Mike Williamson

You have 25 crews running???

Another good one that never seems to get suggested here by some is www.rowlettpressure.com Steve is always willing to take the time to help someone out, and his chems are hard to beat.

The other part of it is that a lot of commercial flatwork is night work, and I'm one who wants to be home with my family at night.

That's great for the schedule, but gets pretty dang boring for the guy doing the cleaning! I thank my pressure washing God for a widely diverse range of work...you never know what's going to come up.

A cat pump is more expensive, that't true. Whether it's better is likely something that will never be settled... If what you're looking at is a direct drive machine, just go down to Home Depot and get one of theirs...no shipping to pay, likely cheaper, and not any less reliable than any other direct drive machine. Or, you can spend the money for a higher gpm belt driven machine. That may get you some more life out of the pump, and will allow you to more easily set it up on a tank fed system. Personally, if I were going to get a 4gpm machine, I'd forget the belt drive...You're going to spend another $2-300.00 for it, you'll pay shipping (as opposed to getting a direct drive Home Depot unit), and all you're getting is a machine that runs the pump slower and sucks water better. The motor isn't going to last any longer (provided they're similar motors)...It doesn't care if its crankshaft is turning a belt or a direct drive....It is still running at the same speed, etc. A belt drive isn't going to clean better, and at best, you'll have a pump that lasts a bit longer...But with the $2-$300.00 you'd save with a direct drive machine, you can buy a new pump if yours craps out.

Says the guy from Phoenix...yeah, the winters are BRUTAL there. :rolleyes: Just kidding...I have no room to talk...I have no winter here either. There's ALWAYS something to do, as Ron says...

I was watching the NYC news last night (we have Direct TV and our networks are out of NYC and LA) and they had two different people from N.O. griping about how sick they were of how they were being treated. Both people were living for free in a relatively nice hotel in NYC (one was a Sheraton). The first guy was griping about how they hotel was only paid for another 3 weeks, and that the hotel had turned off the long distance on the phones, so now he had to go get a phone card to make LD calls. The 2nd guy was griping about how he was sick of eating the same old thing every day...TV dinners and rolls. Rather than thanking God they were alive, thanking the hotel or whoever was paying for the hotel, thanking the providers of the food, they were bitching about how they were being mistreated.

Based on the pictures you posted, I don't see the gutters being bad...there aren't any trees near the building that would drop leaves onto the roof, so they should be easy to clean. What was the reason you found you needed a lift?

Let me know how it works out for you. I'd be interested in giving it a shot if it works better.

You're over-using the citracleen, but if it works for you, great! should be 3/4 gallon per 5 of mix...so 15 gallons should have 2.25 gallons of citracleen. I don't even use that much and get great results.

The most I use for a 1 story 2500sf house would be 5 gallons...if that. I can't imagine using 30 gallons of mix on any house...That'd have to be a HUGE monster of a house...if you're Xjetting, that's 6 buckets of mix! At most I'd use 15 gallons on that 4000 sf, but doubtful because of the vinyl.

Here's our new addition, born Sept 13th at 5:10pm, 6lb 5.5oz, 19" long. His name is Michael Thomas. We took him home from the hospital Thursday. Most of you weren't aware that we have been in the process of adopting Michael since his birth mom contacted us in April. Isn't he cute!!!

Yep, that'd be the one...Citracleen is the soap I use, and am very happy with the performance. There are several other additives that Steve carries that I like, such as the wet wax, foamer, and the rinse aid (great for spot-free windows). The only other chemical he has that I've used is the concrete cleaner, and that works great too.

Yes, you can mix R109 with pool chlorine, I did it plenty of times myself before I found better soaps. You can also look on Delco's website http://www.dcs1.com/del/chemguid.html

I was having this exact same thought the other day...though my irrational fear is of bees/wasps/hornets. I'm not crazy about spiders, but if you want to see me putting out invisible flames on myself, let a few paper wasps start flying around me. I'll sit there and calmly pet a huge dog, an animal that could literally kill me in a matter of seconds, but let a relatively harmless bug fly anywhere near me, and I act as if I'm about to die. I've almost run OFF of roofs more than once because of this nutty reaction.

I get about the same on a tank of gas, but it's a 33 gallon tank. :eek:

Just don't drink when you take them...Some know-nothing fool might suggest that they are exacerbating your problems. :rolleyes:

$100.00 to fill up the new 2005 Dodge two days ago....At least it's only 1 of 2 for me each week. Luckily, I live in a pretty centralized area, there aren't a lot of jobs where I have to drive more than a few miles to quote, and usually I can do those when I'm in the area.

There is no chemical flow through the pump using a downstreamer. I use SS fittings on all my connections, and haven't had any problems with shortened life spans. The chem gets rinsed from the system when I rinse whatever I'm washing, so it isn't in there all that long to begin with. The only problem I have with my M5 (and this has happened on both that I've owned) is that the clip that holds the black adjustment knob winds up falling out, and once it comes out, it will not stay in. I've replaced it with a piece of bare 12 guage copper wire, and that seems to work. Other than that, it's a great tool, but certainly isn't the best or only tool for every job. For most housewashing, downstreaming is faster and much easier (for me, at least). For those things that require a higher concentration of chlorine, the Xjet delivers.

That's a small one. Bananna spiders get pretty big, and as Scott pointed out, there's nothing like walking into a huge bananna spider web...Especially when you're walking a 2 story roof with low overhanging branches...

Could you be more specific?

www.rowlettpressure.com Call and talk to Steve for more info about his chems.

Amen! Some contractors don't seem to get that...As if we're doing a huge favor for the customer by showing up with our new shiny rig and washing the mold off their house.... Yes, it does take a certain amount of income to operate a company profitably, but that number is different for every company.

Nope, because they haven't lost "everything". They've lost the few crappy things they had, and they'll just get more with the coming government handouts. You can't imagine the number of apartments we used to encounter (in my prior life in low income property management) where the people just moved out, leaving their funiture, many belongings, etc. It meant nothing to them, and if you gave them all new stuff, it would be crap in a pretty short time. You can't compare yourself to them, you already had an appreciation for what you had, because YOU worked for it. YOU sacrificed time and sweat to get what you have, and seeing others lose what they have gives you an appreciation for what you have. I'm not saying everyone on assistance is this way, or that every poor person doesn't appreciate what little they have....but it is certainly a very common trait among the poor, and much of the reason they are, and remain, poor.

If the same people move back in after they rebuild, it will become a ****hole again pretty quick. Ever drive through one of those new "low-income" housing projects they build, a year or two after everyone moves in? They're typically ****holes. In my opinion, if they rebuild it and those same folks move back in, they'd better not ask for help again if a cat5 hits there again.