PressurePros

I didn't brush that one. I used a citric based acidic cleaner followed by regular housewash mix. Applied with homemade ShurFlo extension wand and rinsed with garden hose.

The only time I don't wear a respirator is when I am doing concrete work. I had to pull it off the other day and then sprayed underneath a rail. Of course at that moment the wind came right at me and all night long my throat was irritated. A penetrating oil loaded with VOC's is probably not real healthy for sensitive lung tissue. The guy I use for my residential work is resistant to wearing one. When he thinks I am not looking he pulls it off. I told him if I catch him one more time, he and I will be parting company. Almsot everything we use in this business is carcinogenic. It's not worth the risk trying to be macho.

Hey Beth, does Rod know you're out here talkin' trash? LOL, I couldn't resist.

Rick our part of the country is crazy with service industry pricing. My soon to be mother-in-law just got a bill from her shore home. Some clown electrician charged her $480 to replace an outlet. The invoice said "diagnose faulty outlet, replace wire and receptacle". Since every other outlet was working fine, and there were no tripped breakers, I'm pretty sure she got hosed. I didn't have a chance to get down there or I would have done it myself. Anyway, I know in my area $15 per square foot gets you pressure treated lumber from Home Depot.

If you decide to go with the ipe, call George at East Teak Lumber. He is an awesome guy, delivers on time and has very high quality lumber. (800) 338-5636. He is in SC and delivers all over.

Depends on what the customer is looking for... if it's just mold removal, you can use your housewash mix and low pressure removal. If they want the chalky oxidation removed you almost have to wash the whole thing like you would a car (I mean hand wash or brushing) Even then you have to use a specialty cleaner and they are $$$$. Be careful with your X-Jet, an M-5 would be best. Regular X-Jet will leave your signature, if you know what I mean. I now upcharge 50% on aluminum siding houses because I have had enough of the bad experiences.

There really is no other way in the beginning. How can you hire and train two people to do work for you if you aren't experienced yourself? I have been called to clean just a driveway maybe ten times. The jobs I have done have been built from pavers and required more finesse and chemical experience. I agree with Mike, they are mostly an add-on and I would have starved and been out of business by now if I relied on them for income. This is just my thought so take it for what it is worth, but maybe your experience with the company you can't recall that also does interior cleaning is not quite extensive enough to give you confidence in pursuing this thing. Continue to read, educate yourself on equipment, chemicals, pricing and technique. Practice on your house, mom's house etc. When you are ready to jump in, devise your business plan, secure your insurance, put out some advertising and stay dedicated. You are going to have to persevere lean times at first (keep your day job initially, you're going to need it to pay bills).

Mark, if you want to try the Stripex-L gimme a call. The place where I buy some of my chemicals and equipment made me an offer of 50% of their inventory. They are discontinuing it. Let me know via pm or call so I can make sure it was the Stripex-L version.

I am not a fan of the composites. Expect at least 25% color fade. They are also more of a pain to clean. You have to use ultra low pressure and high concentrations of bleach make the fading even worse. Mold spores and tannin bleed still seem to be big issues even with the nwere generations. Both Timber Tech and Trex recommend sealing and the products are $50+ per gallon.

I agree with Dale on this one. At the very least you are going to need to boost the alkalinity of the HD-80 to eyebrow singeing strength and sand a bunch.

I would definitely call Eaco. Hydrochloric acid and aluminum react pretty quickly. You may be able to buff it out or like jim suggested use an acid based cleaner which will actually etch more. I have never had to do this so I can't offer any other advice (I've had to buff windows from too hot a housewash mix just never intentioanlly etch the glass to fix damage)

Your insights are correct. Find out if she wants the same sealer that was on there previously. If the product used was an oil semi trans, or a solid with no peeling or flaking then use sodium percarbonate. Tell you will use a purified form of Oxyclean which is non-toxic and safer for the wood than bleach or a harsh stripper (make sure you don't have to strip though). As far as pressure goes, hopefully you already nozzle down to the correct pressure for wood cleaning so you should be able to convince her easily that you will not damage the wood. From her standpoint, she is correct. Most Master Blaster washers out there use high pressure on wood and cause damage.

Sodium Percarbonate has its place like anything else.. Very mild stripping with a ton of vegetation, cleaning a deck you sealed previously that does not need to be stripped are two I can think of. But I agree, if the deck has been grey for a long time or is heavy with mold, out comes the NaOH. It's faster, cheaper and I'm guessing in the right dilution, just as safe on the wood.

Welcome to wood restoration! I'd have an issue with having to do an entire redo at my expense because a customer chose the wrong color. How did you present your colors to her? If from a chart, you learned a valuable lesson about how meaningless those are. Even from samples of certain species of wood stained with your available colors, porosity and age can totally change the color that shows up. I learned the hard way to come up with just a few color tones that look the best on the broadest range of wood, and stick with them. Now I ask the customer, do you like dark brown? light brown? reddish tint? heavier red or a certain color? What are your plans for this deck and charges to the customer? Whatever you decide to do, talk up the color first (if you think it looks good) and let her get used to it. Sometimes, like a new hair-do, people have to adjust what they are used to seeing.

Should work fine for cleaning. Same ingredients as EFC-38 unless there is something proprietary in the EFC I am missing.

A couple of people have mentioned an osborne brush. Does this attach to a buffer, an RO sander or a grinder? Jon, there was enough money in the job for extended prep. I always allow for it on cedar or redwood.

