jnoden
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Posts posted by jnoden
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When I started I was looking for a business that wouldnt cost much to get started and I think that is what attracts many people. During my first two years I had cheap equipment that broke down a lot, went to the hospital for getting stripper in my eyes, shot two nozzles off my gun and in to siding and patio glass doors, covered two nice cars with overspray and paid $700 for detail work and things like that. I always took care of the customer though and have lost money on several jobs. Even the people whom I broke the glass doors and siding are still customers four years later because I had it fixed right away and did a good job on their power washing projects. Most people will not post on here mistakes that they have made with customers but It has happened to all of us. I remember almost crying because I took a latex strip job for next to nothing and ended up working on it for a week and a half and made like $5/hr on it. I went through three pressure washers in my first two years. I bought my first 3/4 ton work truck for $8k and it threw a rod a year after I bought it with only 85k miles on it. It went to the junk yard. I have been through 6 employees in two seasons with the best employee only lasting 4 months. Then dealing with the whole Wood Tux Stain from last year. Moral of the story; Yes it is nothing like people are hoping it will be and chances are they are not going to last in this business. I am not even sure how I have lasted through everything. I guess I am a glutton for punishment. I do love overcoming barriers and there is a definite attraction for me to develop and continue to build the business and make customers happy. I found that to run this type of business you need to be a little bit of everything from hard laborer to salesman, mechanic, researcher, accountant, marketer and more.
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Just remember; If you are using a penetrating stain it is not going to penetrate where there is latex paint left.
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Those pics look different then what I know mountain cedar to look like on ptp. I have done 4 decks with the color so far including just finishing my own deck this past weekend and the results on each deck was consistent which is what I like about the high solid content. My deck is part old deck (about 10 yrs old) and part new deck built about 2 months ago. Ill post some pics of both as soon as puddles dissapear and I can get some pics.
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Mountain Cedar is my personal favorite. I just did my deck with it this past weekend and it turned out great.
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purple power. It is cheap and easily obtained. I would spend more money if something worked much better.
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looks like the stain you applied did not penetrate in to the wood which makes me think that there is a barrier. Perhaps the customer applied a clear sealer to the wood that was not removed during the cleaning process? I agree that a strip, brighten and restain should take care of it. I wouldnt charge them for the intial cleaning but would charge more for the stripping and would just explain that to the customer. Im also reaching with my opinion about the squiggly line but maybe after the deck was sprayed with the sealer the customer got rid of the little that was left over by over applying it and sprayed it in the shape of the squiggly line?
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Beth
Is that the super sedar semi solid? I did not get a wood chip of that color and have not used it yet. I have used all of the other colors including the oxford brown. My fav is the mountain cedar.
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I have power washing jobs scheduled for Thurs and Fri. Today I had to send my guy home early because it started to rain and we could not do the staining jobs today and I could not get a hold of the two house wash customers to see If I could do them today instead of Thurs and Fri. Thats what I was talking about If I wasnt clear. Oh well.
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I usually schedule a customer and they know that if there is bad weather even prior to their job that I may need to call them to reschedule if I get behind on work. My question is what about when you need to rearrange your scheule at the last minute due to unpredicted rain and you want to do the powerwashing jobs on a day (such as today) so that you can still keep working. Usually I can call a customer and they are ok with it but lately (and today) I couldnt get a hold of a customer that I have scheduled to wash on Thurs to see if I can do them today. Does anyone schedule their customers for a day but then let them know that you may be over up to so many days before that date (say 3 or 4 days) to do the washing?
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We always use the tarps that are absorbent on one side and impermable on the other side (butyl backed tarps?) for patios beneath the deck. Plastic leaves spills laying on top which can then be accidently spilled on the concrete or stick to shoes. Canvas does not absorb larger spills. I guess you could lay down plastic and then canvas on top. Same idea. We use light plastic spray shields even after masking everything to control over spay from traveling far and getting on thigs.
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Very busy here. Rain all this week though.
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I am tired of spending good money on what is suppose to be good quality ball valves when the handles break off of all of them! Using visegrips gets old. Argh!
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Im feeling the paint too. I was a little behind before this week started and I think I slighlty over booked for the next couple weeks. Definately forsee weekend work. I need to find some better rain gear for my guy since he is apparently too good for the Captain Gordons yellow rain gear. Plus pants keep ripping. Any suggestions?
