StainlessDeal

Don Phelps: Man, Pressurewasher, Teacher...LEGEND! First the Phelps rig revolutionizes my roofcare mindset, now COWBELLABUNGA BABY!:lgbow:

Don, you've been a big help to me here and on other boards for some time now, just wanted to say thanks and ask this one question: Is that you playing the cowbell? I just ask because I play too! :lgbounces (I've wanted to ask this for waaaaaay too long now.)

Now I gotta get my boot camp floor buffer out for roofs and siding? Man, I knew I was doing this all wrong.:lgsad:

Hey, good luck Lance,I'm pulling for you.:groovy: The chances may be slim, but what a good time anyway. I'm with you in spirit since I just got married in August after buying a new place together in June. You've got a plateful, I wish you the best luck all the way around.:lgbounces

In the wilds of central Nebraska, about this time of year, two beautiful phenomena coexist: The blooming of the state flower, goldenrod, and the ripening of the enormous dove-hunter-terrifying-yellow-garden spiders. These two events occur in tandem and most often in the same fields. Unfortunately for me, all of my favorite natural dove blinds are in places where native ditch-weed grows next to goldenrod. Once a year, in the early morning half light, over-eager to participate in the opening of wing-shooting seasons, I will tool clear out into the middle of a goldenrod field, omly to be reminded of my folly in one of two equally awful ways. 1. I will feel a web as it simultaneously sticks to every exposed inch of my (suddenly) sweaty face. This is often accompanied by the ever-uncomfortable sensation that something besides myself is in this web. And the something always seems to be rather, HEAVY. 2. I will catch motion in my peripheral vision. Usually just a flash of yellow moving horizontally across my chest. Immediate investigation is normally accompanied by screaming and wild self-flagellation. In either of these instances, the culprit is always a writing spider whose abdomen has been swollen to roughly the size of half a Titleist or more. I must admit that few things really frighten me, but these cases often involve me nearly pitting in my shants. Just thought I'd share.

I'm still doing estimates for free, but I'm doing them on my motorcycle unless they are on the way to or from a job already booked. So far it hasn't seemed to worry anybody too much, but I'm curious if anybody else has used a bike and had customers shy away.

I use an older Utilimaster step van on a Ford 1-ton van chassis. It has loads of room, a secure bulkhead and rear door, built in shelving, and allows me to work inside while standing. It also makes a great billboard and has a step bumper that is a real blessing for me. I have a very bad arm and back, and this rig I've been able to customize a bit to make it possible to work alone: I've added a ramp and winch that allow me to load and unload my PWer and drums/chems without help. My rig is one of Fedex's veterans and will (hopefully) one day be replaced by one of the larger diesel stepvans. Just like me, this rig is ugly and worn, but hard working. I'll find it hard to give-up until it finally just fails me, hopefully no time soon.

You just gotta love Snopes!

Sorry everybody, I must be losing my mind. I meant Hypochlorite rather than hydroxide of course, sometimes it just doesn't pay to get out of bed in the morning. I appreciate your patience and forbearance, I won't run and hide. I'm getting married Saturday and I think I'm just starting to realize how busy and wound I've been the last week or so. Maybe a week of newlywed bliss in Yellowstone will straighten me out. I'll be back at it after the 22nd, maybe by then I'll be able to post as if my mind were actually wired to the rest of me. Thanks again for not jumping me too hard, I'm a lucky guy!

