Palmetto Home and Deck

Rick, I am a true fan of real wood. However, when I run into a customer with their minds set on composite and there is nothing I can do to change how they feel there is only one composite manufacturer that I will use....Timbertech. Check out their web site at www.timbertech.com. They use virgin plastic and better grade wood particles in their decking. Most composites are made of recycled plastics and scrap wood particles. Timbertech has some decking now that looks very much like IPE and you have to look close to tell the difference. Its pricey though and as far as material goes it is more expensive than IPE. Labor to install IPE will still be higher than installing composite so it is about a wash as far a pricing goes. If composite is what they insist on check into Timbertech, but what ever you do stay away from Trex, Home Depot, Lowes, and Rhino composite decking.

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtis y, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oer dr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pbo erlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

"His real estate agent told him don't pay over 175.00" Something is bothering me about the real estate agent telling someone what to pay...or what not pay in this case. What makes them the expert in Pressure Washing? What if a pressure washing company told the owner not to pay over 3% commission to the agent selling the house? Just ranting...going to get another cup of coffee now......

I'm looking at cleaning a home that has a beautiful 16'x47' covered composite deck on the back of the house. However, the rain blows in about 5' onto this deck and leaves a water mark/stain all along this area. The owner wants me to clean the deck and apply a sealer to it to help keep this water staining from happening. I re-skin a lot of decks with composite and I recognized this decking material was made by Timbertech. I checked with Timbertech and they recommend "Composite Stain Guard" by Sun Frog for this problem. I looked it up and it sounds like it is just what I need, but I was wondering if anyone has any experience with it or if there is something else you know about. Here is the link to Sun Frog Composite Deck Stain Guard Finish

Jeff, Gee, I didn't mean to high jack jkevin's thread, but ,yes, this guy lives in PA and has a home down here he is planning on moving to when he retires. We have several nice lakes here with many summer/weekend homes on them. We also have the mountains near by with the same. When I say summer/weekend homes I don't mean the kind of homes where you take your old worn out furniture and silverware to and keep the good stuff at your primary residence. Most of these are multi-million dollar homes and their patio furniture is better than what I have in my house. Being close to Clemson I also see a lot of homes here worth hundreds of thousands and some worth millions of dollars just so the owner can have a place to stay when they come to see the Tigers play a home game. These people often are looking for someone they can trust to do work for them. I prefer to meet the owners in person and if they are local I insist on meeting them to look at a job to give an estimate, but in the case where someones lives in another part of the country it is not always possible. I will talk to the person by phone and by email until we kind of build a relationship of sorts. It can be risky for the owner to hire a contractor sight unseen, but this can also be a two way street. I want to know something about the customer as well when I have never met them in person. I figured I wouldn't get this deck job when I looked at the house. This was more or less a lower property valued home than what I was expecting when I went to look at it. The landcpaping was non existant and there were cars on blocks in the neighbors yard. You know...after a while you can just tell when you drive into a neighborhood that you are probably going to be too high. Anyway, back to jkevins thread, I did give this guy an estimate. What I didn't do was lower my price because this guy was looking for someone with the lowewst price. This week I am doing $1,900.00 worth of work for a guy that lives in Atlanta and has a nice weekend home on Lake Keowee not far from Clemson, SC. I haven't met him either.

I went out to a house the other day to give an estimate for pressure cleaning. While talking to the customer and answering some of the questions he had about our cleaning process, he stopped and asked me how long I had been doing this and what did I do before that. I told him I had some background in Civil Engineering and that I had been a bridge construction superintendent for twenty years but got tired of always living out of a suitcase and wanted to do something that would let me sleep in my own bed every night. He stood there nodding his head and said "I knew your weren't one of those regular pressure washing bubbas that normally come out." I told him "no they were working in a neighborhood I drove through yesterday. Later I started thinking about what he said. When he called, was he actually expecting a "Pressure Washing Bubba" to show up based on his experience? I also started wondering how many people that call us are expecting a "pressure washing bubba" to show up because they think that is all that is out there based on what they see or from the experiences they have had. I often have people tell me that my estimates are higher that other estimates they have gotten, but they still want me to do the work because I seem to be more professional. I guess image and professionalism actually means something to a lot of people. My truck and trailer are professional lettered and I have recently started wearing uniforms with my company name and logo on them in an attempt to constantly be improving the image I put forth. In doing so I don't charge "pressure washing bubba" prices either. I know there are people that will always be looking for the lowest price they can find and there will always be a "pressure washing bubba" there for them. Personally, I take pride in pressure washing as a legitimate and professional occupation and am trying to do my part to improve our image. There are a lot of people wanting our services and are glad when they don't get a "pressure washing bubba". Oh yes, I got the job.

