tonyshelton

Mike, as an administrator on *** I'd like to request that you point out any personal attacks you received on that board so that they can be addressed on the board. If you have made a mistake and there are no personal attacks to point out I'd like to ask for a public retraction from you an BOD exonerating ***. (Since you made it very clear that the BOD was in complete approval of this post. Whatever personal issues you have between yourself and any individuals at *** are your own issues and certainly have no place in an organization purporting to declare a "clear voice" for our industry. You guys didn't have much of a voice at all before you returned to the boards and if you think returning to the boards now means that the entire industry will blindly agree with every agenda the org puts forth without vigorous discussion, then maybe you were right in the first place staying behind the scenes and being a stagnant voice among yourselves. I hope you guys aren't returning to the failed methods of the past.

This what has happened to mine in the past when left in a humid garage with a swamp cooler in it.

Congratulations!

There are only 4 more days before the deadline to get in suggestions regarding the PWNA's proposed BMP's. If you guys don't participate, you get what you deserve and have nobody to blame but yourselves. I plan to send off my fax to the PWNA prior to the deadline. The purpose of this post was to get some ideas of what we, as an industry want. And participation was virtually non-existent. I know I write long posts, and I've tried to narrow it down. Here is what I think we need as an industry from the PWNA. 1) Refrain from writing anything that can be construed as "guidelines" for municipalities. 2) Go ahead and "certify" your members if you want. I have "********** Certified" contractors. Just like there are "Maytag" certified repairmen and various other trade named certifications. Our certification means the contractor has been trained in our way of doing business. Just don't refer to BMP's or "CWA" or anything else that sounds official. You don't have enough members to withstand the furor that will happen if you do it. 3) LEARN the CWA and it's limitations if you are going to teach anybody about it. If you still think "nothing down the drain but rain" is what the CWA says, then you have no business teaching anything about it. Things are changing too. The EPA is short on money right now. North Dakota is drafting a law declaring the EPA has no jurisdiction in North Dakota. We must not move too fast on this. We may find that we played our hand too early. Manufacturers have been claiming that their equipment will be required in the next year and have been doing so for the past ten years. We need to take the offensive stance and see what is REALLY coming around the bend. 4) FIGHT for the contractors in LOCAL settings. Use any money you would have used to promote your "BMP's" to fly somebody to each location where a problem is rearing it's ugly head. Do it early, before the city councils have made up their minds. 5) FIGHT for the industry with a printed, youtube, facebook etc campaign that shows us as the SOLUTION instead of the problem. Stop acting like we are environmental criminals that need a leash to work. Those are my suggestions for the proposed BMP's. Of course this is just my opinion and you are free to tell me to shove it. I just can't support any certification or BMP's that appear official and sit out like an apple on your website for local jurisdictions to pick. There's also no reason to give them ideas for reasons to put more restrictions on us than already exist on a federal level. WE ARE THE SOLUTION. That's your answer for this industry. Sing it, Play it, Show it, Whistle it, whatever you have to do, but get the word out. That would be a much better service to the industry than making BMP's that were initially made with fleet washing in mind accepted as the BEST practice in every jurisdiction and every type of cleaning. These are my suggestions to the PWNA. Anyone else?

If the PWNA or anybody is going to certify anyone they need to make darn sure they know where the reach of the CWA ENDS. John, you should understand this: In other words, If I was going to give a certification on "how to legally drive in America" I could take the easy way out and cover my a$$ and say "You may not travel on the highway at speeds greater than 65 mph". That would be a lie but it would "certify" the listeners to guarantee that they would be covered nationwide. OR WOULD IT? What about construction zones? What about night restrictions? What about trying to dry 65 on a Vegas freeway and somebody running of you off the road for impeding traffic? All this type of stuff takes research. "Nothing down the drain but rain" is a falsehood taught because it's easy and simple and doesn't require any research. Everytime someone says that phrase I will make it my life's goal to make fun of them mercilessly. :) There is nothing wrong with playing within our legal rights. In other words, if you can keep the runoff OUT of the "waters of the US" as Ron is talking about then you don't even fall under the jurisdiction of the CWA. The CWA restricts POLLUTANTS. If we can remove pollutants before they reach the drain we've already complied. If we don't learn the law, we can't certify. It's that simple. We can certify "environmental cleaners" or some other such generic nomenclature, but we can't certify compliance with an Act that we don't understand and can't put in a box with it's limitations. IF ANY entity attempts to certify anything official sounding like "BMP's" or CWA using lies about the CWA I will use every minute of my spare time making them look like fools via every forum I can get high rankings on Google with. I might even provide the text and just ask Ron' SEO guys to place it wherever it has the most bang. That goes not only for the PWNA, but the ***** and any other group that thinks they can provide certification on something so region specific by just throwing a 2 hr blanket course demanding that they give up their legal rights just to be able to get jobs. That's where this is going. Mike Hilborn tells me that is not his goal and I have no reason not to believe him. But that's like running towards the edge of a cliff full blast all the while claiming it's not your goal to fall off. Eventually any 'certification' that even remotely sounds "official" will become the government "standard" that we will have to "comply" with in order to do business. We are not working with things that can kill people like restaurant fires. We are simply CLEANING things that need to be cleaned. We don't need any certification to be required by any government entity just to make a living for our families. Who wins in these situations? Not the contractor. As important as it is to make sure kitchen exhausts are cleaned go ahead and ask all the KEC guys how much their income has gone up since "certification". Go ahead, ask. If they are being honest they will tell you zero and they are STILL complaining about hacks and lowballers and will continue to do so forever because the government does not make things better, they just make them more expensive. Who wins? The only winner is the entity charging for the certification. How about we ask the PWNA to make this certification free of charge permanently to all members and non members if it's "contractors" and the "environment" that is on the top of their goals. Let's see how far that goes. LEARN the law first. Teach the law to the contractors. Don't invite the government into our industry. When they come in - fight them WITH the LAW. You can't do that unless you KNOW THE LAW.

