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tropical wave

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Posts posted by tropical wave

  1. Posted · Report reply

    too strong stripper mix, too long dwell with the stripper, too much water pressure with the machine......cedar furs easier than the rest, I think its all been covered as far as the basics go.....

    removing the fuzz, I use the same makita 7" buffer/sander with the 3m pads (be careful with exposed screw/nail heads as just one will shred a pad fast) so will cracks in the wood if the pad fibers grab them.......doing spindles with it is pretty hard, as it gets kind of heavy quickly. as far as spindles go, take an old pad (easier to bend) wrap it around the spindle and do it by hand...not really easy, but effective, and make sure you wear gloves as splinters you will get !!!

    I have a sander that has a small triangle tip on the end, its a tight place finishing sander, its fairly useless, so Im glad it was a cheap one. I also use a makita random orbit for spindles and railing......all with 60 grit or smaller numbers

  5. Posted · Report reply

    looking :cool: shane-O.......

    I did a silly-cone behr deck last year, afterwards the water test looked good with no beading, but horizontals look like crap already, but the verticals are still perfect. If it ever stops raining here Im gonna re-strip and do it again.....probably strip it twice for the hell of it...its small (kind of) and nobody is really thrilled with the color anyway. going to go with a darker brown or red as it gets 100% sun......

  8. Posted · Report reply

    Mike

    sorry I hate it when my fingers spell something different than my brain thought it ment. LOL

    I bought a new downstreamer from Bob. Haven't checked it to see what the ratio is and no it isn't adjustable. I believe Bob from Pressuretek comes on here maybe he'll speak up and let us know what the ratio is. Or when I get time I'll check it out and report back.

    Sorry for the confusion.

    cool, let me know how its working out for you....

    you navy guys are always trying to confuse us coast guard fellas :cool:

  9. Posted · Report reply

    Anyone still using this stuff? I have been using it on and off and like it so far. I am wondering if anyone who has used Ready Seal in the past has compared the two. I hear that WD covers a little better than RS and may cost less per job than RS but I havent used RS yet so I dont know for sure. The only problem I had was a couple pails leaked all over my garage after the shipper dropped them off.

    havent tried it yet, may give it a shot on some fences this season.....lots of colors to choose from too. the fence sealer is el cheapo as far as price goes

  10. Posted · Report reply

    nicotine is tougher to kick than heroin...that is a fact

    Im soooooo addicted to nicotine its ridiculous, I need to get off the Kodiak. To get the nicotine from cigarettes instead of the chew, I'd need 2 smokes going at the same time 24-7.......

    I just know with the stressors of my regular job and life in general, without some sort of nicotine relief, I'd surely become homicidal very fast.....

  12. Posted · Report reply

    Ditto on the chlorine. That was BIG part of your problem.

    As for the proportioners, that's a personal thing. I used them at first and hated them. After two years of carting around a 15gal bucket, I tried them again and now I will not work without them. Whether you use proportioners or not, you need to know your to-the-wall (ttw) ratios for your setup. 0.8-1.5% bleach is a good start.

    As for the house, I could do a good job on that sized house in under an hour with nothing more than kroger bleach and no-name laundry soap. For a total newbie, 2 hours max. Any longer and you need to re-evaluate your chems and your process.

    Barry has given you some good advice regarding the mix. Since I'm a proportioner user, I would put 3 gals of 12%, 1.5 gals of citraclean, 1/2 gallon of water in a 5 gallon bucket and use a black (6.5:1 @5.5gpm) proportioner.

    With proportioners: For a 4 gpm machine with a, the xjet black proportioner mixes at 5:1. That means that 6% bleach becomes 1% bleach at the wall. So, whatever is in your bucket needs to be at least half 12% bleach.

    Without proportioners: For a 4 gpm machine the xjet with no proportioner mixes at 2.6:1. That means that 3.6% bleach becomes 1% bleach at the wall. So, if you want 1% TTW, whatever is in your bucket needs to be at least 30% bleach (12%). For a 5 gallon bucket, that's 6qts of bleach. The mix Barry provided yields 0.67% which is a little weak for my tastes but certainly a workable mixture.

