Jeff

I'll be at Matts, he's going to put a good one on for sure. You better be there its going to be a blast I always have an urge to put one on too. I just like a big party with some good PWing & biz stuff thrown in the mix. But heck, I'm just a party kind of guy LOL

Don't forget to turn in your one bullet Ha Ha Ha Congratulations to you and your family John. Its a big step for sure but you aren't getting any younger and now you will have more time with your family. Thanks for your service Rock on you mad man.

Hi everyone, I haven't been on TGS in quite a while. I had trouble logging on a while back and just never tried again. Got a million old posts to look over, anybody want to talk about multi unit washing? Hope everyone is doing great and had a good year. Life is Good. Jeff

One building a day. Heck my crew would be home by 9:30 am LOL Is it one building a day because you wouldn't be able to finish two buildings in a day? Or just one building because thats all they are allowing. Never heard of such a PITA thing. Have to go to the same job site 16 different days, thats a lot of travel time and gas expense. You had to rent a lift for at least 16 day, wow!!!!!! I have had a couple managers try to slow things down simular to that. I showed them let us do it our way say for $5000 or their way for $7000, they usually will see the light when its explained to them the right way I just had to explain a job, they only wanted us filling our tanks at the clubhouse off one hose bib and every unit had water hose bibs, but people complained in past years. I suggested getting one owner per building to allow us to use their water. The property was use to one man pressure washing companies. It would have cost them a few thousand more to do it their way. We can not use hydrants in this county plus we would of been there a couple weeks with a much smaller crew, our way its a 3 day project

How many companies out here do gutter cleaning? Its that time of the year. This flier has gotten me tons of new work

What did you kids wear for Halloween? My 8 year old was wrestler John Cena, and Jessica was Strawberry Shortcake. We had a fun night, Jessica wouldn't stop, her long legs were running from house to house

Cool. How many buildings. Wind is crazy today, was going to work tomorrow but called it off. Suppose to be 22-28 mph winds Good luck on the project

