RyanH

Great! Thanks for the backup.

South Park. I love their social commentary and acerbic way of portraying it.

I have a pair of Red Wings I wear on my current job....can be up to 15 hours walking around and standing on concrete. They feel better (once they're broken in) than my Nikes. Not water proof but perhaps you can do the mink oil that Alan mentioned. I think they had a pair of waterproofed versions, too. Paid about $180 for them.

I think I pay $99 per year for iPowerWeb.com 2 gigs storage, some huge number of bandwidth per day, detailed reports (who visited from where, which pages received the most attention, the order the pages were clicked through, number of visitors in given periods, etc.). A bunch of plugins (shopping carts, a handful of scripts for chats, blogs, php, and a bunch of other stuff I don't understand), multiple email accounts and access, etc. I basically use it for file sharing with friends and family but have never had a problem.

It's really strange when a customer asks you to lower your bid to match a competitors. It tells me that they aren't buying based upon price alone but that they recognize your abilities (either through the way you presented yourself, your knowledge, etc.) as being of some value. It's a shame that their brain recognizes that type of value but their wallets (or spouse??) won't allow them to act upon it. Perhaps you can work that into the callbacks when they ask you to lower your price to match: C: "I got a bid from one of your competitors and it's lower than yours. Do you think you could match his price?" You: "The fact that you didn't go with him immediately tells me that you instinctively believe that there is more to what you consider "value" than simply a cost. My guess is that you recognized that he wasn't entirely committed to quality and lacked the experience I have and would not perform as well. Either that or you believe that there is great price flexibility in this industry. I can assure you that my prices are based upon a real business model and are not whimsical...I won't make money if I do it for lower than my original bid." C: .....I don't know, I can't predict what the average customer will say here. Usually the ones I had would laugh and say "Okay, come on out."

I received a call from a past customer over the weekend in Palmetto GA. I'm not going to have time to handle it anytime soon so if anyone wants it let me know and I'll pass along your contact info. Some details (from my foggy memory): Single level ranch style, all vinyl, low gutters, no need for a ladder unless you want to monkey on the roof. Not too many windows, full carport (or breezeway as some call it). Took me about 1.5 - 2 hours to do it last time with the Xjet and I think I charged around $175 or $200. She's trying to get the thing ready to sell or something like that so you may be able to upsell a roof and driveway cleaning. Driveway is pretty small (50' x 10' I think). I haven't mentioned price to her. Palmetto is located in Fulton County, GA about midway between Newnan and Hartsfield airport and is close to I-85.

Glad it worked out for you.

Congrats and good luck. We built our house the first part of this year. The next one I build however will have 6" studs on all outer walls to accomodate more insulation. Some other things you may want to either contract or specify is airflow to your rooms. We've noticed that it is common practice here to allow as much as a 20 degree temperature difference in rooms in houses with central air conditioning. See if you can talk to the contractor for that and work something out to get balanced air flow into your rooms. Learn from our mistakes......

I passed on the info from those who responded. She appreciated my help and hopefully will be in contact with you guys.

One of my janitorial places has a pretty big area of concrete they want to seal. They know and trust me to be in the plant while they are closed down...that's why they are asking if I'd be interested as opposed to a third party contractor. My initial guess on size is around 2500 square feet. My question for you guys is..... Can concrete sealer be sprayed on with my shurflo (12vdc, not ac)? And then perhaps rolled out to even it? I've see it rolled on from a bucket and that works okay but seems to take forever. I've also thought about dumping a glob onto the floor and spreading with a big squeegee and doing it in sections. Any input? The stuff doesn't seem to be too goopy and has a viscosity somewhere between water and lite maple syrup (the runny kind). Just wondering if it's even worth it to try or the time savings is negligible. Thanks, Ryan H.

I contacted one of the people from the plant last night. He said that the stuff is wearing out and looking rough. Big surprise.

I don't remember the type of polymer they ended up choosing. I know it cost about $20/gal but beyond that I can't recall anything else. I was there for about another month after I put it down and it was already showing signs of degradation from forklift traffic and pallets being pushed around. It wasn't good stuff at all and I told them that it would be a bad investment. Oh well. Most managers don't think about investing for the future, they only consider the cost of the present. The really good stuff I tried to convince them to use is made by Benjamin Moore. Anyway, I'm out of that business now and don't worry about it any longer.

One more... Projection TV Ratings.pdf

Some Consumer Reports data..... Front Projector.pdf Lcd tvs.pdf Plasma TV Ratings.pdf

I will be watching my favorite movie war time, "To Hell and Back" with Audie Murphy and thanking our nation's second greatest generation. You won't see any of the candy-assed Hollywood crowd make movies like that ever again. Then I'll call my granddad and thank him and plan another fishing trip for a few weeks from now. I won't be fishing of course....I'll be sitting in the boat with an empty hook in the water like I've done since I was 2 and just enjoy his company and presence. And thanks to those who serve and their families. I have more respect and admiration for you than any other group of people in the world.

I used the Zep brand grout cleaner from HD on one of my accounts regularly and it worked very well. I cleaned the bathroom tile grout every 3 weeks and it always looked clean. Just apply a thin line of cleaner along the grout line, clean in a 3'x3' tile area at a time and wipe down the tile after each pass, use a brush to scrub between the lines, mop 3 or 4 times with clean water and a sponge mop when finished.