clinter, There are some products to remove gout haze that you can find easily at a tile store and at Lowes, Home Depot, etc. I do a little tile work in the winter if things get slow. When the grout haze is only a slight film all I usually use is white distilled vinager and scrub with an acid brush. You might want to give it a try before you buy a more expensive haze remover.

JKevin, Cheer up man, I just lost my 150th today. I was asked to clean this guys house, driveway, and clean and seal his deck. The package deal right? It was not that large of a deck, but at least 10 feet off the ground with no stairs. old weathered wood, with Thompson's on it. Since there was so much to do at this one house I figured I was giving him a deal at $825.00 for the deck cleaning and sealing. This guy lives in Pennsylvania so I could only deal with him over the phone and email. Anyway, this calls me back and said he had a quote that was about the same as mine on the house cleaning, but the deck price the other contractor was offering was 1/4 of what my price was (right around $200.00). That is about what I had figured for materials alone. The guy wanted to know why there could be so much difference between the two prices so I sent some information about proper wood care and what to watch for in the sealers you choose. Anyway, the guy just emailed me and said he was going with the lower bid anyway. Maybe the other contractor is throwing the deck cleaning and sealing in for free and just covering his materials, but I doubt it. I do know he is leaving over $600.00 on the table. I told the guy that was fine and the next time he need something to call me. I didn't tell him that the other contractor pobably wouldn't be around then.

For heaven's sake man, if you try the white painters shorts make sure you are wearing white boxers underneath as they tend to show through when they get wet putting you in a TMI situation. lol The Dickies khaki, blue, or gray work pants (the ones made of 65% polyester 35% cotton) are treated with a stain resistant finish and hold up extremely well to bleach.

“I would have had the same suspicion as well. I would call that a warning. Now, any upstanding company would have nothing to worry about, but who needs the hassle of someone who is already in the mindset of looking to protect their rights before they have even had any work performed. Given, in the past they could have been burned but that would be a flag for me. We had a number of potentials in the past who have given us signals that they were looking for a way to get something replaced just by having the work done and putting the liability on the last contractor to do it. A few were looking for new siding, others wanted a new deck” Yea, Rod, that sent up red flags for me too, but most importantly it made me get up off my "you know what" and do something I have meaning to do for a few years now and get my LLC. I’m not really sure how she figures having a company that is incorporated offers her “more to go after” than one that is working under a LLC. The protection a LLC or corporation offers to the company’s owners personal assets are the same. The main difference between the two is the tax structure. However, anyone working under a Doing Business As or Sole Proprietorship are putting their personal assets at risk. Your house, cars, trucks, checking and savings accounts, and just about everything else you have are on the line if someone decides to sue you/your company. Having a LLC or corporation separates you from your company and protects your personal belongings. I always thought that having insurance would be enough, but I realize ,now, that if you do this long enough that you will run into sharks out there looking to bite you. Getting my LLC was really easy and does not require a lawyer. On my way home that day I stopped by my accountants office and filled out a one page form, applied for a Federal ID number, sent the state of South Carolina a check for $110.00 and paid the account $50.00 and it was done. Think about this if you are still working as DBA, get something done about it. I know I sure feel better now.