OK Motivational speech coming up.:rolleyes: I share alot of pictures and my experiences with you all, not to brag or even not to show off my work. The TGS and others are a place I can share with others that have some of the same business interest and I like that, hell I love this place & this biz I get some helpful & very nice responses from you all and I thank you, for allowing me to bore you all with my babbling Im looking back now on my biz life since Im coming up on my 2 year anniversary of going fulltime. I went fulltime March 2004. Now I want to tell you all, mainly the newbies or the guys that been in it for a little while but now want to grow. It can be done Alot of you have heard all or part of my story. You know the stuff, like was crazy partier for years, waited till 39 to get married & have children, no real education, not a great speaker or saleman. Not mechanically inclined at all, etc etc etc Well 2 years ago I took a big leap, before that I had hunted down 2 property managers of 2 dirty properties, each one took over 9months to a year to get the jobs. Well I got the OK to do the 2 big jobs in Feb 2004 and started one in March2004 and then the other one was scheduled for June 2004 and I had an alright residential biz that I knew would fill up at least 4-6 months of the year. I was worried that I might not have enough work to support my family comfortably, but I had to go full time because I couldnt do these to big jobs parttime. It was a complex of 32 buildings & one of 35 buildings Now let me get to my point, finally, Ya right I see alot of guys out here with motivation and some great ideas. You can do this. I did these 2 big complexes in 2004 with 2 cold water 4gpm machines and 1 rental machine, I had no employees except a kid who worked sometimes for me and he quit 3 days before the big job. I freaked and was VERY scared and almost gave up. My wife said Jeff you can do it, hire a temp and do it yourself if you have to. Here I was no workers and 32 buildings to clean, I called my brother in law who worked nights and who helped me many times PWing, I asked him to work this job with me and asked him if he knew of anybody that wanted a job, I was paying $10 an hr. Well My Bro In Law worked & he found a freind of a freind who wasnt working and I hired a Labor Ready guy. I taught them what to do and we finished the job. I couldnt believe it. The property loved us!!!!! That was the start of something big!!! Now Im sort of in the same boat. I have 2 fulltime guys but it looks like enough work were I'll have to hire for several months a couple more fulltime guys or more, I'll need moe equipment etc etc. I stress, but not to the point of hurting me. I just want to be the best and not screw up and I want to do all this work on time & great. I will do it, why? because I WANT IT!!!! Do you want it bad enough to spend, hours, days , weeks yes years to secure the work. Then you have to work it, live it!!! I see the post on marketing & on equipment. You dont have to be the saleman of the year or have all the biggest and best machines, althou it would help. Ive rented equipment and Ive done some very low cost marketting and its worked and it can work for you guys Residential or commercial what ever you want to do, you can get the work, but you HAVE TO invest time to get the work ALOT of time. The work itself in a few months you can be a pro, almost! With these BB's what you dont know you can learn from those here. But getting the work is the hard part right? I have no fancy brouchures, no smooth sales pitch. You have to show the people you want their work and tell them what you can do for them. Alright what are you doing to gear up for this year? Alright you have 1000 post cards, your in one newspaper your ready to start your advertising blitz, Its NOT ENOUGH!!! You cant afford to do more you have to afford it. You have a computer make up some simple cheesy fliers, buy a roll of stamps every other week and send fliers out now and dont stop for a few months, spring thru summer. Newspaper ads expensive, look for neighborhood newsletters, go to neighborhoods and pull up to a home owner and ask them if they have a neighborhood newsletter. Ask the person if you gave them a cheap price on a roof cleaning & house wash could you use them as a sales tool. Do the job, but before you do it, drive around the whole neighborhod and write down every address, make a flier and invite the people to come watch you work. My wife and I drove around neighborhoods and would write down thousands of addresses and then we would fill out envolopes by had and mail them, I mean thousands of them. I didnt know how to do it any other way at the time, neither of of were good with the computer, we did it all by hand. You get one job, do it geat and ask the people to help you out getting more work. Be sincere, tell them please tell your freinds, neighbors & family about you I posted fliers in supermarkets, put up inexpensive door hangers, drpped cards every doctors office store that I could find an empty spot. I sent over 10,000 fliers and postcards 2 years in a row. You cant do a little advertising you have to alot for at least a couple years to get established some what. Commercial, youve heard me say it before, write, fax, call all the fricking time. You get a job call & thank them and ask for more work, look on the net for companies and write, fax, call. Your afraid to talk to them cold call over the phone, leave message(s) on their voice mail, that way they get the message and you dont have to talk to them directly at first. My faxes are simple black & white on my computer, look unprofessional maybe but they work My motavation for my biz is I dont ever want to work for anybody again and I want to support and care for my family and be comfortable Well Im going to end this. Its Saturday morning and we go to start the big job today. OH ya you'll have to work alot of hours. But now theres many times I send my guys to do the work and I either try to relax, take a nap or Im calling writing & faxing Im lucky with the area Im in theres a ton of work, but unless you live in the back woods thers plenty of work out there, you just have to find it and let them know your here to do it GOOD LUCK and do it and do more!!!! Its out there you just have to make up your mind if you really want it. This goes for the guy who just wants to suppliment their income or wants it fulltime, one man operation or if you want a crew or 2. I love this biz and it shows to my customers Oh ya Ive been up since 4 am I worked on 2 proposals and faxed 15 PM's companies You all know Im not an expert on all this, but I work hard at it. I'll shut up now got to get ready for work:lgjump: Thank you everybody for your help and some of the nice comments JL JL

