RPetry

Tony, A few thoughts. 1) The job looks like an easy strip with low NaOH concentration. I would not be overly concerned with the undersides, unless they are currently stained. If so, prewet and have a helper rinse while applying stripper on the top wood. 2) We have done a number of jobs with that railing design. Very time consuming to clean/strip and stain, you have to figure some way to tarp and spray or you'll be there forever. 3) We would do the "boardwalk" posts, joists, and cross supports. Job will look unfinished without the service. 4) If you are convinced it will help sell the job and you have the time, just prep the small ipe' front deck 1 x 4's on top of the side planter. Chems and a scrub brush, no need for a PW. It will dry in a flash on a decent day. Apply your AC of choice. For a job of that size, well worth an hour or so of work. The metal rails on the ipe' front porch look like they may be copper plated. Don't know, maybe someone knows how to identify and clean. One more thought. That is a real nice size job, and an easy strip. Set the hook quick. I'd try and do the ipe' sample pronto and get the customer a proposal ASAP. Get to them while they are interested, a lot can happen in two weeks.

Beth, NJ requires a contractors license. From what I can tell, maybe 30 - 40% of small home improvement contractors actually follow the law and obtain a license. The only requirement is proof of liability insurance. Which is an easy get around. In effect, it is a tax with little if any enforcement.

Tammy, Tell Mr. GreenJeans you only ride hydrogen powered buses and call it a draw.

Go up to ACR and have Tom build a double Shurflo unit. One for caustics, one for acids. Posting from their office now, Tom and Matt say "Hi"!

Greg, Wow, that is one terrific job. Perfect before and after project pictures. The stain is too yellow-orange in color for my taste but what an improvement.

Ken, Fair enough. This is a interesting test with a stain manufacturer and yours truly. Odd thing, the Forest Products Lab has never, in my search, done anything on paraffin oils, but they have certainly warned of potential mold/mildew with linseed oil. Regardless, if the stain manufacturer has used correct and high quality driers and mold/mildew/fungicides, the oil base should not matter, at least for the short term. Two years on horizontal wood exposed to direct sun, for semitransparent oils in our climate, is the norm. I'm almost willing to make book. Wanna' bet?

Richard, The test board was not much work, but your point is well taken. I only have 5 or 6 sample boards from stain manufacturers that do exactly that! I can almost guarantee that the paraffin oil would have migrated through the wood laterally regardless of any groove.

Tim, Exactly. Ipe' is near indestructible. It laughs at weather, wood stains, owners and contractors. Get lazy for five years, and let it go. You can bring the wood back without penalty. Ipe' is way more maintenance free than any so called composite rip off.

Rod, "Crushed velvet". That is the most descriptive ID of wet furring I have heard, entirely true. Must remember that one!

Daniel, Your presumption is false. Life is too interesting to be bored... Ken, Yeah, like we need it. Last saw the sun on Sat. between rain showers. Doesn't look like we'll see it for another 5 or 6 days. A real tough spring...

Ok, ready to put the test board outside. First pic - 2 x 6 western red cedar, about a year old, never been outside. Prepped with sodium percarb and citric acid as described in the above post. Second pic - Paraffin oil on the left, boiled linseed oil on the right. Put ~ the same amount of oil on both sections. Third pic - Full board after a week of inside drying. Note that the paraffin oil has migrated laterally into about half of the untreated cedar section. About 1/3rd of the linseed section is "shiny", but neither oil is tacky and both are fully dried. It now goes outside and we'll see in 6 months to a year if there is any mold/mildew growth.

Jeff, Don't laugh. About 4 yrs. ago did a job where some of the balustade was about 10" from the side of a pool. Water was about 65 F. Though you cannot see it, wore the bottoms of a 3/8" wetsuit and booties. Would have used the drysuit but did not want to get any stain on an expensive DUI.

Jeff, This has been one of the toughest early seasons, weatherwise, that I can remember for exterior wood here in the Northeast. Very wet and cold through most of April then wham, 90 F. on the 23rd and close to that for the next 3 days. It was like we had no spring. One night in either the 2nd or 3rd week of April, had to bring the PW's and some pumps inside the house one night as it got down to 25 F. and was not going to re-winterize just for one night. Prepped a couple of small jobs over the weekend and have a large, tough strip scheduled for today. With heavy rain forecast, I'll push it back until tomorrow. Its a good time to catch up on estimates and paperwork.

