We Wash Concrete

Hawk, next time you should ask the person to move their vehicle before it gets covered in mold and algea. At the least, rinse it off for them... lol, JK! Those are great before and afters. I have sized my before and afters to 4x6's. This way I can print them at CVS or Walgreens for about 20 cents each. It has proved to be a great tool in closeing estimates. This would be great for you, pointing out the color changing car would be a lot of fun.

Is this house in a subdivison or are there neighbors close? The reason I ask is if you clean that size of a house, and neighbors notice that you didn't clean the driveway, your chances of getting a house close by because of them noticing you will be hurt. I would offer to clean the drive at 50% off if I had too. If there are houses of the same size around that need cleaned, I may even clean the drive at no charge if it was of normal size. Just my opinion, but like you said, sometimes freebies go a long way.

Ed, I would strongly advise you to purchase a larger machine - you've already proved you can land large jobs. With a 4 gpm unit, it will take you much much longer then if you had a 5.5 or 8. This single job will pay for the unit, and I bet you could cut your time down by at least 1/3 if not in half. You're 30 inch surface cleaner is more suited to a 5.5 or 8 gpm machine, you will be able to walk a lot faster. I have a 20 inch surface cleaner, with a 5.5 gpm machine and I can clean 3000 sq foot with moderate gum in an hour, including setup and loading back up. It took me about twice that with my older 4 gpm machine.

Nope. I wouldn't clean it unless I could clean the entire area. Getting the perm. marker up should not be any problem, but even if you don't use a chemical, you will still see a cleaner area where you worked. What does your customer plan on paying for the job? 30 bucks?

The injectors will usually break at the worst time - good thing is at 20 dollars you can keep a spare or two. The x-jet lets you easily dilute the chemical to the right percentage rate too. I put a quick connect directly on a gun with no wand and keep the x-jet on it. This helps keep the suction hose more manageable.

A x-jet uses a tube at the end of the wand, attached to the nozzel, to siphon the chemical and mix it into the water. A downstream injector attaches using quick connects onto your high pressure hose. The injector is usually installed between the outlet of the machine and the beginning of the high pressure hose. This allows you to keep your chemical right with your machine, hopefully on a trailer. When you use a low pressure tip, the injector mixes the chemical in with your water, passes through the hose and out your wand. When you use a higher pressure tip, the injector knows NOT to mix chemical, so you only get clean water. A dual lance wand is nice because you don't have to change tips, you only turn the handle to select low pressure chemical mix or high pressure clean water. Downstreaming keeps you from hauling a bucket of chemical all the way around the house.

AJ, Has your rig thawed out yet?

I believe Winn-Dixie closed the stores that were not profitable - which seems to be most of them. All of the Winn-Dixie's in South Carolina are gone.

I don't know Bigchaz, I may have you beat. How old are you?

Since you're going to clean it anyway, wouldn't it make sense to apply a sealer? I'm not a wood guy, but it seems like after it was sealed it would stay cleaner longer.. thus keeping cleaning cost down for your "bottom line" PM. I also agree with RCBill, those roofs are going to grin at you once you've got the fence nice and clean.

Last Saturday night I got tied up doing something so I didn't get to blow the water out of my rig until about midnight. The water had not sat on the asphalt driveway for 10 minutes until it was frozen. I have never seen water freeze that quickly - but that may be because I've never had to be outside in the freezing wind at midnight with water before. I can't wait for Spring!

I don't wanna get anywhere close to blowing ice - if it's close to freezing I've just been rescheduleing. I just don't want to be not working when I could be working. As far as blowing out your rig on the road, do you carry a compressor or would a gas stations 75 cent machine do fine?

Makes living in Florida look really attractive. This is my first winter with full time pressure washing. In the past I was able to schedule work on the warm days, and clean windows or something else on the colder days. Now I'm forced to put the pressure washing off until a warmer night, but nothings above freezing this week. I hope next week is warmer - i'll be busy. At what tempature would one not want to pressure wash a busy entrance way? What does everybody else do?

The subject of the video sums it up very well. Idiot. Im curious to know what company he works for.

I believe Dan said he planned to be making a 50 dollar profit for each hour; not that he charges 50 dollars an hour. Dan, you will have to find a niche to make the most money. Test the market to find what kind of pressure washing service is open, and run with it. If the house washing market is soaked with competition, try the deck or flatwork market, or vice versa. If every market is soaked, you will just have to be better then the compition, which should be all of our goals anyway. Invest as much as you can back into the business, it will repay itself greatly in the long run. Don't set your expectations too high, it may take 3 years to see sizeable profit margins. The good side to the pressure washing business is there is no limit to profit; you will get exactly what you put into it.

Just found out about this site, thought I would keep tabs on it as well. Signed up for the RT today too, hope to see everybody there. What would be a good idea to bring, other then plenty of business cards? :)