Step by step. Official links included.
This is not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Read the official pages linked here. Partner offers are optional and labeled.
Chicago flatwork comes out of winter with salt stain, and the useful season is the first warm stretch when people can see the concrete again. Two-flats in Logan Square, Pilsen, and Hyde Park often have a gangway, not a suburban driveway. Evanston and Naperville are closer to a driveway route. Say which you do. Salt removal and a gentle house wash are different pressure. A page about pool decks and palmetto bugs is the wrong city.
brick two-flats, bungalows, and detached garages on alleys, with boilers still common in older buildings hard winters, ice dams, humid summers, and wind off the lake that finds every gap in the envelope Spring flatwork, salt stains, and house washes only on the buildings you named.
Start the route in Logan Square, Hyde Park, and Pilsen. Add Evanston and Naperville when you can reach them the same day. Winter emergencies go to whoever publishes a real after-hours path. Summer work is bid more slowly and compared on scope.
The Illinois guide has the filing office. This page is the local version: what the first jobs are, which permit counter to call, and how to price a day here.
Some boxes are labeled Partner. ServiceBase has not joined those programs. The links go to each company's own homepage, not a tracking link. If a program later approves us, the address will change and we may earn a commission. You can file, insure, and bank anywhere. Official government links are not partner links. Nothing on this page is a discount code.
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The guide stays public. An account saves your state, city, and trade, and lets you mark each filing as you go. The advertising credit is reserved when you register. It can be spent after the free website is live.
Create a free account to track your progresspower washer names that work here are plain. Use one you can spell from a driveway in Logan Square.
Search it at the Illinois Secretary of State before you order magnets. The voicemail, the invoice, and the Google profile should use that spelling.
Many one-truck washing routes start as a sole proprietorship. An LLC is a reasonable filing once you are taking deposits, hiring, or putting the insurance in a company name. The filing does not decide the license and it does not decide where the water may go. Read the contractor board and the city separately. Ask an accountant if you are paying helpers and still thinking of them as a favor. This page is not legal advice.
We do not have a filing fee for Illinois that we are willing to print. The Illinois Secretary of State publishes it. Sole proprietors who operate under their own name often skip this filing. Confirm that on the same site.
If your customers are in Chicago, the registered-agent address still has to satisfy Illinois. Read the filing office's rule. A neighbor's kitchen table is not always an acceptable address.
An employer identification number is the business tax ID. The IRS issues it online at no charge and says you never have to pay a company to get one. If you form an LLC, file with the state first. The IRS says an EIN application can stall when the state filing is not done. A sole proprietor can often start with a Social Security number and get an EIN when a bank or a hire requires it.
Apply on the IRS page if you want the number yourself. LegalZoom, the partner beside this step, can request it while they form the company. That service is optional. The IRS fee is still zero either way.
Read the contractor board for a washing classification and any dollar threshold on that page. Confirm a city business license either way. If the work is a lead renovation, EPA's RRP page requires containment so wastewater stays in the work area, and it tells you to ask the local water authority about disposal. On a construction site covered by EPA's 2022 Construction General Permit, building washdown and pavement wash water have to meet that permit, including no soaps, solvents, or detergents for those discharges. A residential route that is not one of those jobs is still a city storm-drain question. Ask before you send water to the street.
State page: Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. This department licenses some trades, including roofing. Illinois does not issue one statewide license for every contractor. Check the city.
City of Chicago permits is the local counter for work in Chicago. We are naming that office, not linking a fee schedule we have not read. Call them or open the city's own site and ask what a new power washer has to register before the first job in Hyde Park.
The Illinois guide repeats the board link and tells you what we could not verify. Read it before you pay a filing service.
General liability before the wand points at someone else's house. Tell the insurer you pressure-wash, and name the surfaces, so a claim is not denied for work you did not disclose. Water forced behind siding or into an open window is the ordinary loss. Ask whether the policy speaks to that. Commercial auto for the truck and trailer. Workers' compensation before a second person is handling the gun or driving the rig. A property manager will ask for the certificate before the first driveway.
