tropical wave

Lance, do you find the gutters clean just as well after you apply your housewash mix even though the gutters are now wet?

Mike.... couple things 1. if your gonna do a lot of this, go with a shurflo type setup, the pump up bites, except in emergencies, you wont use more chems, you'll just move faster without stopping for all the pumping and filling and mixing.... 2. I dont think many here worry much about fuzzies on fences, its a fence... (unless its furred really bad) 3. and finally, what are ya gonna seal it with? looks great by the way

about 13 years ago I spent the most miserable week of my life in Cuba, ran into the biggest spider Ive ever seen....no lie, this thing was about the size of a manhole cover......thought it was gonna carry me away if I didnt haul a$$ outta the way.....in the food chain, I couldnt think of anything that would eat that, except maybe the cubans, and I think it ate the cubans as well.. :)

That rocks.....Im in tears over here, fantastic !!!

Lots of great reading and information folks !!! Russell, why doesnt ESI just make the WT in different colors? and eliminate the whole tinting-measuring-stirring process? for maint, in 3 years or whatever, the same exact precise tinting is needed to match what was done 3 years prior.. maybe Im a tard, but it seems like a PITA.... Im sure there is a reason, was just wondering..... :)

DITTO..... says it all :cool:

Russell, what makes the wood-tux wet a bit more difficult to apply than ready seal? more back brushing? flashing? drips? overlaps?

then they move to Chicago... :) one of the real problems is that it has become a way of life for a lot of them. It has to change for the next and following generations. Our kids see us work hard, sometimes at 2 or more jobs, both parents working etc....a lot of these kids (no fault of their own) see entire extended families scamming the system, selling dope, doing nothing to better themselves or their situations, it just becomes the way it is....there are exceptions, some kids grow up thinking, "this really blows" and they go out and get an education and a career and I respect those folks.

is there a patio or something that is underneath the deck? The slider must go to something like that or is it just grass? the stripping will be easier then staining regarding the masking. I would hang the plastic from the underside of the deck so it covers whatever you dont want stripper on (slider, house, siding etc) you can use clamps or staple gun to attach it.....just soak everything with water, apply the stripper and soak everything again as its dwelling.......if there is a patio (cement-brick-whatever) I wouldnt use plastic when staining, the sealer will run down the plastic and puddle onto the patio, unless you plastic everything, then the sealer will puddle and drip when you remove the plastic. I use a lot of cardboard, canvas and the like when staining....

Nope, Nada, Not a chance......Doesnt work that way. They will take no pride in themselves, so why would they take pride or even respect anything around them (especially everything thats given free to them from all levels of government).....Rats live in squaller and they like it that way.

Im going to get beat up on this...... but, I'd like to know from others that have been there too, as you can imagine, during the past 2 weeks of swat training with about 45 guys, we've been talking about this a lot (since many of our friends and co-workers are down there now) and one good friend of mine was shot at yesterday....no return fire as they were travelling on an air boat and didnt know where the shot came from, but back to my point/question, now, Im sure they will rebuild N.O. and maybe they should as its a very important sea port and the history, blah, blah, blah....but that city is (was) an absolute DUMP, I'd use the term we've used the most, which is ****hole......but there are many that have been there and some live somewhat near there....what do you all think?

yes they were..... we have 2 of our 4 teams down there now, talked to them today, they are running from Baton Rouge to N.O. providing security to the relief supplies being shipped in......many trucks were hijacked by armed gunmen prior (dont see that on the news)...... they are going to split them up as some of them are needed to clear the downtown hotels and office buildings that are being held by other armed suspects.....and what they are calling "squatters" (people just "in there") They were all sworn in as LA State Troopers the day they arrived so they could enforce LA laws.....

a deckster and/or the dek'er may be a wonderful thing, but.....(long pause) its basically a shurflo setup that can be constructed with some inginuity and designed to meet ones own needs......am I wrong? If so, (been wrong before) what is there that makes them different or better? maybe I need to add something to my setups..... :)

well said...... its no different "to a degree" in MANY cities across America, Chicago, NY, L.A. (if the Rodney King riots dont ring a bell), Houston, Miami, Baltimore, Washington DC, Detroit, Atlanta and the list goes on and on....Savages is a perfect word Ken.... and it is not a racist thing nor is the article from racist view points, all races are and can be equally savage. Predators in nature dont try to take on the healthiest animal in the herd, they cause commotion, disstractions and target the weakest beast they can.........