I have been re-skinning a deck in the Clemson, SC area with Dura_Pine by Cox Lumber. At first I thought that this lumber was wonderful. It was kiln died after treatment, it was straight and virtually free of any knots. Being advertised as dry lumber (delivered at or below 19% moisture) with shrinkage at a minimum I installed the decking using a 6d nail as a spacer between the boards. Before I was even through with the project the gap I had left between the boards had opened up to 1/2" or more in some places. In addition the boards began showing signs of severe checking like boards on an old deck. I ran short a few boards and to buy a few more. When they were delivered I checked the moisture content with my moisture reader and some of the boards had a reading of over 28%. Has anyone else used this lumber and have you had problems with it as well?

Hi Micah, The manager from the place I bought the lumber from in Easley and a representative from Cox lumber have come out and looked at the deck. They both say that is normal for lumber lumber to shrink and check (crack) like this one is doing. In some cases, like with the typical wood you get from the big box stores, I may agree, but even then I have never seen lumber that looked so good when it was delivered go downhill so fast after it was installed. I mean these boards were promoted not to do everything they are actually doing. If I had gotten the lumber from a box store and paid $8.00~$9.00 a board that would be one thing, but these boards cost nearly $27.00 each. Now the lumber company in Easley says these boards are fine, but will send me 20 more at no cost and they want the owner to sign a paper releasing them and Cox Lumber from any further liability. (Which by the way ain't going to happen) No one at Cox or the lumber company will except my credibility when I checked the moisture of some of these boards at 28%. The agency that regulates the standard for pressure treated lumber, AWPA, now has the pictures. This where it stands as of now. Don't you wish, Micah, you did wood work? I think I'm going to sell my carpentry tools and by a surface cleaner like yours.

I have given estimates for three decks for stripping and staining this year so far this year where the owners come back and wanted to know how much would it be for just the stripping. I try to make money on the stripping, but more times than not its the application of the stain that carries the job through and makes the whole project worth while. I have thought about giving them a price high enough for just the stripping that would be close to the stripping and staining without showing them the break down I come up with for each item, but I don't want to do that. I know that no matter how good of a job I do on the stripping that the home onwers will put something like Berr on the deck and they will hold me responsible if they are not happy with the results. Its not the legal responsiblity that worries me, but the referrals aspect of it. When I clean and seal a deck I want it to be a show piece. I want other people see it and want theirs done like it. If the owners make a mess of a deck after I clean it I know they will make me out to be the bad guy. Are any of you running into this situation and what do you do if so?

Beth and Russ are right. The woodpeckers are looking for the free buffet inside the wood. About the best you can do if there is an insect infestation in the wood besides replacing the already damaged boards is to treat the rest of the wood with a solution of boric acid. You should be able to find boric acid at a hardware store or even a drug store. If you can't find it there look for "Roach Proof" powder or even many ant powders with boric as their main ingredient. Boric acid when mixed with propylene glycol (non-toxic version of anti-freeze) has proven to be very effective against many types of wood boring insects. The glycol helps the solution to penetrate into the wood and become a part of the wood fibre. This solution is also a terrific treatment for dry rot in wood. I'll often treat decks and other wood with this solution before sealing or painting where carpenter bees are know to be a real problem. If you see holes where carpenter bees have bored into the wood you can soak a cotten ball with this solution and stuff it into the hole. The bees will have to eat their way back through this cotten ball thus the end for the bee. It the bees are out side of the hole when you treat the wood they will not like the smell of the boric acid treated wood whether is painted or sealed and just move over the the neighbors house instead. The wood peckers should follow as well.

If you really want to go cheap you can do like I saw one of my competitors (if you could call him that) doing right down the street from me a couple of years ago. He was using a hose end sprayer (like the kind you would use to apply fertilizer on your lawn) to spay straight bleach onto the house. He would use the garden hose for the hose end spayer then turn the water off and hook up his little pressure washer to rinse. Then repeat for each side of the house. Come to think of it....I never have seen this guy again, but, hey, he was doing it the cheapest way he could think of I am sure.