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Atually we usually only get about 8 months of washing per season. If we had 12 mos of washing I would have quit my FT day job years ago and would probably have 3 rigs out there by now. I am maxed out at this point with both jobs and may quit the day job next spring and put out another FT rig. I thought I was going to do so this spring but chickened out. Tough decision.
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Thanks. Yeah the website does well since all my advertising including phone book has the address. Also it helps that I have it listed in maps and have been tweaking the adwords account for the last 4 years. I am still working on getting better organic search results but I do have it listed with other directories and registered with companies that are rated by google.
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It depends how much you want to work. I basically have two full time jobs now even though I started power washing by myself PT about 5 years ago. I plan to do over $100k in sales this year. We only have about 9 months of a washing season here.
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As you probably all ready know wand marks are usually caused from removing oxidation. If this is the case here then you can make all the siding look like the actual wand marks but it takes a little time. Bump up your house wash with a little sodium metascilate and use more pressure than you normally would one lap at a time perpendicular to the siding and not in to the weep holes. This usually cost a home owner 2x as much as what a regular house wash would cost because we use a large artiulating step ladder and a 7 ft wand and it takes time. I always ask the customer if we can do a test on a bottom lap of siding. I havent done a lot of it but havent had any problems yet. Aluminum siding is a different story.
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I have a Trex deck that I am doing in a couple weeks. Since I do not know exactly how well other sealers work on Trex I told the guy I will put on the stuff that Trex recommends and has sent out to me in the past for warranty work. They claim that it helps prevent the little black dots (mildew?) from returning.
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I still have a box of restora that I need to use on my house to see if I like it. It gets good reviews from the contractors who have used it. Does anyone have any before and after pics of restora on an entire house? Also has anyone seen what the siding looks like a couple years after restora was applied?
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we use ours for all deck chemicals and stains ans they hold up well. My only problem is we really go through the batteries. We bought AGM batteries this year because they can take a deep discharge and do not lose power as they sit around. We connect the leads to the deckster directly to the battery charger that we run to the customers house and that seems to work well. There is no need for a battery if you do that.
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I used the rustic brown semi transparent for the first time the other day and the deck turned out great. It sprayed nicely, covered well, cleaned up off siding easily and the color was nice. I will be trying the woodland brown semi solid this weekend. I did a sample of the semi solid for the customer because they replaced some boards with new boards and flipped a couple other boards. the owner gave me a sample of the three boards (new,flipped and previously stained) for us to strip/wash and stain. the semi solid penetrated well and covered so that there was not a very distinguisable difference between the new and old wood. The customer saw the sample and hired us right away. I am just trying to decide to what point should I push the semi solid over the semitransparent. Some customers care about durability more and not so much about transparency of the stain. Im sure the semi solid will retain its color longer however I am not sure how easily it will strip off if the customer ever wants to go to a more transparent stain in the future. I think I will try stripping the new sample that I just made.
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Im also wondering where you can get size 30 nozzles. The largest I ever see are size 12.
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I usually add Dawn to my mix but I will try the Calgon thing or a rinse aid and see if that helps. I should add a little plex master (wax) to my wash even though I usually apply that as a 2nd step. I think that would cause the minerals and calcium to not stick as well to the glass but I also think it may not allow the soap to cling like it should. Steve I would be interested in speaking to you more about referral work. Give me a call sometime and maybe we can work something out. (717) 808-6645.
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There are a lot of customers with hard water around here. After the windows dry on some jobs you can see hard water streaks. I use to think the streaks were from not rinsing well enough until I started to triple rinse the windows. I do explain to the customer that if they have hard water then it could occur however I dont feel ok with it. On the other hand I do not plan to climb ladders to clean each window by hand. I am thinking about adding a water softener to my rig but space is at a minimum. Do others see this as a problem and what do you do about it?
The Weather
in Wood Cleaning & Restoration - Decks, Fences, etc.
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If I get a couple dry days I do wood sealing and that is it. If I have pressure washing scheduled then it gets rescheduled to do the wood staining. I explain that to all customers prior to them signing the contract and it is in the contract. I can also usually get power washing jobs done sooner if there is a lot of rain. I try to schedule a good ratio of pressure washing and staining on any given week. I usually do not schedule more then two full days of staining on any given week due to the chance of rain. If I only did exterior wood it would be a major headache. I will book out a month or two for wood jobs but leave openings for power washing only jobs.