Rob what you described above is exactly why no one is ready to "certify" any pressure washer in a "one size fits all" BMP.

We've got one too. It was an insurance claim that runs, but needs carb work and a new air filter housing because of a fire. We're putting together a Chevy flatbed for it. with a 425 gallon tank. Can't wait to get it all together.

What do you guys think about the PWNA having their own certifications with some other nomenclature that avoids the "BMP" reference? Seems like BMP's are a "buzz word" for municipalities.

"Don't ever invite a vampire into your house, silly boy. It renders you powerless." Lost Boys - 1987 Still good sound advice today.

Any thoughts about going ahead and spending money on testing runoff before publicizing any BMP's? Wouldn't that be a better use of PWNA funds if the PWNA wants to be involved in a contractor oriented way?

It's put together well.

I guess any BMP by any org or city is fine with Jim as long as it eliminates some of his competition. He doesn't even want to compete with dry wells. Oh the humanity! What about the children! :) All joking aside we need to look for common sense solutions. A dry well is a good, common sense solution for many applications. Dry wells are not left there to fill with contaminants. They are maintained by companies that remove the contaminated material and replace it on a regular basis. This is good for us because it eliminates our worry about runoff and allows the minuscule amounts of contamination brought up by our cleaning to be disposed of right alongside the contaminants that mother nature has already washed off. It looks like a win-win situation to me. Still waiting for that study from Berkeley Jim.

Jim, an internet search failed to provide any text or abstract from any dry well studies conducted at Sanford or UC Berkeley. There was one from Michigan that stated they were looking for a single particular contaminant but were unable to determine whether it came from the numerous city ran dry wells or from two local chemical plants. Please provide the reference if you are going to cite it authoritatively.

That's not an exact figure Jim, but you can pin it down more accurately when you run my credit and look at my tax returns later this year.

This is just another liberal example of using government rules to eliminate competition while trying to circumvent the rules to beat the competition. It's absolutely ridiculous. Jim, when you can clean these garages with a Prius, then come back and bring some credibility to all your environmental BS. Until then, Happy Birthday.

Jim, show the after video in the same parking spots. I believe you because I've seen your other videos. It will be impressive to show it after you're done and dry. I've always believed that a SC + 300 degrees could clean oil better (in spite of the short contact time) . It was just the gum that got me involved in this thread because I personally witnessed zero advantage on the gum. Jim, you know I am in complete awe of your equipment (get your mind out of the gutter :) ). But I'm a practical science guy and I'm trying to justify the added risk and cost vs the cleaning difference. Once you've recleaned that garage and calculated how much more you spent than your subcontractor, then there would be enough data to justify the expense of reaching those higher temps. (Chris is still working on a garage you pitched when you were here......they balked at .05 ft last year)

Nigel, this is the first prototype of what we use. Now, we could prep that entire DMV in two hrs and clean it in another hour. We perfected this after we had to do 4 miles of city sidwalks full of the same gum. HINT: the burnt gum has to go somewhere (not on the sidewalk) that's how we evolved the concept. Btw, how did you embed that video? I can't get it to work.