I'm just putting this out there for your thought on this. I run into a guy today that insisted I put behr's solid color stain on his deck. It did not matter what I told him about behr and the actual cases I have run into with it. It also made no difference what I told him about the good results I have had with other poducts. All that was important to him was that behr claimed they had a ten year warranty and his mind was closed to anything else. Have any of you run into someone that has been so influenced by the cliams of these warranties that they could not hear a word you were saying? Just courious as to what y'all may have told him.

[ Len it's good to meet a pressure washer close by that's on the board. I actually live in Anderson as well. How is the business going for you? Business is good for me, but I stay primarily in the flatwork cleaning, and I travel a good bit too. Micah, Good to meet someone else from Anderson too. I have been on this board for a few years now and post every once in a while. Business is good for me too. We do a lot of deck cleaning and sealing along with a lot of deck repair. Sometimes if we can schedule such work we will even take on new deck construction in the fall and winter when everything else gets slow. Lately residential pressure washing has taken off and we are keeping pretty busy between that and the deck preservations. We do a little concrete, but mostly residential driveways and patios while we are there washing a customer's house. If I get any leads on larger concrete jobs I'll steer them your way. I think I saw you pass my house a couple of times on E. Calhoun Street. Give me a call and stop in sometime.

I wouldn't go below 4 gallons a minute and probably not over 5 1/2 gallons a minute if you are using city water. Eight gallons a minute would be wonderful, but you would most likely need to carry a water supply with you all of the time. Most houses I do are on city water and I have never run into a problem until yesterday. I tested the water supply at this house when the customer said he had bad water pressure and found I was getting less than one gallon a minute. I can't imagine how you can even take a shower, wash clothes, or even how long it must take to even fill the toilet with that kind of water supply. I mean this guy needs a plumber worse than he need his house cleaned. Anyway, I have a storage tank inside my trailer that I converted to roof cleaning since I had never run into a water supply problem before, but now looks like I need to re-think this and add at least a buffer tank to my 4 gallon a minute machine just for these situations.

For those that do deck construction or repairs and work with pressure treated pine. Keep a can of WD-40 near your saw and spray a little on the sides of the blade every once and a while. WD-40 will cut the gunk that builds up on the sides of your saw blades and makes cutting PTP a lot easier and faster. The blades last much longer as well. $$$

This is a story that was on the "Buyer Beware" segment on the local news tonight in Greenville, SC. Now along with lowballers we have scam artist ripping the elderly and unsuspecting off to make us all look bad. I thought I would share this to see what everyone thinks. _____________________________________________________________- Buyer Beware: Home Pressure-Washing Ripoff POSTED: 4:32 pm EDT October 2, 2006 Email This Story | Print This Story Blanche Littleton's house was due for a cleaning. It had been a couple of years since her last pressure-washing. "It was dirty. My vinyl siding was dirty. I had had it cleaned about two of three years ago. This friend of mine only charged me $100 to clean it," Littleton told WYFF News 4's Tim Waller. So when a man knocked on Littleton's door last week and offered to pressure-wash her house, she figured it would cost around the same amount. There was no reason to suspect otherwise "He said labor would be $60, and the cleaning fluid would be $29 a gallon," Littleton said. Littleton agreed to let the man clean her house, but when the job was finished, the 80-year old woman got a nasty surprise. Another man who showed up at her door said the crew had used 23 gallons of vinyl-siding cleaner. The bill, he said, was more than $600. "I told him I wasn't going to pay that kind of money," Littleton said. "Then he said, well, I'll turn you over to the collection bureau. I said, you go right ahead. I'm not paying you that kind of money." Littleton said the man agreed to give her a senior discount for a total of $471. Feeling frightened by the large man in her kitchen, Littleton said she wrote him a check. "He kind of pushed me into it, kind of scared me a little bit," Littleton said. To make matters worse, Littleton said a bottle of pain pills on her kitchen counter had been emptied while she went to the bathroom to get the man a bandage for his cut hand. She also had doubts about the vinyl-siding cleaner they used that cost $29 per gallon. "My whole house reeked of bleach for two days. I believe he used bleach," Littleton said. Littleton said she doesn't know why she agreed to let a stranger in her home. She urges others her age not to open the door if a person comes to their house offering to do a job. _______________________________________________________________

Paul, Sign me up. I have a customer's name I can put beside every item you have on your list.