Lance and Ken, These numbers are not very good. I'm sorry, but in writing and then editing this post a couple of times before I posted it, I got it all wrong. First, I most often mix housewash in ten gallon batches in a twenty gallon drum. I use citracleen and 10.5% with a little alkaline foamer and rinse-aid. In ten gallons of mix I have four gallons of sodium hypochlorite. For most homes I do( 1200 to 2200 sq feet avg. approx.) this mix will often have a couple gallons left on smaller cleaner homes and sometimes will require more on larger or dirtier homes. I usually will seed a new batch on top of the last batch's remnants, and although I started with Steve Rowletts' recipe, I often adjust for filth or other concerns. When first posting, the numbers I was going to post were closer to Lances, but seemed high to my gut. I was adjusting them downward when family came a-visiting and I hurried the post. As far as my dilution ratios go, my consumption is almost identical whether I downstream or x-jet without the proportioner so I use whichever strikes me as the best method for the job. I have never known the ratio of my downstreamer, and don't readily recall the inbuilt x ratio, but believe it is something like2:1 without proportioners. Honestly, most of the homes I do are so filthy that I sometimes just downstream straight out of the sodium hypochlorite drum and then rinse like the dickens. My relatively low flow machine means smaller working sections at a time in these instances, but to insure a decent end result I am constantly adjusting chems and technique. My chlorine consumption always seems high to me, but I'm coming to realize that most of my customers hire me because I can eliminate the lichen that infests many rooves and even much siding and decks here. Until it gets that bad, they don't buy my services. I should have just told you guys this from jump instead of trying to imagine an average for the smaller, cleaner homes. I'm sorry, and hope to do a better, more helpful job next time I go to answer a question I'm ill prepared for. Even with all those caveats though, I don't think I often do ten gallons on a 1500 sq foot home's roof unless it has significant lichen and needs parts done more than once. My roof mix is usually started as ten gallons of 10.5% in a drum with foamer and 5-10 gallons of water then x-jetted or downstreamed. Unless it's a pretty complicated or large roof, I will often have a few gallons left over. Sorry again for a useless answer the first time and a long and maybe even less useful answer this time. Maybe I should continue to read more and post less for a while. All the best, Scott.

Ken, In my area people in this business are so rare that my chlorine supplier is the only one for at least fifty miles, and I'm his only non-pool related customer. I get my chlorine in 15 gal drums and often draw straight from them. Also, my use is pretty high because our area has a lot of lichen infested roofs that require pretty sturdy doses and second applications. Usually after I figure the time a job will take, the chems are almost thrown in. Not literally, of course. If you get past all of that, I'd say the average 1500 sq foot ranch house with a typical hip roof gets 1.5 to 2 gallons of 10.5% on the roof and around a gallon in the house exterior. My customers usually won't bite until the place is dirtier than a ballpark crapper: Few people around here think of PW guys as anything but fleet and maybe deck cleaners. Sorry so long winded, but I didn't want you to be caught off guard by an easy answer. My consumption varies so much that I usually just keep a lot of 10.5 on hand and monitor empties against my bookings so I don't wind up with lots of salt water on hand.

My little Tuff 3.7 GPM unit has an odd aversion to running well with the m-5. It runs real rich and eventually fouls plugs, especially during very low-pressure work like misting and soaping-up. I don't really like the idea of leaning her out too much, I'd rather foul plugs than burn a piston, but I'd very much rather have it run right in the first place. When I downstream with a dual lance setup I notice less of this trouble, but it's still there. This makes me tend to favor downstreaming, especially since I really only have one good arm to work with. (Less buckets and carts to mess with is good) Anybody have any thoughts on this? I may be missing something pretty obvious, I'm a bit of a novice with small Honda motors. I tried a hotter plug and that helps some, but we're not there yet.

My best hunting buddy is my weimaraner, Pete. He's just turned ten and is currently adjusting to my new home and wife. (We actually get married this coming Saturday.) I don't know what I'd do without him, and don't even want to contemplate going through a scare like you just did. I'm hoping to get him a young trainee this winter. Let me know if you know a good breeder with unspoken-for pups in the next few months. In the meanwhile, keep your powder dry and take 'em when they crow!

What chems would you use to clean a blue tarp roof, Don? Maybe some Tarp-A-Way or Plast-I-Clean from Ripco? (I'm a riot!) Remember to tip your waitresses, I'll be appearing here all night! The scmmers are a shame, whether they are travellers or local, in NE the locals in smaller towns have been tending to show them the door pretty quickly. In the Omaha area they get a little better play. Roll in behind hail and high winds and collect and roll. Makes it tough on the smaller guys and legitimate travelling contractors. Drives you nuts, but what do you do?

