Celeste

We printed a lot of information about the fungus and provided it to the homeowner, told them we were sorry but we couldn't help them. We have also contacted most of our builders that were using mulch and they are all switching to pine straw now...amazing what education will do. Thanks for all of the responses.

HELP!!!!!! We need a good, good waiver of liability for our big contractor to sign. It's been snowing here about every other day, temps try to get into the upper 30's and this guy wants the brick cleaned on one of the houses (we managed to get the other three during one of our balmy 41 degree days last weekend). So far, one guy in charge is getting it when we say the temps are NOT optimal for cleaning brick (and concrete??) but in the event that upper management gets very insistent, we want a very thick butt-cover. We don't want to refuse the work if it may cause us to lose this contract and he may say that he won't hold us responsible if the faces of the bricks blow off two days later, but I want it in writing - preferably signed in blood. If anyone has a waiver that they will share we will be eternally grateful. Thanks for any and all help, Roger & Celeste

Paul, I knew I could count on your wisdom - they backed off when we mentioned signing something and are leaving the temp decisions up to us now (thank goodness). The project manager told me that he was not used to what our company projects - his last p/w were two guys with a HD 1800 pull around machine. We did some flat work today with a surface cleaner and he was bug-eyed at that - it was quite funny. I am going to print your information tho and add it to my wisdom book :) Thanks, Celeste

Photo please :)

I wish we didn't have to worry about temps - here in the Carolinas we routinely drop below 30 degrees from about mid-November until mid-March. As to your other question....yes they had these washed very late in the game, another point that will be brought up this week. Since we had already done the interiors of these houses (including the window tracks), during our re-clean, we'll have to clean the tracks again from the pressure washing. This is a new kind of development concept for around here and there are still many bugs to be worked out. These particular four houses are the model homes and scheduling has been beyond the normal house for sale. We had to clean a little earlier in the process because the designers and furniture had to be put in - the weather has delayed other work being completed. My personal opinion is that winter is not the optimal time for them to be trying to do this. Pressure washers are not the only tradesman to be affected by cold weather - can't pour concrete, can't paint and if those two aren't complete, CAN'T PRESSURE WASH!!!!!!!!!!!!! On the upside, we didn't have to worry about any landscaping around these houses :) Celeste

Excellent points Paul - There are issues lacking in their contract (clearly it is for their benefit above all others) and we are addressing everything at one time next week. For example, the main office, the construction (scheduling) office and the sales office in this development - none know what the other is doing. We scheduled cleaning the exteriors of 4 houses today (all requiring some acid work) because the construction office wanted it today. We had realtors and potential buyers ALL OVER THE PLACE - walking through our blockades because they couldn't drive through them (I mentioned acid and they beat a very hasty retreat), but this traffic slowed our progress down. Realtors are now pissed off because we prevented them from showing the homes - contractor is going to be pissed on Monday am because work is incomplete. 6:00 pm on Saturday when no one in the management position is going to answer my calls was IT for me. We shut down. If the right hand, left hand and rear end of this operation can't get themselves coordinated - we will begin charging for fouling up our schedule. GGGGGRRRRRRRR....thanks for letting me vent. Truly this is a great opportunity for us - we are so new and to have landed an exclusive contract this large. We should easily have 2 houses per day interior, maybe 3-4 per week (but all in one day) to pressure wash so even with all of these, we'll have time for what we really want to do, which is to preserve and refinish decks! I'm sure we'll be getting more efficient with every house and we'll be open to any suggestions we can get and will have no problem sharing any shortcuts we come across :) Celeste

Paul, their contract was about 40 pages long - it covers virtually everything. We have already had to renegotiate our price as what they represented was not accurate. Thus far, they seem very willing to work with us. My main concern of the contract though is the out clause - which is there. Right now this is a great safety net since we are just starting out. I'm living on these boards looking for ways to make the pay worthwhile!! Celeste

Insurance - both General Liability & Workman's Comp. This may take some shopping (don't know about your state - took me a couple of days to find ours in NC) Some will say if you're the only employee you won't need WC until you get employees but it has been our experience here that you can't get on most builders jobsites without the little piece of paper. Good luck - did you get my pm? Celeste

Another thing to consider on employees - cleaning interiors requires nothing more than someone wanting to work. Temp agencies can prevent payroll issues that some smaller companies don't want to mess with. When you find one that really gets it, offer to hire then if you find you will continue to need steady help, otherwise, work until you about drop and then call in reinforcements :) Celeste

We are doing the interior final cleans (in NC area). List B is pretty accurate. One builder pays us .15/sq ft + $6/window. We upcharge $25 for excessive drywall, excessive paint, excessive trash (if if happens) We get average of 1 house per week, 1300 sq ft takes 2 of us about 4 hours. Our very large contract (signed for 8-10 years) pays .12 / sq ft - nothing for windows (in the middle of re-negotiating this though). Houses range from 1500 - 3500 sq ft with bookoodles of windows. Quantity reigns with this contract though since it is for 4-5 houses per week as well as all of the pressure washing. Women may have the cleaning gene but my husband kicks butt on windows. It's pretty rough work (or it can be) but the weather doesn't mess you up much and if the work is consistent - hey the bills get paid!!! Best of luck, Celeste

The Bible is no more heresay than reading these posts. The books in the Bible were written by specific authors and none require any more proof than a history book that you pick up off the shelf. I personally don't feel there is any such thing as "blind faith". One has either found their faith and lives by and through it or they are just going through the motions. If you truly live your life as God guides you, there are no questions. Only when you have truly experienced deliverence and wholly given your body, mind and soul to God can you see that faith is not blind. It is a gift.