I love the PWing biz, best of luck to all

Hey guys need some help. We had some paint on aluminum fascia and trim just WASH AWAY this week. It looks horrible and its in several areas of 2 buildings. Let me explain and give you thoughts on why it happened and walk you through the whole mess and hear your thoughts We were washing 30+ townhome buildings, we had 27 washed and 2 out of the last 3 buildings we had major paint failure on the ALUMINUM trim. Also in two other little spots on two other buildings, small spots of paint washed away too. Of course the homeowners and at first the manager thought it was our fault. Hey I understand, we wash there buildings and rinse and paint just flows off. I have been going crazy with this trying to figure what happened and am pretty sure I know exactly what happened I want to know what some of you experts think and then ask what kind of paint I should use to fix this. Yes I know it wasnt our wash process of house wash mix that did this, but I am going to eat this one instead of telling them sorry, not my fault I bid this job in 2009 and also 2010, in 2009, I was told I lost the bid, because another contractor got the job and I asked the manager why he got it. The manager said the contractor sold the property on using hot water and a quality chemical to clean the property. So the other contractor washes the property in May 2009 The manager tells me in early 2010, that they had a lot of problems with the contractor and I asked her like what? The property has an irrigation system, but NO orange iron rust stains EVER showed on the siding, this contractor whatever he used to wash the buildings, when he applied it and was finished ORANGE RUST STAINS APPEARED on many many buildings at ground level where irrigation heads would get irrigation water on the siding. At the time I told the manager, I had never seen anything like that ever happen and I questioned her about it, she said she knows he used hot water and I asked her if he used bleach mix or something else, she said she thought something else but did not know what. I have since this all happened if she knew what he used, she doesn’t. Now these orange rust stains appear for him washing, so then he refuses to remove tham and says its not part of his contract, they tell him to remove them if he wants his money. He goes back and uses some kind of rust removal product or something and then he kills grass wherever he applys the rust remover and they freak again, so that’s that Now I am trying to figure why basically ONLY on 2 buildings out of 30+ we have this major paint failure. On our trucks, we have 12% and Dawn, then also powder form of Oxalic, NO oxalic was mixed up, no other chems were mixed in our mix, so I wonder if its maybe something wrong with our 12% we had got some new 12% the day prior and still had some older 12%. On these last 3 buildings, we were gangbanging them and 4 my employees were washing them to finish up, some were using newer 12% and some were using older( a few day old) 12%. Paint removed on the two buildings using old or new Now we had already in 2 days using ALL the SAME 12% with NO PROBLEMS, except one area the paint came off aluminum trim in a perfect circle and another area of about 10 inches, no big deal I have seen this happen for some reason in the past and we just spray painted the area Now these two messed up areas it’s a total of 10 units and it happened to about 5 – 10% of the Aluminum trim, many right at the entrance of each of the 10 units, most of the paint washing away was from a 8 foot section of trim that is under an entrance over hang, but it also was on a few areas of fascia aluminum also. It’s a flipping mess BACK TO the other contractor last year. Pretty sure he used something other than bleach, because of the orange iron stain APPEARING. I have talked to a few contractor and all have said maybe he used a Sodium hydroxite (sp) like a stripper or something like a gutter black streak remover. That got me thinking and asking questions. I know if I use (I think its Bobs F13 or F XX? the stuff to remove black streak from gutters) If I use that, in the past I have spilt a little on driveways and all of a sudden ORANGE iron stains appear on the concrete, just wherever its dripped on the concrete, so I now figure looking back, these houses driveways had irrigation spray on them and this product or similar products bring out the Orange on the concrete NOW why didn’t all the buildings trim paint wash away??????????. I figure he used a product and maybe just didn’t rinse these two buildings well or at all and this stuff sat there for a long time, breaking down the paint and when we come along, we aplly our house mix and then rinse, it just washes right off into a white liquid…ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGG WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK?????, something caused this, heck I could of made my 12% and Apple Blossom Dawn mix 2, 3, 4 times stronger and it still wouldn’t strip paint, heck it only stayed on 3-5 minutes before we rinsed. I know its not our mix, but how do you tell the homeowners this, they see us wash and the next thing they see there trim paint washed away. I have talked to the manager and a couple of the owners and I think I have them understanding but its still a mess I have to deal with We are going to take care of it and I am going there Monday to take a closer look and hopefully meet with more of the owners. I want them to know what I think happened and mostly know that it wasn’t us that caused this mess, its PRIOR DAMGE . I am sending one of my guys to this place next week for a few days to paint the crap. I want these owners to know ITS not us, this is my reputation here ANOTHER question, what the best paint to apply to bare aluminum??????????????, there is some paint left on in spots and its pretty tight. I just want to find the right and best product so we don’t have problems down the line later Sorry for the long post, but just need some professional input. I am going to write a letter and state what I know and think to the Manager & HOA, I want it on record and clear my name Thanks Life is good, but a pain at times too…LOL