That is the kind of gum we have to deal with everytime we do a city other local government job. Surprisingly it only takes a month or two in the heat here to turn into that stuff. Like you, I agree that the gum removal technique that day was NOT the best technique for that gum. We've gone to doing a prepass with the propane scraper on all city sidewalks and places like the DMV where we did the demo. I wasn't comparing our machine to Jim's as if ours can even pale in comparison to his. His machine is awesome. I was comparing temps only and mentioned that it was our machine only because our machine is common in the industry. I'm sure Jim's turbo twisters would eat our lunch on a sidewalk. But I'm not 100% convinced it's the 300 degrees that is making the difference. When you grab a hot handle of a frying pan you instantly get relief as soon as you pull your hand away. Why? Because heat dissapates quickly. When going over concrete the length of time the spray is in contact with the surface is very short. That 300 degree intial impact (and I have a feeling that impact is reduced because of the steam factor) fades QUICKLY and the concrete begins it's fast return to room temperature. Is it possible that 100 more degrees makes that much difference in those few seconds? Hot water sprayd for a period of time cleans dishes, but a quick spray of hot water wouldn't do much. You and I know a contractor who never uses hot water on concrete because the chems do all the work before the SC even gets there. I can't help but wonder how much of Jim's high quality work is more the result of a little higher impact (4000 vs 3000-3500) combined with his chem? We need some experiments to settle this.

Nigel, You are my friend and I respect you and you knowledge. But I think you have had so many conversations with Jim about heat that you've forgotten what really happened that day. You, Tom and I were standing around in bewilderment as to why Jim's machine was taking so long to get up the gum. We came to the general consensus that the problem was the fan was blowing out and not providing enough impact. If you will remember the final conclusion that you and Tom came to was that the optimum temperature for removing gum was around 225-230. While that is a little higher than most of us use, it's not 300 degrees. I can't say anything about how 300 degrees does on grease and oil. I've never seen it. But I have seen it on gum and there are lots of people who were there who saw it too. Here is a video of you cleaning gum with Jim's machine. I can't see any speed advantage, can you? Here are you guys talking to Jim. Why is he defensive here? That's because he knew it wasn't getting up the gum faster. He even admitted later that he had never come across gum as baked in as we have here in Las Vegas. You can clearly see Chris Chappell popping gum like a maniac with our machine in the background on the same concrete slab. I think time has made memories change. Here's a little more of our machine cleaning. I'm not saying we've got any kind of super machine it's just a normal Landa skid. I just don't see how anyone can claim that the 300 degrees made the gum come up any faster.