Maybe reading the linked post below would help to clarify how/why this occurred? I suppose I opened myself to criticism , constructive or otherwise. If you are just wondering why I even asked the question it is because I DO offer vastly superior service and go the extra mile for customer happiness. I know no other way than to remove all the fuzzies but was curious if some guys have left some of them remain and have still achieved decent results? (ie.. am I overdoing it and making work for work's sake or does the additional sanding/defelting make a noticeable difference) http://www.thegrimescene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3770

Jaime, test a small spot for color. Cedar can be funny the way it takes sealers, especially when it's older. On a couple of cedar decks I did using Tux they came out orange-y. Yet on my cedar sample board, the Tux looks fine.

The color of the tip is irrelevant to the measured pressure leaving the nozzle. The colors indicate spray width, not pressure drops. You are looking for a nozzle with a larger orifice to reduce your pressure. I find a number 15 to work well with a 5.6 gpm machine for wood if you are using the right chems and dwell time.

Nice job, bro..way to go!

My fixed expenses are $32 per hour. That leaves $79 for three hours minus $25 for Uncle Sam (because remember we are legitimate business people that pay ALL taxes) So I just made $54 for the 1/2 day in question or $18 an hour for the time worked. If you have your overhead down to 15%, that's very good. But if you were me, would you be doin this for $18 an hour? Not to mention that a small job like this requires a second job to fill the day which involves drive time which drives up expenses and adds time to the day.

Okay, then you understand my point. I am asking business owners to sell those things as add ons. This whole post wasn't spurned by some deep rooted desire in me to have guys in Florida (or anywhere for that matter) charge more. I typed it after I read the sad post on another board about a guy selling this top notch rig and saying there just isn't enough business in his area. I felt very bad that someone invested time and money and got nothing out of it but having to sell the business' only tangible asset. My objective is to educate. My goal is that one day we have some type of powerwashing union (figuratively speaking, not a labor union per se). An organization that people recognize as quality contractors that do this as a chosen career, not because they coudn't find any real work. I apologize if any of my passion for this topic comes acrossed as biting or condescending. There is only one person whom I let get under my skin and as I have been reading these boards more, I see other people react the same way to him. He is not trying to be mean, it's just his method. In person he is probably a great guy. I don't want anyone to percieve what I type as an indictment, I would help anyone on this board that asked and I truly wish all reading this happiness and success under God.

CCPC, I'm not sure what part you guys aren't getting? It isn't about raping one person for an exorbitant rate and hoping noone finds out. I am in line with any guy that does this type of work. Lucky for me, noone around here does. (And so you realize, there are guys in my area that do $200 housewashes) I am not saying quadruple your prices, but I think some people are stuck in a rut. I'm workin my ass off, so therefore I must be successful. Anyway, onto the property wash scenario, since you asked. Two floors..dryvit.. house has gables and turns that X-Jet cannot get to requiring ladder work. Expensive plants butt up against house. Every one that gets killed can cost me about $50. Landscape slopes, driveway is 200 linear feet. Pool that is exposed and close to house. Front of house is brick and customer wants mortar whitened and efflorescence from last guy using high pressure, removed. Rear of house has rust stains running halfway up wall. Add in that we are lucky to work seven months a year. Once again, you're missing the point. It isn't about you guys charging a thousand dollars, it's about educating people to get what they are worth. Labor and materials inclusive: (platinum property cleaning a la carte) Housewash $350 (my area not yours) Gutters $60 Acid wash rear $50 Specialty chem applied to front brick to remove efflorescence $100 (applied with ShurFlo to contain spray) House sealed with polymer sealer that cannot be added to housewash mix $100 Windows recleaned squeeg'd $50 Front drive, brick walkway, area around pool -5000 sf $200 Fountain and lawn statues $35 Flagstone pavers leading around property to pool $30 Seal Pavers $80 Cleaning cost $1055. Time to perform: 7-8 hours with setup, break down, masking. Materials: Housewash mix, prosoco chems and sealers, chlorine around $200. That means we may average the same per hour but look at the work load. At this rate you'd have to do 25 jobs per week, I'd have to do five. As far as marketing expense.. minimal for me. Yellow pages ad, word of mouth, local paper and a few church bulletins. Logic dictates it would take more marketing to land 25 jobs than it would five. Allbeit, this is premium level service. Not everyone has this much to clean or wants to spend the money. This isn't my average job, just letting you know what you can do with attention to detail and a little sales knowlege. But hey, whom am I to argue with the status quo?

Mike, you may be reaching a bit. Hypothetically speaking and pseudo morality aside, who is to say you are not a crook for charging the rates you currently do? I'm sure there are lowballers out there that think making $60 per hour to do what we do is a crime. To clear things up so you can, in good conciense, swallow a $1k property cleaning.. this type of job usually takes a full day with a couple hundred bucks in material (soaps, brighteners, sealers). Difference is, the property is immaculate from front sidewalk to the edge of the woods, from mulch to gutters. My gross profit might come out to $125 per hour. And yes, I do have all the goodies to make a job go fast, I have a laborer, I am not slow and we may stop for a half hour lunch. Step back and look at the big picture, not the specifics of dollars. I have read many of your posts, Mike and you self admittedly have mentioned that you are not into doing sales. That's fine, not many people are. Some of us want to change the perception of the industry as a whole. Pricing is just one aspect of it. When someone tells me they think they should pay $175 for something I know is going to take three hours plus materials I am offended. I want to exact some sort of change in public perception. I want to share knowlege that has been taught to me on the art of selling and getting what you are worth in a marketplace..not everyone is going to jump on board. I would argue it counterproductive to making money. This is the philosophy of the lowballer isn't it? You should really think about that statement. A wise man said to me once "If it doesn't apply, let it fly". There is room in the marketplace for your business philosophy and for mine. All I ask is that you respect my opinion and the way I conduct business as I respect yours.

I am the first to acknowlege that us northerners can't compare to what you southern guys are capable of makin' on a grill. The stuff I see on TV made at those barbecue cook-off's makes my mouth water. I have only seen pig roasts on TV, but they look good too.