hpwasher

I love this thread. I have to yell at my guys all the time rinse rinse rinse...."we did" then I have to point out the dry chalky bleech on the windows. We go back and wash the windows anyway but its a great example

Everyone, I have taken paint off buildings in preparation for paint using a rotary nozzle on my power washer, but this customer would like all the paint removed from his brick building. I was thinking about getting some paint remover and applying it to the building first to get most of the paint off then get the rest left behind with a sandblaster. 1. Would I be wasting time and money with the paint stripper? This customer knows he has a lot of mortar filling to do after I'm done. The best idea I have is renting a sandblaster. I can rent a sandblaster from our local construction equiptment supplier for about $500 a week. that includes blaster, air compressor equipment, hoses and the clean air suit. 2. Is sandblasting the right thing to do? would soda blasting or wet abrasive blasting work better? Thanks

Rick, The price included cleaning up the site and we took the blast media/paint mix and dumped it as fill at our shop. all 3 tons of sand. what a bear!!!

Rod, Both!!! We had some crazy rain here the weekend before the job and water got in with the sand. I opened up the bags. They seemed a little moist but I threw it in the pot! I have never sandblasted before only power washed. In the power washing world water is great. In the media blasting world water is the worst thing ever! The Air Compressor we rented was just spraying moisture in the air. We opened the air/water seperator valve like they wanted us to but moisture was everywhere at the entry point. I think I had to take the blaster apart about 3-4 times to get all the wet sand out

So I guess I will answer my own questions then........ 1. paint stripper waste of time.... 2. sand media costs a ton of $$$$$$ 3. Use rotating nozzle before sandblasting. This will take off a lot of excess paint and less work sandblasting! The cost was about $10 gas out of my pressure washer. That would have cost over $200 in sand alone. 4. The sandblaster works great except a **** ton of water got into the pot, twice, and I had to return it to the rental place to get a new one becuase wet sand does not move in hoses!! oops 5. Overall, Sandblasting is a very expensive and work intensive job. attached are some mid job pictures

Scott, what would you like to know? I started a pressure washing business when I was 18 my sophomore year in college. I'm now 24 years old with my degree in electrical engineering. I work for National Grid, the largest electrical provider in the northeastern states. You can even e-mail me at czgoda@us.ngrid.com for "credability." I bartend 4-5 days a week at Jack Astor's Bar & Grill in Buffalo, NY and own a pressure washing business. I've worked very hard to get where I am today and will continue to work even harder. I know how many business are run and take offense to the scrutiny of my own. I apologize for what I said about your employee. Oh and if you were the guy that called me 15 times from a private number yesterday to mess with me.....Please don't do that again.

Well Scott! If your talking about what I pay my employee, "I guess you get what you pay for!" My employees comes clean to work, always shaved and doesn't look like a slob! Thats right at the top, below their work ethic and quality! Thanks to Ron's video of your employee and the teeth comment. You have provided me with a great laugh today. Oh and lesbians huh??? your credability went right down the drain!

My first job pressure washing was cleaning a mobile home. My father told me, "The mobile home facility contract requires them to have the home pressure washed once a year." Perfect, hand out a bunch of flyers and I'm bound to get a job or 2. I listed on the flyer $30 a house. I received between 12-15 calls after Handing out the flyers to the neighborhood. Haha....a couple of them were elder folks yelling at me about how my flyers were all over the place (don't go door to door on a windy day). Bang, got my first job pressure washing a mobile home. I had bought a pressure washer and enclosed trailer brand new and had no clue how to wash. Taking 4000 psi to siding takes a long time to get those little pores of mold off. If you miss a spot its definatly noticeable. I was busting my balls for 2 summers cleaning those things for $30 a pop. I had a customer base of about 15-20 in the same mobile home spot. I would get about 6 done a day. It was hard labor and it sucked. Well after taking some classes and learning about down streaming chemicals and softwashing the job became much easier!!! Now, I start at 8am and stop around 7pm with 2 guys washing almost non-stop. We have about 45 homes we wash, out of the over 180 homes there. We can easily get a mobile home done in an hour and most likely less. This also includes going back and washing the windows. Oh, and the price has gradually increased from $60 single and $70 double wide. 65/hr * 10 hrs (1hour break) = $650 Pay my employee around $150----I take home $500. I make $2,500.00 with a combined week of work But no one looks at the long term affect. 55 and older, what do you do?? your retired or you feel like your retired. You talk to all your neighbors, you tell your children about the young man that just came and pressure washed your house and next thing you know.....networking calls left and right. One woman was very close in the church. She told the church about what a great job I did and I ended up pressure washing the entire church $$$$. Another woman bakes me a small cake every year, delicious and its better than my mothers!!! I would say the mobile home community is solely responsible for approximately 30-40% of my business through networking. I had to start somewhere