This is a duplicate post from ***. If you've already read it there, you can skip it. This is my notice that I plan to discontinue posting and visiting ***, The Grime Scene and the ***** BBS for at least the rest of 2010 and probably much longer beginning tonight at midnight. This decision is not based on anything that has happened on or off the boards, but rather is going to be a time for me to rebond with my family and my business after two years of trying to give what little I can to the industry. I have reached a lull in "crusades" and roundtable commitments and find this the opportune time to bow out for a while. Based on data from our most recent sales figures I estimate that all the time spent preparing speeches and classes, posting on the BBS's and traveling to and from roundtables has cost us around $320,000 in new sales over the past two years. I probably wouldn't have noticed this but I recently did an annual evaluation of our business plan and saw the dip that was not fully explainable by the economy alone even taking into account the devastation our company took in 2008 with all the commercial business closures. That may seem like a lot of money to some and virtually nothing to others, but keep in mind we just started this particular business in 2004 and we are still on the initial growth pattern. This is no one's fault by my own. But it's time to turn it around. MY INTRODUCTION TO *** 2 years and two months ago I logged into *** for the first time. After spending hours reading ***. Ron and I spoke on the phone and I told him that over the years I had been involved in BBS's in other industries, but *** was the first time I ever found a board where the Christian attitude of giving freely to others was prevalent. It was also refreshing to find a board with primarily business owners rather than a board that had been taken over by complaining employees who know nothing about what it takes to run a business. Although Ron and I shared a different religion, a friendship was immediately forged that has not been shaken since. Ron is who he is and he doesn't hide who he is. We do not always agree, but he has never failed to gain my respect, even when he's slipped for a while he has taken himself up by the bootstraps and did whatever it took to get back on track. He is also not afraid to apologize. That is the sign of a good man. I hope you guys can recognize that. Along the way I've met and spoken with many great and honorable men and women in our industry. Any of you can feel free to email, txt or call me anytime. That goes double for any of the people who have been to my classes. My phone is always open. *** and NCE I've never been on the boards for SEO. I didn't even have a link in my signature half the time. When I joined the PWNA and ***** I revamped the sig for their sakes. (to the best of my ability) My industry is different from most of yours and SEO isn't as much of a help. While I never used the boards much in the way of SEO, I won't try to pretend that I was on here only to help others. I received a LOT of good and needed information from you guys and I am forever thankful. I tried to return the favor by teaching classes at roundtables as cheaply as I could offer them without losing money yet still lost money every single time! It was frustrating. BUT early on I made a commitment to Ron to teach classes and I held up my commitment to the very end no matter what it cost. I have reached the point where I think everyone on the boards who is interested in what I do has already participated in the classes and further offerings will just serve to cost Ron money in unnecessary promotion. And, Kory, you are awesome dude. You are one of the most professional young men I've ever met. I wish you well in your business and NCE. I am humbled by your balance of professionalism and humor. REFERRALS Ron has never asked me for a dime. He's referred business in our area to Chris and me but unfortunately we have never been able to make the deal. If we had I would have given him 10% for the life of the contract, as I would with ANY other referral we closed even though he's never asked for it. Any of you guys who think there is something wrong with that need to re-evaluate your advertising expenses and the cost of obtaining a new account and realize that 10% is a relative bargain. But I emphasize again, Ron has never asked us for a dime. I will forever be in Ron's debt and the debt of all you guys who have helped me along the way. THE ***** While I am not always proud of the way I conducted myself, I am proud of the results of my "crusade" against the failed leadership of the *****. The org is on the right track now with the right people. I stated before that the polarizing figures like myself, Matt Johnson, Ken Fenner, Carlos Gonzales, and others should lay low and allow the ***** to mature for at least a year without significant involvement by any of us. My leaving the boards is my contribution to that end. My involvement at this point will only serve as a stumbling block to those who perpetually suspect me and my motives. There has been a burst of new memberships, but I'm afraid future growth may be impeded if I am materially involved during the growth period. I have full faith in the men who are running the ***** now and have no doubt that they have the integrity needed to build the ***** into something great for our industry as long as they remember the lessons learned. The PWNA No comment except for this question - You doubled your membership last year due to "hard work" from the board (quote from Charleston RT) - with little or no mention of any outside help - --- That's taking a lot of credit - Who are you going to blame when your membership is half next year when all those new guys don't renew? The same way you got them is probably the only way you are going to keep them. Just food for thought. The CWA There seems to be little to no industry concern over how the CWA is misquoted and misunderstood to he detriment of our industry. I leave it in your hands. I won't effect me. The HVAC side of my industry has already took this by the reigns and gained exemptions for coil cleaning in many large cities by using education in the limitations of the CWA. I have spent a lot of time explaining how we could do this through education and representation, but the myth that buying a lot of equipment to "cull" the lowballers has been swallowed by the collective industry and probably can't be turned around. I'm not concerned too much about environmental regulations in our area for my son's business. Our state and city has a rebel attitude anyway and has very realistic and easily implemented BMP's. If ridiculous regulation is proposed I would hope that a national org would eventually be able to help if needed. The end result of the current direction our industry is headed will be one or two large lowball national contractors tailor making the rules to fit their equipment running most of you out of business. It will start with the commercial end and eventually work it's way to residential. It's in your hands now. Unions make the rules because they don't start negotiating from the middle. Our industry needs to start from the standpoint of ZERO reclamation and COMPLETE exemption and work from there to an acceptable agreement. Anything less than that is just bending over and taking it. THE GRIME SCENE Beth and Rod have produced a priceless resource in the Grime Scene. My small contributions to the industry over the past two years pale in comparison to theirs. While I didn't post as much there because there was more of a residential conversation going on there I am thankful for the resources afforded there. I hope that we will be able to meet at an event in the future. RUSS JOHNSON I wish I could afford to buy a machine a month from you. Thank you for everything. Conclusion: I will probably return to the boards one day. I don't need a requested ban. Shelly says I have a sense of self control that borders on frightening. My phone is always open - 702-358-7477 (same number for txts) Email is tonyshelton@**********.com Thanks again everyone!

Wow, a bridge with lead paint. Must be the longest lasting outdoor paint on the planet!

Another forced reclaim disaster. I wonder how many crickets lives were saved by vacuuming up the paint chips. Who picks up the chips that fall off naturally every day? Or when it rains?

Looks like a common morning scene.....:lgbonk:

In 1983 I worked at Stauffer Chemical on a 30ft platform shooting about 100 gpm at a dirt pile making mud (reclaiming phosphates). There was nothing like blasting away with ultimate power. It was at that point I knew I would eventually be a pressure washer or a p*rn star. :)

You mean come together like we did when Bush was President? :) (I'm just the messenger)