CCPC

thanks Neil, that helps answer a few questions.

Clay Co. Pressure Cleaning, Inc - 904-535-4590 - Lance Powell States: FL Counties: Clay and Duval Cities: Orange Park, Jacksonville, Middleburg, Green Cove Springs, Ponte Vedra

Can a flow type unloader be installed on any machine? How do they hold up compared to a pressure accuated unloader? Can you still route your bypass line into a water tank? Thanks for any info. I've thought about switching to one, but had questions and didn't get around to finding the answers.

Gutter Shock

I would pass. First off, I think the guy under estimated his bid. $100 per house and driveway for a 2,700 sq's and average driveway is low. It would be difficult to offer a bid of the drives that will be fair for you with what he's getting per. Your 1,300 averages out to $17.80 a driveway, and that's just not enough. From your post, it seems you don't own a surface cleaner, which would make things even worse because the limited experience would hender your time even more. Even if you managed to do 10 to 15 drives a day, that's a long day for only a couple a hundred dollars.

This is kinda odd, but I had problems with carpal tunnel for a number of months about a year ago. I consulted my mother (she's like a medical journal), and she warned that it was probably early stages of carpel tunnel, and that usually it doesn't get better, or go away without surgery. I said damn!! (but not out loud, that would be disrespectful). She recommended that I try wearing a wrist brace that keeps your wrist from moving, which allows the carpal tunnel to weaken it's inflammation, so I started waring the brace in the evenings and when I slept, and within a month or so, the tingling and numbness stopped and hasn't returned since. It was bad there for a while. Like Philip stated, my hand would sometimes numb up and tingle just from holding a cell phone or while steering a car. Anyone with carpal tunnel, I would highly recommend picking up on of these wrist braces from a local pharmacy. They work great.

Captian Chaos. Quick quiz, anyone remember what movie?

Pinch-A-Penny

I fill straight to a 100g tank and a 30g drum. How much just depends on what I've got lined up. I never fill the 100g tank more than half full because it's my roof cleaning tank and I dillute it.

.......:rolleyes:.........

I'm not. My chlorine doesn't come with labels. I simply back up behind P-A-P run the hose to my tanks and fill er up.

This has been my experience as well. I prefer the hover style when it comes to surface cleaners that are 20" or smaller. They seem to be much more versatile when cleaning tight areas, and you can easily tilt them to cut in around where concrete meets grass and what not. They don't seem labor intesive to me, once the machine is spinning the weight is lifted (hence the term hover style), and it practiclly moves itself.

I know you asked Ken, but I'm going to through my reasons out there. The really wealthy sometimes tend to be the cheapest out of all the classes, and they tend to be some of the most difficult to please. It's happened to me to many times to overlook anymore. They usually also tend to be the most belittling to you and your trade, and act as if it doesn't merit a decent wage. This is why I prefer upper middle class client el, because most of them know what its like to work for a living, but yet they still have expendable income to afford my services. They usually tend to be more respectful of me and what I do. At least this is how I see it.

Tropical Wave who?? Never heard of em. Just kiddin, nice to see back on the bbs!

It sounds like she took it well, until you get a call from her lawyer in a couple of days. :lgtear: Just kidding. Some people are opportunists, but most are genuinely honest and moral.

Thanks for the info Jeff. But I do have one question, whenever I have removed the whole black thing off the end of a broken m-5, I've always had to break it off. It doesn't seem to unscrew or anything, it seems to be like it's actually fabricated around the end. How do you replace it? is it a different than the original piece that must be broken off? Thanks.

Most chemicals that will be affective at cleaning what you metioned above, will have potential negative effects on landscaping, the trick is learning how to use these chemicals in the proper manor, thereby drasticaly reducing the risks. You know, to do this (pressure washing) profesionally, and to achieve professional results, it's a must to learn chemicals and how to use them properly. There's mounds of subject matter regarding chemicals and their various uses in previous threads on this bbs. I would start by spending as much time as you have available to read previous threads, and if you are unclear about somthing in a previous thread by all means bring it back up to the surface for clarification. Hope this helps, and good luck.

This is great advice (not like the rest wasn't either, but this is worked very well for me. If you specificaly target even just a few small communities that you feel is a prime market for your services, and hit em' real hard, the rest will fall into place. I started with 3 target communities (all gated comm., eliminates some of the lowballer, flyer competition), each of these three comm. averaging maybe 600-800 homes. I mailed out to these areas about 4 or 5 times a year for two years now, and I now am the primary guy in all three comm. I have streets where 90% of the homes are my customers, and everytime I go in there, I seem to pick up a few more. A lot of these people say they called me because they've seen my truck in there so often, that I was the first one they thought of (not to mention all the referals). Anyway, now that I've got this established, I'm getting a lot of referal calls from others outside of these comm., and the great thing is, usually these callers fit the same demographic as the customer who refered them. It's a great method for developing a solid customer base, while limiting the amount of undesirable work, and price shopping prospects.

I've had the same failure problem on all three of my M-5's, the little plasitic pieces that squeeze the metal tabs together get weak and eventually break off. To me, it's a flaw in the design, and should be looked into by X-terrior.

I usually downstream my house wash over the concrete, clean with surface cleaner, rinse clean, and then apply a thin layer of 50/50 to straight chlorine to the concrete via a pump up while it's still damp, then leave last thin coat of chlorine to dry and nuetrilize on it's own. This is for standard Florida dirt, mildew, algea, mold removal. For rust or grease there's a few more steps involved.

A #16 orifice will not create more pressure than a smaller orifice (#13). Think about what you're saying, when it comes to regular tips, which creates more pressure 4016 or 4013?

I know what you mean. It seems like everytime I upgrade my equipment, within a few months I need to upgrade again. I just hate ineffeciency, so any thing I can add to speed up my processes without sacrificing quality is hard to avoid.

I'm confused. I'm not sure what those #'s represent, but all I know is that the pressure I experienced with the #16 was far less than with the #13. {where's the smiley face for I've been out partying all night, and feeling pretty good}

I use a #16 with my 5.6 gpm machine, and it works beautifully. I changed to the #16 to help decrease the amount of mist and over spray that I seemed to get when I switched from a 4gpm machine to a 5.6 gpm machine, using a #13. It seems to apply chem just as high. Pressure wasn't a real issue because I rarely rinsed with it anyway, I would either use an extension, or 00?? something or other, depending on the height.

Experimental roof wand refined. bought some different plumbing and decreased the weight to about 4 ounces. I used all nylon fittings on this one, and I also found that adjusting the tips with a slight angle (top side tips a little inward, like an up side down V) seems to cover a little better.