Workers' compensation is a state program. Before anyone works with you, including a friend, ask an insurer and the state labor office whether you must carry it. This guide does not quote a headcount, because those rules differ and the state page is the source. The SBA page describes the common policies. It does not sell them. Buy the policy before you work in a house in Chicago.
Fuel, tips, and the replacement hose should come out of a business account, not a personal card you sort out in April. Deposits on a house wash and the small driveway tickets both go in the same account, with the address written down. Set tax money aside the day a larger job pays.
The bank will usually ask for your ID, the EIN or your Social Security number, and the formation papers if you filed an LLC. A checking account and a habit of setting tax money aside are enough at the start.
Write three prices before you need them: a driveway or flatwork visit, a house wash, and the surface you will not do. Wood, soft stone, and roofs are where a single 'per square foot' number goes wrong. Include the time to control the water. A quote that assumes the runoff can run to the street is incomplete until the city has said so.
Mildew, dust, and salt stain are different films and different times. A price copied from another climate will be wrong. Adjust the three numbers after ten real jobs, and do not promise the film will never come back.
hard winters, ice dams, humid summers, and wind off the lake that finds every gap in the envelope brick two-flats, bungalows, and detached garages on alleys, with boilers still common in older buildings That is why a price copied from another metro will miss. Spring flatwork, salt stains, and house washes only on the buildings you named.
Write the price you want for the common job in Logan Square and the price you want for a far stop in Naperville. If the second number is not worth the drive, leave Naperville off the service area.
Claim the Google Business Profile for Chicago, IL. Set hours you answer. The service area should list Logan Square, Hyde Park, and Pilsen if those are real stops, and it should leave off towns you will not drive.
Ask for a review after a clean job, and ask them to mention the neighborhood and the task. A review that says the work and Evanston helps the next search. A review that says 'great service' does not.
Google Business Profile with photos of driveways and siding you have actually washed in this climate, and a service area made of towns you drive. Reviews should name the neighborhood and the surface. The website splits flatwork from house washes, says which surfaces you refuse, and says you ask the city about wash water. The form asks for the surface and the size. ServiceBase publishes that page and keeps the requests. It does not make the discharge legal.
When the name and the phone are real, create the free power washing site with Chicago already filled in. Quote requests land in your list. The site does not replace City of Chicago permits.
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Signup asks for an email and a password. No card. This guide opens the next step with the trade and city filled in. You can change every line after.
Pick the service you can finish, search the name at the Illinois Secretary of State, get the free EIN from the IRS, read the license page (Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation), call City of Chicago permits, insure the work, open a business account, and publish a page that names Logan Square and the jobs you want. Spring flatwork, salt stains, and house washes only on the buildings you named.
Read the contractor board for a washing classification and any dollar threshold on that page. Confirm a city business license either way. If the work is a lead renovation, EPA's RRP page requires containment so wastewater stays in the work area, and it tells you to ask the local water authority about disposal. On a construction site covered by EPA's 2022 Construction General Permit, building washdown and pavement wash water have to meet that permit, including no soaps, solvents, or detergents for those discharges. A residential route that is not one of those jobs is still a city storm-drain question. Ask before you send water to the street. Start at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. Then ask City of Chicago permits what the city adds.
Write three prices before you need them: a driveway or flatwork visit, a house wash, and the surface you will not do. Wood, soft stone, and roofs are where a single 'per square foot' number goes wrong. Include the time to control the water. A quote that assumes the runoff can run to the street is incomplete until the city has said so. hard winters, ice dams, humid summers, and wind off the lake that finds every gap in the envelope Time the first ten jobs in Logan Square and Pilsen before you copy a price from another city.
You can draft it. Put it in public under the name you will actually use, with the phone you answer. If the state requires the license before you advertise the work, wait. The free ServiceBase site does not file the company. Signup can open with power washer and Chicago filled in so you are not retyping them.
Illinois filing and license · Free power washing website in Chicago, IL · All trades in Chicago, IL
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