For those who are reminiscing about good old stuff, I got this email just the other day: "Hey Dad," one of my kids asked the other day, "What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?" "We didn't have fast food when I was growing up," I informed him. "All the food was slow." C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?" "It was a place called 'at home,'" I explained. "Grandma cooked every day and when Grandpa got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it." By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it: Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears AND Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died. My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 11, but my grandparents had one before that. It was, of course, black and white, but they bought a piece of colored plastic to cover the screen. The top third was blue, like the sky, and the bottom third was green, like grass. The middle third was red. It was perfect for programs that had scenes of fire trucks riding across someone's lawn on a sunny day. Some people had a lens taped to the front of the TV to make the picture look larger. I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called "pizza pie." When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had. We didn't have a car until I was 15. Before that, the only car in our family was my grandfather's Ford. He called it a "machine." I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line. Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was. All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers. I delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which I got to keep 2 cents. I had to get up at 4 AM every morning. On Saturday, I had to collect the 42 cents from my customers. My favorite customers were the ones who gave me 50 cents and told me to keep the change. My least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day. Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them. If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing. Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?> MEMORIES from a friend: My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old. How many do you remember? Head lights dimmer switches on the floor. Ignition switches on the dashboard. Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall. Real ice boxes. Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about! Ratings at the bottom. 1. Blackjack chewing gum 2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water 3. Candy cigarettes 4. Soda pop machines that dispensed bottles 5. Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes 6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 7. Party lines 8. Newsreels before the movie 9. P.F. Flyers 10. Butch wax 11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive-6933) 12. Peashooters 13. Howdy Doody 14. 45 RPM records 15. S&H Green Stamps 16. Hi-fi's 17. Metal ice trays with lever 18. Mimeograph paper 19. Blue flashbulb 20. Packards 21. Roller skate keys 22. Cork popguns 23. Drive-ins 24. Studebakers 25. Wash tub wringers If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age, If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt! I might be older than dirt but those memories are the best part of my life. Don't forget to pass this along!! Especially to all your really OLD friends....

That is so unbelievably true!!!!!

Here's an option to going to Florida ;)

So far all I have found is a company that claims to have a chemical that will remove (obviously I have not tried it yet!) Site is www.protekchemical.com and the stuff is $95.00 for 2 gallons - supposed to mix at 10:1. They even have a link on the site about the nasty spots. Local company here says chemists can't find a way so I'm skeptical. Also found a p/w company out of New York that says that they can clean it. Here is a quote from their site: "The positive aspect is that it can usually be removed with the proper detergent and cleaning equipment. Hot water pressure washing coupled with light hand agitation with a slightly abrasive scotch brite pad will usually do the job. " I plan to call them and see what their proper detergent is. I'm so aggravated!

I love reading these boards - it's better than school :think:

Why is okay to let the water go into the ground...ie, routing water into grassy areas or in the vertical cleaning area, water that goes up must come down and usually it soaks in next to the building you're washing - but water on flat surfaces must be reclaimed instead of letting it go into the gutters and storm drains? Ground water is not necessarily affected only by what goes into the storm drains?????

Back to the intermittant cold weather - our rig is on a "non-enclosed" trailer. It was 70 today and will get down to 27 tonight. Temps will be back up in the next 48 hours so we're not ready to flush & winterize the system. What is the best way to keep the thing from freezing or cracking or whatever other horrible thing that can happen? (Murphy's Law originated at our house!)

Reed - your son, along with many others who are becoming Veteran's today - have the prayers of our family who are fortunate enough to have had ours come home safely.

Please forgive my ignorance in this area, although I'm getting more educated on it by the day, but are you all primarily referring to pressure washing large flat surfaces because I really can't picture how you can reclaim your water at a residential property. Most of our water soaks right into the ground when we do a house, gutters or roof. This is clearly just one more aspect of pressure washing that many new companies may not take into consideration. We are not doing parking lots, drive-thrus, etc... for this specific reason. Don't have money for the reclaim piecy-parts right now so don't take jobs that may have a need for it. Thanks, Celeste

You get doubly taxed as a corporation - LLC is a great way to go but talk to a good atty and acct to make sure.

LOL - guess that wouldn't be the average-joe pressure washing equipment, would it? I'm still interested in experiences with a foamer type application though if anyone wants to share :)

It looks like some sort of foamer - anyone have any input on using one of these? We have a small one and it seems like a really good notion - having your chems stick to where you put them instead of rolling down the wall but as a real newbie, don't have any idea of how to use it or with what chemical, although I'm sure any acidic is out.

The guy we bought our equipment from devised his own stand-off extensions for a standard stabilizer. He added angle iron to the each end of the stabilizer, drilled through and used a hinged pin thingie to secure each side. The little rubber feet that come with the stabilizer slipped on the ends and poof - he was another couple of feet from the wall. We haven't tried it yet but he tells us it worked just find. The angle iron was only a couple of dollars and the stabilizer is under $40 at Lowe's (quick attach/detach).

So I'm a little confused here with the 3/8 vs 1/4 thing. We don't usually use a downstream system as we have a pump dedicated to spraying chemicals so on the one hand the 1/4 would seem to be the one we'd want, however, if the need were to arise to use the downstream method, can it be accomplished with the only drawback being the weight? We've got to do something pretty soon about this - the yellow noodle we're using is killing my partner!