God, I hate it when people put a solid stain on a deck. It's just a personal opinion of mine I suppose as I like the look and feel of natural wood. However, other people have their own opinions and you will always find someone that either already has or wants a solid stain on their deck. Just for a choice of products Cabot's has a decent solid stain, so does SW with their WoodScapes, but the one I have found that is the best as far as fade resistance is Sun Proof by Pittsburg Paints. Look for it at a Porter Paint store .

Have you looked into BioBarrier Mold & Mildew Preventative from Sun Brite Supply?

Hey Jim, How are things down at the beach? I haven't been there in I bet 12 years or so. Is Drunken Jacks (my all time favorite sea food restaurant) still in Murrels Inlet? I may have bought stuff from you before if you worked a contractors supply house in that area. I lived in Georgetown for a while and worked at the Wynah Power Plant construction. Then I worked on the Highway 17 north bound lane bridge over the South Santee River. After that I come up to North Myrtle Beach and repaired the swing span bridge in Little River after it got struck by a barge. The last time I was in that area I built three bridges in Ketchup Town right out of Anor. I hear things have really changed since I was there. I have been wanting to come down sometime, but if they tear the old Pavilion down I just don't know if it would be worth it.

Dan, I was a bridge construction superintendent for thirty years before I went on my own doing what I do now. (Got tired of living out of a suit case all the time). I poured hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of concrete in that time. Anyone that has traveled anywhere through South Carolina to near Jacksonville, Fla. has probably crossed or driven under one of my bridges. Concrete was my life and these little low spots that showed up in a bridge deck was the bain of my existence. There is no really simple or cheap solution. It can be done, but you are not just going to be able to go to Lowe's and buy a bag of cement to spread out over the low spot. There are products there that say they will work, but in a short time they will fail and start to spall off. Pressure grouting to raise the slab is expensive and even with that they have to drill a series of holes through the slab and that will always been seen. A patch is a patch is a patch. Overlays are expensive and require a lot of prep and should be done by someone that specializes in that field. Phil had an idea of putting in a drain...this is probably the cheapest route. If they don't want that, this only about a 1 1/2 cubic yards of concrete so complete replacement is not totally out of the question, but here is an option you might sell him own and you could do this yourself. No matter what you read on the patching materials you find at Lowe's etc. to make a permanent patch that will last the life time of the slab here is what you need to do. Take a good straight edge and lay over the low spot. Start at one end and mark out where the low spot starts to slope down. Keep moving the straight edge and marking until you have the entire circumference of the low spot laid out. If you have a power saw buy a few masonry blades and make a saw cut at least 3/4" deep around the low spot you have marked out. (diamond blades cut better, but are very costly) You can straighten out this lines and square the corners if you need to, but just don't short cut back into the low spot. Now rent you a 15 pound chipping hammer. A rotary hammer/ drill with a chisel bit will work. Chip out the entire low spot all the way up to your saw cuts to about 3/4" deep. Clean this place out very good and wash away all the cement dust. Look in some of the commercial contractor supply stores or a good concrete plant an get a non-shrink/ non-metallic high strength patching grout. Follow the instructions on bag carefully. Place it in the low spot and screed it off level with the rest of the slab. Now someone said a patch is a patch is a patch and that is true. You will see this patch, but you could stain the whole slab or you could do what I have done in a few garages this summer and that is an epoxy coating. I have put the flakes on some, but I think the colored sand gives a better texture and look for patios etc. This all sounds complicated, but I could make a patch like that in about four hours time. I do have all the tools and equipment, however, so you will have figure in some leg work getting all this stuff together in your proposal but you should be able to do this patch for around $500.00~$600.00 not counting the staining or epoxy. Maybe the squeegee is not such a bad idea after all.