Ken, will you photograph the damaged deck so that when you are done you can use the "save" as a talking point in future sales? Kind of a "Before", an "after a dumba$$", and an "after Pressurepros does it right" sort of thing. Do you think that would be like saying,"I told you so"? I'm curious about your questions for contractors list. I know some people that use one, but haven't found one that fits into my spiel naturally. Improvement required, I imagine. Do you give one to everybody as a way to answer those questions about yourself, or do you only give one to people you strongly suspedt are price shoppers? I know how something that seems so elementary as value vs. price arguments can be so difficult to sell. It can rankle to do your best and see that there are none so blind as those who will not see. Good job on the save, anyway, and better luck as the summer goes on.

Don, Scott, Phil, I am impressed and heartened by this thread and the way you disagreed with Celeste (Whom I respect very much). I think that religion is the most personal part of anybody's life and I pity those who never have any positive exposure to it and anybody who can't countenance differences of opinion concerning it. As a matter of faith, religion is here to give answers that cannot be explained rationally. This being true, we will never have a definitive answer for any but ourselves concerning which religion is 'best'. This leads me to the conclusion that we must not allow any religion to enter into state institutions where any people might feel the considerable coercive power groups can exert, even without intending to. Any person who wishes to pray in school may do so whenever they may feel is appropriate. If this is not true where you live, somebody in power is misreading much law. The caveat is that one person's (or group's) praying must not disrupt the normal routine. There is no provision for led prayer or prayer time. I know that when I was in public school and college I prayed often and hard. Especially immediately before, during, and after testing. I'm not joking. If people lived the way most religions require, we would probably live in a better world. This also is no joke, but most of the people I've met who ascribe to no religion and even those I know who eschew religion altogether, require ethical behavior of those with whom they associate. My ethics are bound in the Protestant Christianity I was raised to know. I know of no large religion whose moral and ethical standards are so far removed from mine that I find it impossible to respect those standards. I know I couldn't happily live in a fundamentalist society based in any religion.

I have to agree with Degraffreed and Celeste. The whole mess just makes me ill, but if you have enough money you can get away with a lot. Also, if you have a lot of money, you should be smart enough to know that people are going to look for ways to get next to you and catch you up, to their monetary benefit. That is just one of the many reasons that I try to live by the first commandment of ethics rather than legalistics. Put simply, we all do better when we attempt to avoid both wrongdoing and the appearance of wrongdoing. Any person of any repute at all, will at some time become the target of slander. If you want to avoid those snares, you'd do well not to engage in any behavior that can be presented as immoral or illegal. This is hard to do (try thinking of a behavior that nobody thinks is immoral) but it is your first bastion against the kinds of people who would troll their child before rich wierdos looking for a hit. Mike's creepy, but he's apparently stupid too. I have no idea what the facts of this case were, and I imagine the jury did what it had to, but just having watched Jackson's career tells me he is lowhanging fruit for scumbags to pick. No way in hell would my child go near this guy, or his crazy fans. I'm never surprised by the depths some people will plumb for a buck.

In a past life I was a moving and storage driver and I well remember my skepticism concerning the advent of computer controlled diesels in our tractors. I was sure it was going to be a lot of power-robbing smog gear and a way for companies to govern the trucks more easily. I am amazed at how wrong I was. Modern electronic diesels lay out more power, with less fuel consumption, while burning cleaner. They also do all this while having the ability to track maintenance and failures before and as they happen. They self diagnose and perform better than I thought was ever going to be possible. Ever since entering this business, I have been wondering if and when, this innovation would come to our equipment. It will be expensive, at first, but in a short time we will wonder how we ever got along without it.

Thanks Roger and/or Celeste, that makes sense. You recommend the RPC products pretty strongly, that says something about their quality. I've noticed in my very limited experience that customers tend to respond more favorably if they look in the rig and don't see any products they are too familiar with. One guy really thought he had me when he smelled chlorine and I told him it was sodium hypochlorite. He says, "Household bleach." I say, "Same ingredient, stronger solution, better equipment, superior knowledge, drive to succeed, etc," I think he was relieved when he found I was using something he didn't have just lying around. BTW, I may have been stetching the superior knowledge part, I'm pretty green, but was just cleaning some backyard toys so a little stretch seems OK, I guess.

Howard and Philip, are youx-jetting that mix? I'm a newbie so please forgive me if that's a really dumb question.