plainpainter

Anyone have experience matching Cabot's Mahogany Flame color in the TWP1500 series of stain? This would be for Mahogany decking, the customer says it's cedar - the only cedar that it looks like it is spanish cedar - but my guess is that it's still mahogany.

Rick, you're kind of snotty. You know I do not like the A.C. product - but you had to go thumbing your nose into this tread and bringing it up. This thread was asking if anyone had any experience with matching a Cabot's color in the TWP line. It had nothing to do with A.C. or any other product. Why do you insist on being an A$$?

I've been using TWP steady now for 3 years. I would never use the product you use on decks.

Well, I don't really want to use A.C. anymore - although, I've had some success with the product on Mahogany that suggests that it may be a plausible product to use. I just don't understand these stains anymore. I've had great great results with TWP on pressure treated, and not so great results with it on Mahogany. And I have the reverse results with A.C. I've had lousy results with it on pressure treated and decent results on Mahogany. I just don't understand how one stain can perform wonderfully on one wood and not on another - and get the reverse results with a different manufacturer. I don't want to pass judgement on TWP yet, as the mahogany deck I did is super hot with tons of south facing sun - and there are other variables I dont' want to discuss. And the other thing is another deck I did with A.C. that I thought was mahogany with 1x6 boards I think turned out to be another kind of wood, where A.C. was nonexistent on it the following year. But it didn't look like Ipe either, perhaps teak or maybe that spanish cedar that looks identical to mahogany to me. Which is what this woman seems to have.

They have redwood, http://www.amteco.com/products_twp_1500.php#.UeK9lPmkqqI I don't know from these online color samples if it's similar - went onto the Cabot's site and the Mahogany flame didn't really look red to me - that's why I hate these online colors. Just wondering if anyone knew from experience.

I find that no matter how competitive gutter cleaning becomes, there always seems to be room to make a handsome profit. I can't even tell guys how much I make anymore with gutter clean-outs, they just can't comprehend why I am getting so much money.

Just made killer money prepping a cinderblock foundation for painting with my turbo nozzle.

I just washed my own house the other day, took down some notes based upon it. Let's say you do a house that requires 500 gallons of total solution/rinse, and you have 5 gallon muni supply. You will need approximately 130 gallon tank for a 9 gpm machine. And that assumes you come to the job with the tank filled. As far as I am concerned large buffer tanks are for starting a job immediately, if you have to wait for it to fill - you kill the whole purpose of it especially when you are trying to combat low flowing muni supplies. Let's say you are doing two homes that require 500 gallons of solution, which is what I am estimating a 3600-4000 SF home would need, then you need to double the buffer tank to a 260 gallon tank. If you plan on three homes of that size, then you need a 400 gallon tank. After each job the tank will be approximately filled a 1/3rd less, if you get the 400 gallon tank and do 3 homes of this size. This assumes no waiting around for the tank to refill

I have a 5.5 gpm machine and the 35 gallon buffer works just fine. If you need any bigger than that, than you need to charge clients extra for water delivery - because there are real supply issues at that point! My only issue is that the traditional float valves that looks like it came out the back of a toilet - allowed me to have water fill right to the top, yet it couldn't hold back any serious muni-supply pressure and the tank would leak from overfilling. The Hudson valve that replaced it, can take the pressure - but you lose like 10 gallons of capacity - and I hate that!

Just curious, has anyone seen or heard of these products? I first got wind of this when some pressure washer was leaving brochures in my neighborhood. Here is a link: http://www.abrp.com/ They seem to use a product that is oxalic based for restoring weathered wood as opposed use caustic solutions that I see paraded on this website. -Dan

Without knowing the size of your home, it's hard to say. If it's a one level ranch that measures 17 deep and 34 wide - then I'd say the quote was right on the money.

Lance, stop asking questions about this. A homeowner that wants oxidation removed on their aluminum siding - yet doesn't want to pay for a repaint, is a homeowner that's going to stick you with painting their whole house for free. Just walk and look for another profitable job.

Most definitely - get drills and core those tips out until the chems draw. I tried a 4040 with my two machines hooked together - and I thought I was going to blast the house off the foundation.

with that setup you'll only pull chems through a 3/8" hose barb - only the single injector after the machines are joined up will work with 3/8" line. But you'll have to happy with 15-17:1 downstream rate. If you want to stick with 3/8" line and a single injector - you'll have to get a 1 gpm delavan and pump chems through the chem injectort in order to make it work. If you just want a normal setup - you'll have to resort to all 1/2" hose. And once again you can put an injector after each machine.

I went through the same thing you just did two years ago. I couldn't get the machines when hooked up together to pull chems through even 100' of line. And I took the hose reel out of the loop to see if it would help. Nothing but nothing would pull chem unless I was just shooting straight out of a 3/8" male hose barb. But I was doing something slightly different as well - I was putting an injecter sized for 5.5gpm machine after each machine before they were joined together. Probably forcing all 10+ gallons through a single injector would get the injector to once pull again. But the limitations is that the max flow through a single injector is 84 ounces of chemical per minute. To a 10 gpm machine that's a downstream rate of 15:1. I don't know about you, but unless I can get my hands on 18% sodium hypochlorite, that's useless to me. That's why you will need 1/2" hose to make the system work well.

Whether you realized it or not, you've just confronted the limitations of 3/8" hose. You will never get chemical to inject until you upgrade to 1/2" hose with that setup.