No, I'm not jealous at all. I'm just sick of this litigious society we've become and how quick people are to want to sue. When the guy claims that "it isn't Home Depot's fault" but wants to sue because he was embarassed or because they laughed at him, I just don't understand how you justify a lawsuit with the intent on getting money out of it. Some other things I don't understand why people think they are entitled to sue: Getting injured on my property while they are trespassing. I'm currently installing my own irrigation system and I have trenches dug across the yard. I had to stand outside on Halloween so some dumba$$ kid wouldn't walk across the yard (instead of using the driveway) and get injured. Getting burned by hot coffee when you drink the same coffee everyday and realize that hey, it's hot! Then for some reason one day you spill it on yourself and now it's the restaurants fault that you were careless. Be responsible! Seeing a wet floor sign in a store and choosing to ignore it and walk through and fall anyway. Who's fault is that? Certainly can't blame the poor shopper because that just wouldn't make sense. Anyway, you get my point. People's flippant tendencies to sue and get money for nothing has made our society so politically correct and added so much liability to companies' operations that it just makes me sick.

Here's another one..... Most people will notice see this picture and notice the blue trash can on the side. Keep staring and you will notice the tower in the background. Oh, you didn't notice any of those? Amazing what kind of [useless] info our brains filter out on a daily basis, isn't it?

"Left there to rot" ??? wtf?? These whiny crybabies really **** me off. This man acts like the rest of his life will be ruined by this incident. Honestly, who can put a monetary value on his embarrassment? Instead of being so quick to file a lawsuit he should have asked to see the security video. Glue dries fairly quickly so they should have a pretty good idea from the videos of who did it. The whole bypass surgery thing was thrown in there as a red herring for sympathy. This man should be slapped, not rewarded, for being so quick to sue. :soapbox:

Oh yeah, a remote control *cleaner*. Guess I didn't read it Van :) Well, if you can get access to the top of the building, I can imagine a unit with a bank of nozzles perpindicular to the building. It would have four wheels (for contact against the building), a counterweight balance (adjustable length via a screw or plug design), an arm branch for your nozzles, and a QC tip to connect to your hose. It would have a cable (or rope) tied at two ends on the top (for balance) and the rope would extend upwards to the top of the building and connect to a motor/pulley setup. Motor will be on a timed basis and you can either use a frequency control VFD (a little pricey) or a gear reducer. The motor will mount on a platform with another motor connected to wheels to allow the entire contraption to move laterally along the wall. The counterbalance lever/arm is there to balance the force on the cleaning unit. As the nozzles are blasting water onto the building, you get a thrust force that will want to push the unit away from the building. The counterbalance lever is there to provide a vector force back onto the outside of the unit. It is angled upwards so as to keep the bottom of the unit (and wheels) contacting the wall. It needs to be adjustable to you can adjust for the different pressures you will be putting through your unit (higher pressure = higher thrust = more force required to keep it against the building.....having a longer distance between your weight and your unit will increase the force / torque at that point). You will also need to have your hose on a reel with slight resistance (torsion spring) to feed to the unit. The spring will also assist the hose back up as the unit returns to the top of the building. Do you want this fully automated or do you want to babysit it? If you want to babysit it it will be very easy to set all of this up. If I get a chance over the weekend I'll throw together a model with the parts you'll need and dimensions. One begs the question though....how will you get the machine and stuff to the top of the building? Is this just so you don't have to rappel or constantly move the rig up and down the wall? Oohhh! Now I'm thinking in reverse....if you had your ropes fixed at the top of the wall/building with a good clamping system, you could use a tension system on your washing unit to pull itself up the wall so you won't have to haul all of that stuff up to the top. That wouldn't be very robust though for every building.

About the best you can expect under good conditions with a draw-only system is about a 32 foot vertical rise. Factor in your hose length, number of turns, and any pressure drop you may encounter at the nozzle and the final number can be much less. Also, the closer you get to that 32 ft. value in height the less flow you will get. If you were going to consistently be working at heights above 10 - 15 ft (wand height from your chem source) with hose lengths over about 50 ft I would invest in a shurflo setup to supplement or replace your Xjet as it will save you lots of time.

look into the remote starters for cars. they are simple and can be installed quickly.

....And then there was the story of the little old lady who was adamant that all I needed was to put TSP in water and spray her house, because bleach was just too harsh. She claimed it would clean paint and glass. She said she'd do it herself if she could get up on a ladder (she couldn't climb a ladder if Jesus Christ Himself was holding her hand). I walked her over to my truck and showed her on my window what happens when TSP comes into contact with glass and told her that there was no way I would take that kind of liability.

Fill it up with gas, roll down the windows, and leave the car running with the blower on full power (outside of course). Febreeze works pretty well on vehicle interior. You could also get an ozone generator and use it in the car....it works very well for eliminating odors.

Lou, judging by your pics I would say that your most difficult portion of that house will be the stretch of gutters that runs over the garage area (mainly because you'll have to attack it from an angle) and fighting the bushes to get close to the windows. Go with the butyl on the gutters (rinsing windows IMMEDIATELY after application) and hose those off and the gutters will brighten up easily. Vinyl is so easy don't even consider it an issue. Hose it down with Xjet and let the bleach do the work while you apply butyl to the gutters. For that house (relatively simple geometry and accessible layout), I would charge around $350 - $375. It would include brushing washing all window sills with a brush (they would have to loosen the screens on the windows) and cleaning the gutters/siding. Deck would be rinsed but nothing beyond that. Driveways are usually cheap when I can charge premiums on the house, so if the drive is no more than 12 - 15 feet across and 50 feet long, I'd probably throw it in for $50. Total time to pull up, unload, clean, and pack everything would be about 4-5 hours. The biggest consumer of time is removing/replacing the screens. This would be non-negotiable on my part because I don't like leaving streaks under the screens after giving the siding a rinse. If you are confident with your cleaning technique, don't let a customer dictate parts to clean and parts to ignore. Kind of dumb for a customer to to say they only want the gutters cleaned but not the 1000 square feet of brick siding and glass below it that is going to catch all of that cleaner and grime. Sheesh!