CCPC

Wow!! That's a lot of NY'ers considering the world population is under 10 billion. LOL!!

Call Keith

Say good night to that crack head. Of course they'll just be another one to take his place, but all the same, it put a smile on my face. Lets not forget how among other things, this sick ******* personally beheaded some of our own, on video no less. see ya!! feed the earth worms @#%$#@%!!!!

Good post Dave. Hopefully people will get the message. I swear, if I do one more estimate and here from the homeowner how the last guy blew the seals on the windows, or killed a bunch of plants, I'm gonna scream!! For god sakes people, learn what your doing before selling your services!!!!! All right, I feel better.

Maybe you could. The way I did it was just because it was the cheapest way while using a lot of parts already on hand. In reality, controlling a valve with a motor is not anywhere near the best way to do it. The best way would be to buy a chemical resistant solenoid valve like charles has and find a transmitter and receiver kit that would be compatible with it, but whichever way you go, your probably going to want it 12v.

Charles, I think you may have misunderstood what my valve is for. It's for controling a ball valve that stops the flow of my chem draw hose for my injector. I'm not having any chem draw issues, I only keep 200' on the reel becuase 9 times out of 10, it gives me plenty of length. In the rare occasions that I need more hose length, I carry back up hose (usually only 50-100'). Just curious why you need that much hose on the reel anyways? Can't you just keep 250' on the reel and hold another hundered as back up? Anyway, I believe Dave is on the right track. The 1/2" hose will allow for less back pressure on the injector which could allow you to downstream with 350', but I've heard from others that using 1/2" hose can be quite a pain in a** because of the extra weight and what not. Did you try going with a smaller injector yet? This will allow you draw a stronger chem solution, as well as allow you to draw with more hose. I think you might want to try that first. Go with an injector that's one size to small for your machines rated GPM. I use a rated 3-5 gpm injector with my 5.6 gpm machine and I get great draw with 250-300 feet (just be sure to disconnect it anytime your not downstreaming). Give me a call over the weekend, I'll talk your ear off LOL!!

I had a customer who was adamant about having good weather when I cleaned here driveway. I told her that the rain wasn't an issue for me, but she couldn't be persuaded. Oh well, I guess you give the customer what they want. The only time I take cover is if the weather brings in a lot of lightening. I'm a little scared of lightening. I was on a roof Monday when a nasty storm came through. I had to hurry and finish applying my chem to the section I was in the middle of cleaning. It started to lightening, and I was on the ground in about 45 seconds. I love when I'm cleaning a roof and right after I finish applying my chemical, a huge ground soaker comes rolling through. Saves me about an hour and a half of rinsing time.

If you carry a permanent odor of bleach (working of not) you just might be.

Good question. permanent magnet motors can easily be driven in both directions by changing the polarity. Basically, if you take a motor and hook it to a battery, if you connect the wires one way to the battery it will go in one direction, and if you switch them, it will turn in the opposite direction. We used common automotive relays to accomplish the polarity changes.

I'm not sure if US Plastic ships to your local, but they have just about every kind of plastic fitting you could ever want. Check em out.

Hey Charles, Nice to see another local. About the downstreaming, you will probably never be able to draw chems with that much hose, too much back pressure. If you reduce your hose length to 250'- 300' and use a down streamer that's one size smaller than recommended for your machine, you will not only be able to draw, but you will drastically be able to increase your chem draw rate. If your insistent on keeping the 350 on the reel, you might want to look into an M-5 X-jet.

Every time a meet a real D**k, I can't help but to feel sorry for the wife and family that has to deal with him on a daily basis.

I'm sure I remember hearing that up north that the yellow pages actually have a separate category listing for wood restoration? Not sure if this is true or not. Around here, most people just call a painter or any old pressure washing outfit too restore their deck, and man, I haven't seen anyones wood work around here that's worth a crap. The sad thing is that the customers don't know any better, and they think it looks great. My parents live on a small lake with townhouses surrounding it, and I just recently striped my parents neighbors small dock and compared to the others it looks like a diamond in the rough. I did have a bit of interest from other neighbors after they saw my work, but I turned down any opportunities to bid on others. There's just no money in it here. Oh, and my parents neighbors who I did the work for were originally from up north as well.