Queensboro is selling these now, bleach doesn't touch them as long as you dont mind the safety orange or safety yellow color, not a single bleach stain on them

Sleeping, whats sleeping? I'm a nap kind of guy. 110 mph, got to get rich like you

400%, thats all? I want 1000% or I want them to ban themselves

Yup, thats what I heard, Jarrod was always interesting on the BB's, said it like it is Whats up Scott, hope all is rockin for you

Get some good pics. give you $10 if you get to touch her...........heart. What if she said you could kiss her, but had to give up your Xjet Ha Ha Life is good

LOL, enjoy your time with Cindy. She needs YOU

LOL LOL LOL Have fun man, I know you love her. She used to be my girl too

I freak out on my guys if they don't have a lot of cones out, wherever they are, even in a closed condo community. They are a lot better now, I think they got sick of me bit*hing them out. I have cones around trucks, whereever a hose crosses a walkway, I have them in communities if a hose is crossing a parking lot to slow cars down. Cones cones and more cones, it takes seconds to put out, but a bunch of bright orange cones will be noticed usually by all SAFETY FIRST FYI.....Hey I just got these really great safety caps, baseball caps. Safety Green/Yellow with reflective areas on the hats too, with company embroidered logo. They are bright. Queensboro has them, I think they are a great addition to the safety factor, all my guys now where them and my foremen where the orange ones Really you might all want to check them out on the Queensboro site Hats and Visors scroll down and you will see the caps. I bought 30 of them. Something GREAT about them, BLEACH DOES NOT EAT THEM UP, how cool is that. Check it out. NO bleach stains on hat and logo looks great. Great for under $10, they had a sale and they were like $7.97

Glad you are alright Stupid people

April is over (Best month ever, Bring on May, I'm ready to make it even batter than April YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, rock and roll

Cool Larry Every once in a while I am hoping for heavy rain and lightning so my guys can get a break, but then if we take one day off now, we are screwed, just have jobs packed together Glad you are getting all the work

Hey hows the Seminar going? I would of liked to see the sales coach. Way to go Mike K

Been on the BB's for years and historically it seems August is slow for many pressure washing contractors. It gets slow for us in August every year too. So far every month this year we have done better than last year, we have been booked solid all of March, April and May is insane and June is pretty much packed, got some July & August jobs already

Surprising, by the poll 50% dont have Comp, I thought it would be much lower.

I'm covered in many states, but some of the large management companies ask for extra things to be listed, endorsements, waivers etc etc and it gets to be a PITA sometimes and has cost me more $$$ to add & meet their requirements, its all over the place sometimes for comp & GL when dealing with the big regional or nation wide companies. Just when you think you have every possible addition to your policies, you get a call from a different management company and they want something extra, argggggggg. Just part of doing biz, but man 9-15 pages of stuff just for insurance coverage. One job I probably got close to 35 pages of stuff before it was finally a signed contract. Is it worth it? Sure, but sometimes its just overboard. Forget what I had to go through for having coverage working up to 20 stories high It was funny I have coverage to hang off the side of a flipping 20 story highrise building on swing stage, but had to fight, kick & scream to get the right coverage to clean two story roofs, go figure I believe in being covered, a few hundred $$$ here, a couple thousand $$$ there, extra, to make sure I am covered, its worth it, better than doing a job and hope nothing goes bad. Not worth getting sued and possibly losing my company and more for one job Got to love insurance companies LOL