PLD

Good deal. Call me if you want to sub it out. I'm about 15 min from there.

Good deal. Call me if you want to sub it out. I'm about 15 min from there.

Good deal. Call me if you want to sub it out. I'm about 15 min from there.

Moven from thread of building washing. Please do. I'd love to see how it works. Is the PTO energy transfer hydraulic or physical? My mouth is already watering at the thought of only buying a pump and a belt to go from 5.6->11.2gpm. Does anyone know the capability of the typical skid burner to heat larger volumes of water? By that I mean what's it's upper limit for volume AND heat. Please tell me that they are actually rated for 10gpm and I can just hook up another pump w/o buying another burner...

It's 12v. Any idea what the specs are for the stock burner on an APW liberty?

Please do. I'd love to see how it works. Is the PTO energy transfer hydraulic or physical? My mouth is already watering at the thought of only buying a pump and a belt to go from 5.6->11.2gpm. I'm moving this thread now so as not to hijack Jeff's thread...

We don't run into it much down here, but IIRC I believe that you are dealing with pure crystalized dihydrogen monoxide. Be very careful, as it can be quite dangerous. There is another thread here that deals with the hazards of working with dihydrogen monoxide. One more thing. The white stuff is tricky to deal with, but whatever you do avoid the yellow variety. Apparently it's a mixture of DHM and an organic acid. Make sure that everyone on your crew understands: Never put yellow dihydrogen monoxide in your mouth!

I've thought about this issue many times. I find it very silly that we keep a 15-20 hp motor on board just for turning the pump. Carpet cleaners on the other hand use a PTO from the engine. Seems pretty easy to do, and then your pump takes the same fuel as your vehicle (whatever that is) Why don't we do this as well? Does anyone know the specifics of how a carpet cleaning system draws it's power and regulates throttle? For this application, I'll assume that you need 56gpm. That's 10-5.6 pumps drawing 18hp each. It's be even more efficient with 7-8gpm pumps. Either way, that's no problem for a most PW truck engines. Draw the power from the truck using a hydraulic pump and turn each pump with a hydraulic engine. For pumps that are not in service, bypass the hydraulic back into the supply tank. Feed all 10 pumps into a large manifold and run one large supply line to the washing rig. Presto! 56gpm @ 3000psi. For soap, run a second set of nozzles and PVC piping in tandem with the HP stuff. Drive it with a roller pump.

Dan, Just last night I followed up on an idea that Mike W gave. I went to our county website and began digging for property appraisals. After about 3 hours of digging, I found an obscure little page (way off the beaten path) that would let you pull the appraisal for a given property. At the bottom of that page there was a small text link for "search". BINGO! Put in any street or subdivision, and there's a nice little listing of every house and the owners name. The only drawbacks that I see are that the name is last, first and trunc'd to 40 chars. So, some of the records will need to be massaged or look a little weird. That and they don't give zip codes. That's no biggie as the subdiv's generally have one zip. I downloaded 10 of my hottest subdiv's and plan to start carpet bombing the tomorrow morning... Many thanks to Mike for this excellent tip. I was driving to the subdiv, getting a few cross street names, using google maps to get all the street names in that subdiv (by eye), and then buying records on all the houses on street "x". This takes a WHOLE lot less time to get a subdiv (minutes vs hours) and I can take an old invoice and easliy get all the homes in that subdiv. Oh, and as a bonus you get the appraisal. It's not hard science, but in uniform neighborhoods you can judge relative size/difficulty by the differing values.

Nope. Home Depot something or another... I mention TWP because it is ALWAYS a problem. It seems to be more of a problem with film forming oils. My typical is a little different. About 1:10 are stain that is still within it's useful life and/or relatively new. Yep, but not a very good one. Smooth with thinner if possible, re-stain if not. All this said, does anyone care to share a bid sheet and/or auth to begin work that disclaims this nicely? Any suggestions on how to communicate the isue and not spook the homeowner away from the work? Should I be tarping all of these?

12c/piece is min 100 pieces per route sorted by route number and dropped at the post office that services the route. Realistically, 15c is about the min unless you're doing some serious volume (then start figuring cost of time for sorting). Anyway, for oversized cards figure 15c/piece + 10c for printing [+ 8c/name (one time cost)]. That put you at $25/lead. Factor in 80% conversion and you're looking at $31.25 per lead.

I only flyer during really slow periods when I need jobs for the guys tomorrow, but the printer is 7-10 days out. I hadn't thought about mailing the flyers, but that's worthy of consideration. The reason I had not pursued it further is with a 1% response, first class = $37/acq. Thoughts anyone?

Yes, pre-wetting. Unfinished decks are cake. Just pre-wet to avoid splotching. Light colored trex can be a bear as there are always noticible clean areas.

In this particular case, I didn't see it before. But the descriptions from the employee and the homeowner both point to what I have seen before and described above. I have seen it even on newly stained decks that looked perfect beforehand. Barring some insight from here, I don't see a way around it. Tarping it (often very unwieldy),is not something I see as feasible. Passing or disclaiming would cost me a great deal of jobs....