Tony, "when your feeling down, look at a clown" :)

Heres a good (but long) assesment of the problems....this is part of what Ive been attempting to get across.....among other things :) .....it is somewhat long. An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005 by Robert Tracinski It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild. Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting. But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster. The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state. For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country. When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11). So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire.... "Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. " 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' " The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad. What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them? Sherri figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.) What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa. There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves. All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency. No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism. What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men. But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them. The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

that is true...but when the big winds come, call it whatever you want, because it'll be called "gone"...... and there are sooooo many in hurricane/tornado prone areas....but, what are ya gonna do? nice and clean by the way....great job....i like to brush gutters anyway, less chem useage and saves trying to see if theyre clean and if not then applying again and getting the brush anyway....

C'mon now, thats funny..... :) (maybe not)

Hey Rob, first of all, Nice to Meet ya :) , next time in vegas we should hook up, we LOVE it there...... we are told that we would need to bring tents, sleeping bags, water and food for a minimum 2 weeks, which we know would be longer.....lots of less lethal (my personal favorite is the 37mm sage) and LOTS of .223......but New Orleans is not the place now, looking at mississippi.....in about 20 minutes the first teams are heading out.... still waiting to hear about the rest of us.....but we were told that our mission is strictly support for the L.E. already in place and as immediate action response ........ not patrol, but to provide cover for air and marine rescue. rob, if you go, good luck and take care of yourself, ken, if I go, Ill put PP on a few bean bags for ya....like the military put FDNY and NYPD on the cruise missles sent into Tora Bora :) still standing by to stand by...nothing moves fast with government

weve been called off L.A. but so far we have three teams scheduled to go to mississippi, team one is leaving for downstate IL tomorrow morning, then heading out from there with the equipment, our gov just signed off on it this afternoon.....minimum 2 week deployment per team....the rest of us are still waiting to hear....we've been pulled off our regular duties and are still training for it every day....todays 12 hours were CQB, vehicle assaults and hostage rescue with a 20 minute lunch and about 2 gallons of water---pooped out again.....and the deck jobs are waiting :) those people really need some help down there, which Im all for, and there are plenty of those type people to help them, but as we were talking today, we really just wanna get there and put a real bad hurtin on people that need it..:cool: (we're a bunch of a-holes, and love it)

If your leaning towards more wood restoration as your primary mission, and some house washing......cold at 4gpm with 3k-3.5k psi is fine. 5gpm is better, as is 6,7,8......for wood, you'll probably use 500-1000psi at the most....the volume of water is what you want to remove your stripper, cleaner and all around rinsing. and you can clean most residential homes with the same machine, hot works quicker and usually requires less rinsing, but if a $1000 machine is in the budget more so than a $4,500 machine, then your answer is almost staring you in the chops......because even if you have the 4 grand and thats it, dont forget the trailer, wands, hose (supply and pressure), tips, nozzles, plugs, quick connects, ladders, x-jet, chems, (house, cement, gutters, wax, rinse aid, wood strippers, cleaners, acids, sealers, various soaps etc etc) brushes, poles, mineral spirits, tarps, plastic, sealer and chem delivery system (shurflo-flowjet-etc) and on and on......oh yea, insurance, advertising, vehicle signs, t-shirts, business cards, blah, blah, blah.........you can always upgrade and everything you aquire down the road (mostly) will work with a hot rig as well, then you can get into the bigtime commercial stuff like gas stations, dumpster pads etc.......good luck and shoot me an email or PM anytime :)

what? The only surface that self cleans is a "cat"......

Hi Trent....welcome from the left coast :)

if you want it done right and professionally, you dont have all the materials....if its "painted" (ie, covered with actual paint), wash it, and where the paint has flaked, sand the edges "feather" and repaint......but paint on exterior wood (a deck) is not a good thing.......I guess in your dilema, it really all depends on how you want it done.....just covered with clean paint and fresh, or a professional deck restoration.......Im sure more will follow toss some pictures up if you can......isnt winter about to start in ND? :)

dont even get me started :mad: we will find out by Friday if me and the rest of my swat team (about 25 guys) will be heading down......we've been training all week (10-12 hour days)