the local rule is the one the sheet must name.

The table sets two published city rules side by side, as each city's page stated them when read on 16 October 2026. They are examples, not a summary of the law anywhere else, and the owner confirms the rule for each job's town.

Portland, Oregon, as its Environmental Services page stated it on 16 October 2026, adds a third pattern:

• STORMWATER SYSTEM

  City Code 17.39 prohibits wash water from pressure washing and graffiti removal entering it.

• STREETS AND SIDEWALKS

  City Code 17.32 prohibits directing water onto a City sidewalk, street or right-of-way without authorization.

• SANITARY SEWER

  City Code 17.34 requires approval; a pressure washing business that wants this route must apply for and receive a Mobile Washer Discharge Authorization.

• PLANTED GROUND

  Only non-toxic, non-hazardous wash water onto a vegetated or unpaved area of the property, and never into a rain garden, green street planter or other stormwater facility.

• CHEMICAL WATER

  Wash water with hazardous or toxic chemicals or solvents goes to an industrial wastewater facility permitted to treat it.

Take, purely as an illustration, a 1950s house with painted clapboard, hostas along the foundation, a curb inlet at the bottom of the drive and a septic tank in the backyard. Every line below has something to say about that address. Lines drawn from a city's guidance cite that city; the rest are the owner's own practice.

• THE RULE AND ITS DATE

  The town's published wash-water rule, linked, with the date it was read; or a plain statement that none was found and the owner must ask the town.

• EVERY INLET

  Each storm drain near the work, including ones hidden in landscaping or in the gutter at the end of the block, which Lathrop's page warns about.

• WHERE WATER POOLS

  The low spots where the rinse will gather for collection, Lathrop's second step.

• DRY CLEAN-UP

  Sweeping and absorbents before any water, as Lathrop asks, and as Monroe requires before any storm-drain discharge.

• THE ROUTE

  Where this job's water goes under that town's rule: soaked into planted ground, collected, or taken away.

• RECOVERY KIT

  What the owner will bring, chosen from the kinds of equipment Lathrop lists: drain covers or plugs, berms, a vacuum or sump pump, a holding tank.

• PERMISSIONS

  The property owner's permission for a sewer drain, and the city's own authorization where its rule requires one.

• SEPTIC

  Whether the house is on a septic system, so collected water is never sent there.

• THE MIX

  The product the owner chose, linked to its label and safety data sheet, with the owner's dilution; the label's directions come first.

• PLANTS

  The beds, lawns and neighboring planting the photos show; the protection plan is the operator's own decision, made at the house.

• YEAR BUILT

  From the customer or public records, with its source; before 1978, the job is flagged and waits.

On EPA's RRP rules page the requirement attaches to firms performing renovation, repair or painting work that disturbs lead-based paint in a home built before 1978: such a firm needs certification from EPA or a state, and its renovators need EPA's renovator credential (as checked on 16 October 2026). Whether a particular wash on a particular house falls under that rule, and what containment it would need, is not something this checklist or an assistant decides. That call is the owner's, made with an EPA-credentialed renovator, and turning the job down is always open.

The rule itself, its paperwork and its records are covered in the painting article on RRP records, which this sheet links to rather than restating. The wash water is a separate question: Monroe's pamphlet, summarized in the table above, already treats water from lead-painted surfaces differently from ordinary rinse water.

Grok Bot lets the owner set up a Bot with a single job, here a sheet Bot under Aevrion's design. It works from a persistent cloud computer, and the browser there can read many town websites, though a site may block automated use or need a person to step in. The documentation recommends asking a Bot for a result that can be reviewed, such as a document with headings and source links, or a short recommendation followed by its evidence, and the sheet is built to that standard: each line says whether it came from the town's page, the customer's photos or the owner's own records.

The documentation asks users to have a Bot reopen current data before a consequential decision rather than trust what it recalls, so the Bot re-reads the town's page for every job instead of reusing last month's answer. The owner attaches the customer's photos to the Bot's conversation, or saves them to the job's folder, when asking for the sheet; that is how the inlets and beds reach it. Reading jobs from scheduling or customer software is a custom integration or supervised browser use where the vendor permits it, subject to testing. The Bot sends nothing and confirms nothing; it hands the sheet to the owner.

Based on the Grok Bot documentation at docs.x.ai as checked on 15 October 2026. The trade examples are Aevrion's illustrations, not documented Grok Bot use cases. Aevrion Ops is an independent consultancy. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or a partner of xAI, SpaceXSI or Cursor. Grok Bot is named here only to describe it.

Fill in the eleven lines on paper for the next three jobs. The lines that take longest, probably finding the town's rule, are the ones worth giving to an assistant; the lines that need judgment stay with the owner. The reliable workflows pillar explains how to keep a routine like this checkable.

Then take the free, ungated workflow automation readiness assessment and score the pre-job sheet as its one workflow, across twelve fixed dimensions. If nobody is named as the person who confirms the water route, ownership clarity will score low and cap the result, as a weak rule clarity or security and compliance readiness score would. The result, its blockers and a next step appear straight away. With that result in hand, the sheet can be talked through with Aevrion Ops in a scoping conversation.

1. Wash-water rules are local: Lathrop, Monroe and Portland each draw the storm drain, landscaping and sewer lines differently.
2. Storm drains often carry runoff untreated to local waters, which is why towns regulate what washers put in them.
3. The pre-job sheet records the town's rule and its date, every inlet, the route, the kit, permissions, septic, the mix, the plants and the year built.
4. A house built before 1978 is flagged and waits; a person decides, and the painting RRP article covers the rule itself.
5. The sheet Bot researches and assembles with sources linked; the owner confirms every line and sends nothing until satisfied.