Varying thickesses of stain. If you watch during the cleaning, you can actually see stain coloration in the rinse water. Just like when you actually strip, only to a much lesser degree. It often softens the finish to the point that you leave shoe prints in the stain. I haven't tried the sprinkler yet, but no amount of pre-wetting & rinsing has stopped it. If you don't pre-wet at all it'll seriously ruin the finish. IMHO, it's clearly the Ph+ bleach beginning to emulsify the oils.

I am really particularly picky that my flyers do not offend. Today I got a call from someone who as soon as I said hello spouted out: "We got your flyer on our mailbox today. I just wanted to let you know that we will NEVER use your services [click]"

Yep, but outside doesn't draw the ire of the postman nearly as much as inside does! Courtesy and placement of flyers goes along way with the homeowner and the mailman. If they have a "non-mail" box, use it. If the flag is up, pass. If no flag, skip it.

I just read this. It reminded me of my old '83 Porsche 911. It had every factory option except two. Tow pkg/trailer hitch and roof racks. Does anyone actually buy these options?!? I can just see someone cruising down the connector in a beautify red widebody turbo with two ladders on top, and 5x12 enclosed behind and mag signs for "Rich Man's Power Washing"...

Craig, I was considering this exact setup, and I was wondering if you could answer a few Q's. - How do you deal with exhaust (burner and small engine) - Do you have a tank inside? - What do you do about chem leaks/spills. Would you do it this way again?

I have been told many times that 3 things really tick off a homeowner about flyers. - Taped or tacked to the post/box. After a few dozen it begins to look cruddy. - bend the flag while inserting non-taped/tacked flyers. - place them so they come lose and fly about the streets. For these reasons, I losely fold them trifold (not roll) and slip them behind the flag. The trifold provided enough tension to stay, not enough to cause damage. No tacks or tape neccessary.

Ditto what Tony said. I used it once before to see what it was worth. It's expensive if you use enough to act as a good surfactant and is designed for low/no suds which is a negative with respect to dwell time. That's not to say that I wouldn't use it again in a pinch, but for daily washes, there are much better and more economical products.

Speaking of blue siding. My rental has that stuff on two sides. The neighbor decided to go with someone else to PW their rental, and the PW'ers "drew" in the chalk on my light blue siding with an x-jet. I don't know if they thought they were doing me a favor by bleaching the side that faced them, but it looks like crap. Of course, no everyone pleads ignorance so I've gotta go fix it....

Carlos, I just saw this thread pop up again and realized that I never got mine. Can you re-send?

IMHO, it's not your best option. That's a very light trailer with a relatively small pump. Will it work, sure. Is it a good value? No. IMHO, for nearly 10k, 18hp, 5.5+gpm and a double axle trailer w/ brakes are a minimum requirement. Just to give you some point of reference, check the bargain basement here. You will see that earlier this year there was a nearly identical used unit for $4200. You will want to shop around quite a bit before purchasing. You should be able to locate a good 5.5/3500, double axle, hoses and all rig for around $5-6k. Check the bargain basement here. Also, get the local equipment trader and start looking. There's bound to be someone local selling a rig. That's where I found mine. I'm not recommending any of these, but you can see that you can get much more for nearly the same $$$. http://cgi.ebay.com/PRESSURE-WASHER-4-GPM-4000-PSI-Honda-Trailer-Mounted_W0QQitemZ4416207555QQcategoryZ50388QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem http://cgi.ebay.com/PRESSURE-WASHER-8-GPM-3000-PSI-Kohler-Trailer-Mounted_W0QQitemZ4417099358QQcategoryZ50388QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem http://cgi.ebay.com/HOTSY-POWER-WASHER-complete-rig-READY-TO-WORK_W0QQitemZ4417080124QQcategoryZ50388QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting http://cgi.ebay.com/CUSTOM-HIGH-PRESSURE-WASHER-STEAMER_W0QQitemZ7560879840QQcategoryZ46536QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I recommend that you look at used rigs. When I started, I looked at used rigs (about $5k) and passed because I wanted new. Hence, I built my first rig from scratch. All new equipment, trailer, etc. Looked great, and IMHO was priced reasonably. After using the rig for awhile I realized that my $5k budget was about 50% of what it should have been. And, while my rig was perfectly functional it was missing alot of features that I had since learned that I wanted/needed (like hot water). At the beginning of this year, I was looking to upgrade. This time, I decided to go used. I purchased a *fully* loaded trailer second hand for $6500. Extra guns, tips. lances, QC's, 400ft of hose, etc. I did spend a full day re-organizing the trailer and re-plumbing it to my specs, but it was a business in a box when I got it. If you are rolling in cash, there definitely advantages to rolling your own. But for me, used is the way to go. Many people get into this business blind and drop 10k only to sell it all a year later for 50c on the dollar.