Leaderboard

Ok, I will start off with a question for you. Do you wash your dishes without soap? How well does the grease come off without soap. How about your laundry? Do you use soap, softener, bleach, spot pretreater/prewash? When you take a shower? I think you get my drift. Wood can be water chiseled with a pressure washer to make it look clean because you are removing much of the wood the contaminants were residing on. The problems with pressure alone are as follows: 1. High pressure washing removes the early wood (soft wood between the grain) and creates a corduroy type condition which can only be remedied by sanding. Some call this 'raising the grain' which is a misconception and a lack of understanding of the woods reaction to getting wet. If you take a piece of wood and add a drop of water to it... the grain will respond by swelling up as it absorbs it. Problem is, it doesn't always return to the previous condition and requires sanding to get rid of it. Hot water amplifies this condition. 2.Water is the universal solvent but alone it cannot act against many types of contaminants found on decks. Just like cleaning a restaurant hood, you would never rely on hot water alone. You use a caustic to cut the grease so the water can wash it away. Decks are exposed to 'life' as a generality and with that comes food, grease from the bbq grill, drinks which are often acidic and some which contain tannins (wine) and microorganisms from decomposing food. Then you have pet and other wild life waste which can be a biohazard in itself. Mother nature is hard at work with mold, algae, and deciduous matter from trees (leaves, pitch, sap) which stain the wood and promote the growth of mold by water retention. Water alone cannot sanitize, make soluble, emulsify or otherwise dissolve much of these without the aid of soap. It is likely you have heard some of these industry terms and buzz words related to cleaners, bleach and other products since you have a background in hood cleaning so I will address you on that level. Surfactants, emulsifiers, caustic builders and neutralizers/brighteners are all a part of wood cleaning chemicals. The most widely accepted method of cleaning is a 2 step method which consists of a cleaner/stripper and brightener/neutralizer. The first is for the purpose of cleaning obviously and can also be used at higher concentrations to strip with if it is designed to do so. We use a product which has this dual purpose. The brightener/Neutralizer is for bringing the wood back to its original pH and neutralizing the stripping agent used to remove old finishes/coatings etc. Chlorine bleach is the most controversial so do a search here and I am sure you will find much to entertain you about the pro's and cons of it. Your use of a 25* tip is not bad but is reserved for use on decks that are being stripped. A 40* tip is much more innocuous and can cover a wider swatch with each pass. The one thing I will bring to focus is nozzle distance to the wood. There is a minimum distance required to avoid damage. 6" is the minimum distance. Your speed of each pass will determine your effectiveness. A good rule of thumb is to make the pattern of contact at the wood on 6" wide decking to cover that plank and the opposite side of each adjacent plank. Ie; you will cover the entire board plus the sides of the adjacent boards to get into the space between them. As your technique improves, you may learn how to get closer but also understand that your pass speed must also increase as you do. Experiment with this technique and evaluate the results. Look for splintering, soft grain culling (raised grain profile/corduroy effect), stop/start marks (the effect generated by abrupt reversal of direction without a sweeping motion to avoid scaring the wood which looks like a rake in the sand that stops suddenly. Only, this is in the wood grain. Trust me, this is amateur and a point your competition will spot. The whole purpose of wood restoration is to clean the wood without damaging it and bringing it back to a cleaner and more natural state than it was before and then applying a protective coating, finish or preservative to help maintain that condition for the duration of the particular products capability. Anything less is a black eye to the industry and makes it harder on the rest of us who are trying to make a living in this field who have to dispel the worries and fears a customer has had in order to trust someone to provide this service for them. It is from this perspective I post articles like this to help raise the standards of performance before the bad habits can set in. I have read many of your recent posts and can tell you are trying to learn how to do things right and avoid problems so I respond in kind to get you off on the right methods and mindset. Rod!~