Upkeep
How to clean permanent lighting track without wrecking it
The track on your fascia gets the same grime your siding does: pollen, road dust, spider webs and, in river towns, a film of salt by March. A garden hose and a soft brush handle all of it. A pressure washer handles it too, right up until it blows the seal on a pixel.
Why the track gets dirty and why it matters
The track sits at the top of the wall under the eave, which is the least-washed surface on any house. Rain does not reach it and nobody wipes it. Over a year it picks up whatever is in the air: cottonwood in June, dust from a gravel drive, soot from a neighbor's wood stove, and the salt haze that settles on everything within sight of Route 422 or Route 28 in winter.
None of that harms the pixels. They are sealed in IP67 silicone and the housing is salt-tested for exactly this. What a dirty track does is dim the light. A film on the lens face knocks down brightness and can shift the color slightly warm as it yellows. Homeowners sometimes call about a roofline that looks dim in spring and the fix is a hose.
The other reason to clean is that the track is color-matched to your trim so it disappears by day. A track with a dirty streak below it stops disappearing. Keeping it clean keeps the invisible-by-day promise, which is part of why it passes HOA review.
What you need
You need a garden hose with a standard spray nozzle, a bucket of water with a small amount of mild dish soap, and a soft-bristle brush on an extension pole. That is the whole kit. If you can reach the eave from the ground with the pole, you never leave the ground, which is the only way we want you doing this.
Skip anything abrasive, anything with bleach, and any solvent. The silicone over the pixels is tough but it is still silicone. Ammonia-based glass cleaners and citrus degreasers cloud it over time. Plain soap and water do not.
- Garden hose with a fan or shower nozzle
- Bucket, mild dish soap, water
- Soft-bristle brush on an extension pole
- No pressure washer, no bleach, no solvents, no scouring pads
- A dry, mild day, not direct hot sun on a dark trim color
The process, start to finish
Rinse first. Run the hose along the track from the ground, working in the direction the water sheds, to knock loose the dry stuff. Then dip the brush, run it along the lens face and the top edge of the track where debris collects, and rinse again. Two passes on a normal house is plenty. Do it before you clean the siding below so the runoff does not streak what you just finished.
Landscape fixtures are the same idea at knee height. Wipe the lens, clear mulch and leaves away from the fixture body, and check that the stake is still upright after the frost heave of March. Uplights aimed at trees drift over a winter and a quick re-aim while you are down there is worth doing. thraxel.com/blog/landscape-light-fixture-maintenance/ has the fixture-specific checklist.
When you are done, run a solid white scene at dusk and walk the house. Clean track with a dark pixel in it is now easy to spot, and that is something we want to hear about.
What a pressure washer does to a sealed system
This is the one that gets people. The track survives a Western PA winter without a mark, so it seems like it should shrug off a pressure washer. It does not. A concentrated jet at close range can lift the silicone edge, drive water past a connector, or push grit into the seam between track and fascia. The damage is not visible until a pixel fails weeks later.
If you pressure-wash your siding every spring, keep the wand pointed down and away from the eave, and stop a couple of feet short of the track line. Tell the pressure-washing crew the same thing if you hire it out. Damage from a pressure washer is a physical-damage repair, not a defect, so it sits outside the 3-year parts and 1-year labor warranty.
Same rule for the landscape side. A pressure washer aimed at a path light or a well light is how water ends up inside a fixture that was dry for three years.
How often, and when
Once a year is enough for most homes. Twice is better if you are on a gravel road, under big trees, or within a block of a salted state route. The best window is late April or May, after the salt stops and before the pollen drops, with a second pass in early fall before the holiday scenes start.
If you would rather not, an annual preventive maintenance visit covers the track rinse, the fixture wipe-down, re-aiming, a zone-by-zone check in the app and a look at the controller. We run those in spring across the whole footprint. Details are in thraxel.com/blog/annual-preventive-lighting-maintenance/.
Track that has faded or discolored rather than just gotten dirty is a different conversation, and a rare one. The aluminum is powder-coated and the color holds. If yours has not, that is a call to Tyson at 724-859-4390, and thraxel.com/blog/uv-fading-and-outdoor-led-lifespan/ explains what we look for.
Keep it boring
Cleaning permanent lighting should be the least interesting chore on the list. Hose, brush, rinse, walk the house at dusk. If that feels like too much, it is one line item on a preventive visit. The point of the system is that it stays on the house and out of your way, and a clean track is what keeps it looking like part of the house instead of something hung on it.
For anyone still on seasonal lights, note that there is nothing to clean because it all comes down and goes into storage. The trade is a January takedown and a November install every year. Both paths are laid out at thraxel.com/permanent/ and thraxel.com/christmas/, and the free consult is where we tell you which one fits.