Funny you should mention that, out of the few wood jobs I've done, my most profitable deck was for a lady who moved down here from up north. In general though, I don't see much difference between the northerners and southerners. Actually, there's a gated community near by that I do a lot of work in that has a large population of retired folks from up north, and they tend to be some of the cheapest customers I bid jobs for. Most of them aren't wealthy by any means they simply moved down here to get more house for less money, but nothing wrong with that. I had a pretty nasty experience with one of these folks that really burned my a**. She basically, in so many words, accused me of trying to take advantage of her because she was from up north. I gave here a quote to clean her house and driveway. The whole time we walking the property she was ranting about how the last guy had killed a whole row of shrubs while cleaning the roof, and how another guy left streak marks all over here screened Porch and had destroyed here ceiling fan on the porch. I submitted the bid, and she said she wanted to think about it and talk to here husband. Meanwhile, I get call from her several hours later where she informed me that she called around to a few other companies and was quoted (over the phone) a price that was almost half what I quoted (low ball competition). I explained to her the possible differences in what I'm offering compared to much of my competition blah, blah, blah, but it was in one ear, out the other. All this idiot could comprehend was price. I really wanted to bring up all the things that she said the last companies destroyed, and tell here that's what you get for half priced services, but I just didn't think about it while on the phone with her. While on the phone with her, she said something along these lines: "That price seems too high, I seems like a lot of you contractors come in here and raise rates because you think we all have a lot of money, but most of us are just northerners who moved down here too retire. It seems like a lot of you guys are trying take advantage of us".

Agreed. That company has been creating quite a reputation for extremly poor customer service, and cheap parts.

I'm looking into another surface cleaner and was thinking about looking into a Big Guy, but after reading some of the posts I'm second guessing whether my machine will give it adequate power to operate effectively. My machine is a 5.6gpm 3,500 psi. Anyone else run one with these spec's? Will the be sufficient? If not, I might just go with another 20" model, probably the Classic seems to receive some really good feedback. I don't want another cheapy, 2 driveway life span model (GP). One more thing, looking at the design of the Big Guy, I'm wondering what its maneuverability is like. With my hover rotoblaster, I can go forward, move it sideways, and then go back wards. How does this one handle this kind of maneuverability?

Sounds good Ken, but when you realize that most aren't willing to pay more than a couple of hundred for a clean and stain, you'll probably be on the first plane back to PA.

Religions have been present ever since mankind developed the ability to reason. After evolving into intelligent animals, yet still driven by our innate animal instincts of survival at all costs, humans had to reason out acceptable explanations of death to achieve peace in life. Not knowing exactly what goes through the mind of other animals, but one thing is clear; survival is the most important thing. Humans are probably the only animals on the planet that have knowledge of death very early on in life. Fear of non existence is what drives faith in an after life. It’s not our fault. It’s just the intelligent human mind using abstract thinking to reason out an acceptable outcome from the thought of something so unbearable.

It's pretty common that a surface cleaner will not remove tough black mold. When cleaning concrete with that kind of build up, the surface cleaner may only take up maybe 80% of the build up. The best thing to do with situations with that much build up is to clean with surfacer, rinse with wand then apply a thin layer of a strong concentration of chlorine to the concrete while damp, let dwell, and watch the rest of the black mold disappear.

I've worried about being taken advantage of by would be customers. They call you out to clean the roof with full knowledge of roof problems, then come back and use you as their ticket to free roof repairs. This doesn't sound like that kind of situation, but still somthing to be weary of. I try and take pictures of any existing roof flaws or damage that I come across on top of the roof, but obviously its not realistic to ask permission to take a walk through the house, or attic to look for existing problems.

Yep, insurance companies will spend a quarter to try avoid paying out a dime.

Maybe I'll look into having it replaced, but the problem is I bought it almost a year ago as a back up. Yesterday and today was the first time I've used it since then (besides a 3 minute trial run). Oh well, when some, loss some. Actually, I don't really care that much, I actually started laughing when it started to malfunction and imediately thought about this thread. P.S. three house washes? try 6-8 :banana:

what site?

Well, eat s*** General Pump!!! As a stated some time ago, I had bought one of the General pump surface cleaners as a back up for my work horse Rotoblaster. Because my work horse is finally starting to get a little flakey (after 3 years of dedicated service, bless it's little heart), I started using the GP surfacer yesterday. I cleaned a driveway with it yesterday and got about 10 minutes into another job today and the thing went to crap. So, I guess it is a piece of crap just like everyone else stated above. Lesson learned, just like a preach to my customers quality comes at a premium. Actually, I never expected it to be a champ like my old friend "Rotoblaster", but 1 driveway?

Your customer was right, but that's not the only reason. If you use pressure on thermapane windows, and you blow the seal, the windows can fog and also allow all kinds of funky stuff to grow inbetween the panes. NEVER USE ANY PRESSURE ON DOUBLE PANE WINDOWS. That wasn't for you, but rather anyone who might not know better.