    One last comment: Based on the description of the chemical you used, I am going to guess that it was a yellow butyl caustic called "PowerHouse" from SunBrite. Without bleach, you would get results like you experienced. I personally don't use it for general washing because of the drawbacks Ken mentioned, but PowerHouse is a good product suitable for housewashing.

    proportioners are probably a good thing, I just dont like messing with them, so I dont.....I just adjust the mixture in the tank/bucket. 1 gallon of chlorine, 1/2 to 3/4 gallon citriclean and water....open M5.....two buckets will do a decent sized house wash for me....and usually 1/2 gallon of gutter shock does it for the gutters

  13. Posted · Report reply

    I love to fan out my xjet for doing this and I even tried to do it but it kept draw chems and the same time. What tip would be good for wetting things down with not much force, but wouldn't draw chems? .

    Barry, I have a little plastic ball valve in my xjet line, just turn it a quarter turn and the chem draw stops.

    Ive also done a couple house washes with my dual lance, pop the xjet in, do my thing, throttle the handle back and rinse plants etc with the soap tip from the dual lance.

    one more thing, about 6 inches from the xjet itself, in the hose I put a QC, so after I soap, I can QC off the long hose and just have the xjet itself attached with a little hose hanging off.....works great

  15. Posted · Report reply

    I wont do an estimate over the phone, but if theyre persistant, Ill toss out, "somewhere between $229 and $599......but until I see it, the price will be in there somewhere. people can be a bit goofy, so I try to explain the differences between 2 houses that are the same size, but different problems, new vinyl vs old faded dark colored aluminum, no landscaping vs heavy brush, easy gutters vs nasty black crud.....they seem to understand

  16. Posted · Report reply

    I reluctantly went to %#%* walmart tonight, I HATE that place up here, the ones down south are so much nicer, they're hell holes up here, no English is spoken, it smells like bombay india and it looks like a bulldozer just rolled thru behind an F5 tornado........anyway, I looked at the 7 gallon teal colored jugs in the camping section, they are really skinny, seems like they'd tip over fairly easily, especially when half empty or so.....they also had darker blue colored 5 gallon wide body ones that seemed better for xjetting, but I was thinking about filling them with chems, and the mouths seem a bit small.......almost like Id need a funnel to get my chems in....I passed, even though they were $5.26 each.......I may get on later on and see if I can make some sort of improvements......

  18. Posted · Report reply

    As I said I am new to the business, what else do you put in your mixture?

    Nice to hear from another New Englander, where are you now?

    Im in Chicago now.....

    my house wash is (usually) about 3/4 to a gallon of citraclean, a gallon of chlorine, if I want a little more suds Ill shoot a squirt of dawn in there, couple oz's of rinse aid (maybe) and I have the wet wax from RPC also, which is another maybe from time to time....top it with water and M5 XJet it.......

  20. Posted · Report reply

    the day started out as usual on day shift, got in at 0700, coffee and looked thru the 30 or so cases awaiting my attention on my desk. read thru one I got handed yesterday where a nice husband and wife were moving into a new home. the discovered that their wedding rings and her giant diamond engagement ring were stolen...... well, I spent the next few hours digging thru our scumbag files, using some clever "tactics" I was able to identify the jerkoff criminal, and located 2 of the 3 rings deep in the city of Chi, all before noon...........I'll go lock up my bad guy when I can find him, return the rings, try to find the third......

    then I thought, the weather is pretty nice today, I took a couple hours of time that was due to me and busted out a decent sized housewash in the afternoon........busy busy busy (all in a days work :cool: )

  23. Posted · Report reply

    I may have to check out the walmart thing, but Im having no problem with my design as of yet....

    I use a 5 gallon bucket (dark blue ones, they're :cool: ) and I drilled a hole in the top, put a MPT 3/8 hose barb thru a large washer and into the hole, then threaded a 3/8 FPT barb onto the MPT barb. the washer just keeps it from falling thru the hole.....I then have 3/8 hose clamped to the barb with a big filter clamped on the other end...the hose is just long enough to reach the bottom of the bucket. I make my mix, pop on the lid (with the hose and filter attached to the lid), so when looking at the bucket and lid all you see is the barb sticking up thru the lid, I then just put my xjet hose on the barb and its all good........also, I drilled a hole in the top, about 1/2 inch or so right in the middle to keep from sucking the pail inside out, and allow air to replace the liquid as it draws.....pretty simple and it costs about 6 bucks, including the new sexy blue pails... :)

  24. Posted · Report reply

    Mike, I have been using Krud Kutter with bleach, any other suggestion on what to use. Thanks

    sorry bud, I know nothing about krud cutter? I use citraclean from RPC for my house wash mix, I was just wondering if your using a powder, maybe its not dissolving completly......

    say hello to new england for me....NH, "live free or die"...gotta love it, every plate in the USA should have the NH motto....(I was born and raised in CT)

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