I currently have a 4GPM 4000PSI belt driven machine. I want to be able to clean some heave duty grease on resaurant hoods. Well I figured it's time to add the hot water. For right now my budget can afford a new burner. "A" Will this get me in the right direction to have the proper equiptment for what I want to do or would it be a good idea to get a brand new machine with a 5-6gpm pump (burner and all)? "B" if i can work well with just adding the burner where is the best place to look? thanks

A day off? What is that? Between Working for a power company, Bartending at night and powerwashing on the weekends. Ok I got it......5 hours of sleep a night x5 nights = 25 hours. Thats close to a day off right?

well i have a problem I never come across in 5 years. I powerwashed this vinly sided mobile home in the beginning of summer. I down stream 12% bleach let it dewll for no longer then 5 minutes then rinse. never had a problem in 5 years. Got a call from this customer and he e-mailed me this picture of this house. looks like wand marks all over the place. obviously you can only see it in the sunlight and at an angle, not straight on. there has to be a remedy for this thanks

Thanks for the advice. I ended up buyig a new hotbox from sunbrite. came in on a pallet yesterday. My pressure washer is 5 years old with only a couple thousand hours on it. I just talked to a guy that has the single machine setup and he said his burner is leaking, now he has to take the whole thing in to get looked at, and his whole operation is down until it's fixed. I will be a kid in a candy story tonight, can't wait to try it out.

I carry many of the same tools, I also carry a cordless tool set; sawzall, drill, and circular saw. I found one thing I cannot carry without is glue and/or nails. I always find a way to take a number off a house on accident. People put the stainless steel numbers on houses and if they are not properly secure, especially if its vinyl siding they come right off

The homeowner has only owned the house for 18 months. This is the first time he has had it powerwashed under his ownership. Since this post he has e-mailed me back and i have some more valuable information. He has more pictures of the house prior to him owning it from the realtor. he says it looks like the wand marks were already there and he asked his neighbor and the previous owner did have it powerwashed. He would like to get it fixed. I've never used wax on a home and I've never heard of waxing a home. do you downstream it? can someone fill me in

next question. No one likes to lose customers and especially not in a sitution where I don't feel like it was my fault. Now, I have to make a decision, do I powerwash this whole house again and most likely free of charge for something I didn't do?

I am an engineer for a crane company and we recently installed a new crane in the buffalo water authority. The crane lifts a 8ft long x 3ft diameter cylinder of chlorine gas at 99.9% chlorine. I wonder how they condense it? I wonder if we could get it from that same place and store it in smaller pressurized bottles like an oxygen acetlyne size tank? (A) sounds dangerous, but if its cheaper.....I like cheaper

well im in the same predicament Ken is in. All i have is some sodium hydroxide from concentrate and no other types of formulas. If you could give me a little recipe that would be great

You can use sodium hydroxide to strip a deck? I used it to whiten gutters and sometimes take the residual off houses left by insects. I guess I need a lesson in chemistry because I definatly got a D+ in it last semester. Bleach, is sodium hypochloride. Sodium hydroxide I know is different. I was told not to clean a deck with sodium hypochloride (bleach), whats the difference with sodium hydrxide? Both a very caustic acids, why one not the other? I actually need to strip some decks this weekend and was thinking about purchasing some products from either ACR in PENN, or that TIMBERPRO in Michigan. I live in Buffalo and if I can just use sodium hydroxide to strip a deck that would be fantastic. I buy it in the liquid form. does anyone know where I can find it in the solid form, because I pay about $45 for a 5 gallon pale and I have to dilute it about 3:1. I Live in Buffalo, NY so if you have any advice let me know....thanks