PressurePros

You know its weird, Rick. Shane's pictures were either doctored, his camera was strange, the wood in Texas is different that the wood here, or those pictures were the 3rd or 4th maintenance treatment. I have never had the experience with Baker's being opaque. That pic above is two fairly heavy applications of Bakers Super Cedar dark mixed 50/50 with Super Cedar applied hours apart.

I dunno, I've tried them all, Rick. RS looks dirty and oily to me (my work, not judging anyone else's). I also am tainted by a bad experience with ready seal. The closest I ever came to having an insurance claim was a deck with RS that bled onto teenage feet having a pool party. Footprints were transferred onto very expensive wool Berber carpet. A week later I was called by another customer that had ruined their shorts sitting on a RS stained bench weeks after it had been completed. Alright, I was over applying. Started putting on less and a couple of customers called me to say the stain washed off their deck. I went back and sure enough the deck looked like all the stain had been absorbed. The irony of it being called goof proof is that I found it to be the hardest stain to work with. Its just not for me, Rick. I've talked to a ton of contractors. Many feel the same as I do. Many people that I respect including you and Jim swear by it. I guess we all have our choice of products and personal reasons why we like them. Rick, without completely stealing the thread, how would you rate the opaqueness of the picture below? I ask because I may not have the right definition of an opaque product. I don't find the beauty of the wood to be obscured in any way.

You are on the right track.

Two different types of products. Baker's blows away RS. Like Rick mentioned, it is not VOC compliant though.

Baker's vs Armstrong. A Color match would be Super Cedar Gold and Cedar semi trans for the Armstrong.

Mike, a few observations. 1) I am assuming we are talking about a regularly maintained fence. If a stain goes into failure, its not being maintained. 2) Your wood is both older growth and the better (though more toxic) PT lumber. 3) Your neighbor's fence may have been treated with a waterborne. Those products allow very rapid rot to occur on cedar. Two identical fences built with today's younger growth lumber.. Its my opinion that one treated with a penetrating oil and maintained will always outlast the untreated one. 100% of the time in equal environments.

Probably not that high. A 6"x6" PT post can last a long time, sealed or unsealed.

I think that is a fair ratio. Its infinite if the fence is oiled and maintained.

That's acrylic. You may need it but I would try without it first.

There is nothing worse than hearing the phrase "oh that part is proprietary". Cha-ching$$

Overapplication of stain is a sure fire way to get premature failure. Let it cure and be done with it until next season.

smart!

If you didn't touch it at all, you probably would have been fine. Don't over react yet. you may still be okay. We have had it happen five minutes after we finished and the deck was fine other than a couple of water drop stains that we touched up.

Its growing William. Big, strong.. price setting.. taking your business from you.. destroying the industry! Taking souls for the price of a membership. :deal:

Jon, that is why I recommended a silica hardener versus a stain or sealer. I doubt he will prevent the moisture but he can protect the wood against rot.

that design looks nice and clean but leave some to be desired for selling content and SEO. I'm not sure I would pay that much. I certainly wouldn't pay $7000 for it. The "Visualizer" is hot though. that's an awesome piece of programming and is what makes the cost more justified I suppose. Here is another company that I believe offers contractors a leased website deal. They have a much firmer grasp on SEO as well. http://www.footbridgemedia.com/

All of Bob's mailings have a link and a plug for the *****. Bob is a supporting member. You know I had to break your stones a bit.

Hi Vance, the moment you take payment, you are a professional with liability for the outcome. I know what you are saying but you are kidding yourself and justifying with excuses. An inexperienced person messing with other people's homes with no insurance is a problem waiting to happen. Get the X-Jet, read all you can on here, do your neighbor's homes for free and if you feel this is something you may want to pursue, you go forward setting up your business officially. Any of us would be more than willing to help you with that.

The alternatives to bleach, which all require the use of some type of pressure on the roof would be the above mentioned chems or a quaternary ammonium.

Hello V and welcome. Here is a good place to start. Joseph D Walters Insurance Agency INC

The equipment and all that is consequential to the startup. You can start for relatively cheap. Where the expense comes and as its tied into gross sales is in the advertising. A new company can expect to earn back maybe $4 for every $1 spent. You also have to keep in mind that a correctly setup company pays its owner a salary. You don't just keep what's left over. That salary can fall between 20%-30%. You can add another 40% to your salary as a one man show but that will be lowered the moment you add employees (which should be every company owners goal). So here's the math on realistic first year earnings if you have a $10,000 advertising budget. Gross Sales: $20,000 Your take: $25,000 minus taxes give or take a couple thousand. So to answer your question, you had better allot a fair amount of advertising dollars to your budget as well as a cash reserve that will supplement your first year's income unless you have a full time job or a spouse that can pay the bills. I started PressurePros with about $60,000. Now the much less discouraging part. When I started PP, I had to go the traditional route of advertising (mailers, Yellow Pages, news ads, etc). Today, my website generates a ton of leads and its fairly cheap. You can start with a much lower budget and make a halfway decent living. Don't skimp on your website. Budget to have it professionally designed and SEO'd.

You won't use more chemical, you'll use less. One five gallon bucket should do a whole house (smallish house). We average ten gallons (six gallons of 12%) on the houses we do.

Rick, I notice a marked loss in strength of chems using anything over 150' of hose.. even on the 4 gpm machines. I now keep 150' on all my reels. One job out of 20 requires more than that. Another thing that can starve flow is having restriction at the gun. Use a gun rated for at least 12 gpm. Another thing I learned is that undersized downstreamers will draw more. The downside of doing that is you have to pull the downstreamer to rinse or it takes a bit longer. All of these things should help you overcome the downfalls of using store bleach. I agree with Rando above. you may have to go with all bleach and just add your soaps to that. Good luck. Let us know how you like it!

That's neat. One product I would recommend treating all of that would with would be: Cretowood 5 Gallon | The ProSealer Store

Your going to find through your own experience that marketing and sales come down to "six of one a half dozen of the other". There are things that work and don't work based on your style and your market. As you can see we all have opinions as to what works and those are differing fairly dramatically. My average deck price this year is coming in around $1700 which is dramatically different from 6 years ago when I chased $450 decks. In the beginning you do what you need to do to stay busy. I know very successful guys that probably average $450 per deck. They obviously need a much higher volume and would be spinning their wheels meeting with every customer. I am to the point now if a customer calls and they cannot meet with me, I start leaning towards sending them to someone else. If you cannot meet with me to begin establishing what I want to be a lifelong relationship, you may not be the customer I am seeking. Again time in business and YOUR business model is going to determine ultimately what path you take. As far as employees.. I send the majority of mine through a leasing agency. My lead guy or myself interviews them and determines employment viability. They then go sign up at the leasing agency. Leasing agency covers the WC and all payroll taxes and they finance my payroll for 5 days which helps with cash flow.