Tim, It depends on the stain you are going to use, and how you prepare the wood the first time. Ipe' has a lot of natural oils and extractives in the wood. Spray water on any wood, cedar, redwood, pressure treated southern yellow pine, it all looks great when wet. It would take a physicist to say why, but it is an observable fact. With ipe', if you really want to stain it, you are going to have to remove the natural oils / extractives from the first few mils of the wood. To do this, it is either a sodium percarbonate wash or a more aggressive sodium hydroxide wash. Both will "fir" up the wood. A very light sanding with a R.O. sander and 60 grit will make a difference in the final look of the finish. But it is temporary. It has no effect on stain adhesion, only the look of the finished wood. If you are going to stain your ipe', you are going to do it each and every year. It is the nature of the wood.

Daniel, Try Everett Abrams, he is down in that area. For contact info, go to: Deck Restoration Plus: Contact Us

Pat, Nice job. You may want to consider using your "Bobcat" (is that a type of sprayer?) for applying your acid brightener instead of downstreaming. 6 to 8 oz. / gal. of acid hitting the wood will really lighten up the color of the wood. Ready Seal medium red would look great on that deck. 2 applications on the horizontal surfaces, one heavy on the vertical.

Tim, Why not wait for prepping and staining next spring? Ipe' is damned near indestructible, weathering is not going to harm it and will help to leach out some of the natural extractives from the wood. Next spring, use a sodium percarbonate based wood cleaner, and lightly pressure wash. The rinse water will look like diluted blood, even after a year of exposure. Neutralize / brighten with oxalic acid diluted at 6 oz. per gal. and rinse well. Use your stain of choice, the first time you will probably not get a year before the wood needs a cleaning and restaining for appearance. But don't worry about it, its winter! Dependent on the stain, its either a strip or cleaning and re-oiling every single year. Its just the nature of the wood, I know as I own an ipe' deck. Just got some finished pictures of the ipe' deck above in this thread from the owner. Never did get final shots as the stain was still wet when we left the job site. Bleached off built up mold/mildew and dirt, stripped off some remaining old WoodTux stain and applied 2 separate oilings of Ready Seal medium red. It will have to be cleaned and re-oiled next spring. There is a saying with ipe' owners, it's "e-pay" or more accurate, "u-pay".

Tim, One of the best constructed ipe' decks I have seen, we restored earlier this Spring. The builder did his own custom routing and installed metal hidden fasteners, not the plastic. What was nice about the design was the pattern of 4" wide, 6" wide, 5/4" boards on the floor. Broke up the boring same dimension pattern and really looked nice. Pre preparation picture attached.

DJ, I have owned a unit for the past 6 yrs. or so called a Decker 5'er, manufactured by PumpTec, very similar to the Deckster. What is going on with trade? Canadians (or excise tax) are charging Americans a friggin' fortune for western red cedar. And you cannot purchase decent chems and equipment from the US at a reasonable cost? What happened to global trade? Lord, its not like dealing with Somalia. We share a vast border, common interests, and history. Something stinks..., probably both in Washington and Toronto...

DJ, Your name says it all. Search "Decker" here on TGS, its a HVLP pump unit specifically designed to apply exterior stains and can be used for chemicals. Any manufacturer can help you with chem proportions. If you can read a measuring cup, you are good to go.

Beth, Don't hold your breath. Results will take a while....

A fire extinguisher. Mounted one into the truck this Spring. Don't want the truck or anyone to candle due to infrequent linseed oil use.

Comedy of errors. Stopped by to meet prescheduled new customers last Saturday morning during a veritable monsoon. It was raining so hard, could not take measurements let alone try some strippers. Worthwhile as the husband is only available on weekends, and very nice people. Promised to stop by when weather permitted. Stopped by late this PM coming from another job to test the wood, no one home. Facts I learned on Saturday. PT deck, 3 yrs. old. Husband stained the first year, then again the 2nd year. Never cleaned the wood, just slopped down some stain. So two coats of this stuff with mildew/mold stains beneath and between the two layers. I saw the 5 gal. can, it is Olympic Maximum in a blue can with rain drops. 2nd error, I did not have my glasses with me so could not read the details on the label, and did not want to get soaked running out to the truck. The deck is an eyesore, and they are going to put the house on the market this summer. It definitely needs a full stripping and a restaining. What is with this stain? 8 oz/gal. of sodium hydroxide test stripper on the partially failed floor seemed to work ok, but did not appear to be effective on the mostly intact stained horizontal wood. It has a "shine", almost like a waterbased semi-trans acrylic. A few pics attached. Never knowingly tried to strip this stain before, and it looks like a tough one. Any experience would be welcomed before I try and price the job. Thanks.

Beth, 3rd error. Did not have a boosted batch of stripper mixed up in a sample bottle on the truck. Have a few gals. of 633-ADD, plus a half a 5'er of Tom's thickening/surfactant additive in inventory. I usually add 8 fluid oz. of each per gallon into a hot 8 - 12 oz./gal. ACR 760 mix. Will be back in the area early this week and will stop by to test it on this semi acrylic.