I have a large deck in the process of restoring - and I have 10 gallons of TWP 1500 cedartone on deck. Just curious if there were any advice for using the product. Not a long time user of TWP. I've started using TWP 500 last year and TWP 200 on my own deck. Applying the 200 series is a nightmare - but great results! Applying the 500, I remember thinning it 25% and it was still thick - and had a 125 SF per gallon spread rate, but after only one pass. I was routinely doing two passes with A.C. before this - and years ago was doing one pass with woodtux. Is the 1500 series a one pass or two pass application kind of stain? Is it a thick product like 500, does it lap easy? Any and all experiences using the product would be helpful - so I have some sort of game plan together.

One year old Defy on pressure treated, Rod. I wish all my work looked this good.

It's not just mildew issues, I had some hardwood customer - not sure what the species was, could have been ipe - whose deck I stained with a rustic brown and sierra redwood blend that looks a lot like that new Mahogany color. And that was the year we had over 100 inches of snow, but still 9 months later he said the entire deck was all white. Now he never gave me a chance to look at it and see for myself before he let his uncle restain it. But I'd assume that meant there was no pigment left. And that stain was lambswooled spread out - no chance of over application. Don't get me wrong - the stuff is beautiful when it goes down - it's just soon after that I don't like it. Not to mention I was in the shed looking through all my cans of stain - and noticed a color I haven't used on a customers deck 2 years this coming september. And the stain on the top of the can is still really goobery - most stains I would have used in the past would have been rock hard by now.

My intention was not to strip it with bleach, Rick. I've never seen a stain you could strip with bleach unless it was on it's final legs and 6+ years old. My intention was to clean the mildew, and in the process when I was done, I noticed a 100% removal of the stain. That's when Istarted to learned that this stain had very little tolerance for being cleaned - I ruined a customers one year old finish on Mahogany as well and had to restain much of it for free to keep that customer happy. I think another customer must have cleaned their own deck with some store bought bleach/soap product and killed their finish as well.

Tony, this is my front porch at the 4 month mark. Notice how nice the finish is where the mat layed down. Look how bad the mildew is on the remainder. Look at the top board - you can see an area between areas of mildew, notice how the pigment is totally gone from the wood. This was no simple surface mildew that a 2 cups of bleach per gallon of water could clean up. By the time I got the mix strong enough to kill the mildew - this finish was totally stripped off the wood. This happened twice in a row to this front porch, died at the 4 month mark. Then I gave it a finale bleach strip and have left it ever since. The wood is greyed out - but no mildew.

BTW - l love how everyone trashes on waterborne products such as Defy. That pressure treated deck I did with Defy - I seriously couldn't tell it from when it was first done. I'll keep track of it as time goes on, but not one shred of mildew or peeling. I'd probably not choose the cedar color for the future, as it's a bit orangey for my tastes - but they have a more pleasant 'pine' tone that I would be proud to offer.

Why shouldn't it last? What's your rationale? The deck is under trees and hardly gets much direct sunlight - so why should the trans-oxide pigments burn up? Is Mahogany and Amber truly a different formulation? From what I understood, they're only color changes - but the basic makeup of the stain is no different. And the failure as you can tell is from going black, mildew ate right through the stain and coughed it right off the deck. Understand I put a full 1 oz bottle of M-1 mildewcide into every gallon of thinned stain. This is just one example. I have second hand reports of decks I never had a chance to visit or was already redone - but the feedback was never good. And the remainder of the work I have been able to see was very disappointing at best. So-so results at best on pressure treated with the semisolid line, somewhat acceptable results on mahogany with the semitransparents. Mildew is a severe problem with every deck I saw, and the stain would strip off way before I was able to kill the mildew. Even ESI's timberoil would clean up relatively well.

My gripe isn't so much aimed at the semisolids line of A.C. I think their performance can be decent, especially on Mahogany. It's a good thing you didn't go with the 500 series of TWP. I tried that stain, and it was discontinued for a good reason. It never dries - fortunately I put it on a really dried out deck, so it was able to soak in enough. I have looked at the photos of timberoil, but I have to make sure the time stamps are right and exactly when I applied the stain. The initial application photos are on another computer. TWP 1515 is not the same league as timberoil - timber oil is most like readyseal. My timberoil pics look probably worse, but I'll have to put them together and let you judge. But I noticed at the time the photos always made the stain look better than in real life. And timberoil always turned black with mildew. But they aren't toners, they do have tons of trans-oxide pigments that put them into the semi-trans line. BTW - TWP 1500 series is the replacement for the 500 series. I believe in having several products as well, these pictures are from decks I did 13 months ago - taken a couple weeks ago. This is when I really began to realize the failures I was having. The pressure treated is Defy Extreme in Cedar, the Fir deck is A.C. cedar toner. I did alter the A.C. to promote better results - I thinned it 25% to promote better penetration, as Fir is considered a hardwood. I added a couple of ounces per gallon of jap drier to promote it to set up faster and lock everything down, and an ounce bottle of M-1 Mildewcide to each gallon. Well to each 3/4 gallon, as the final gallon was 3/4 original A.C. stain and 1/4 extra mineral spirits. See the results for yourself. The corner is where the customer tried a bleach cleaner to see what it would do. I honestly don't know what to do with this job/customer. Still trying to figure out the next steps to rectify the situation.

Here is a photo Scott Paul posted on his own deck of TWP 1515 at the 20 month mark, it may be 5 months less of weathering - but to my eyes looks worlds better.