plainpainter

Just wondering how you guys handle someone who lives on one side of a duplex and only wants their half washed? My gut tells me unless I do the whole thing it ain't worth it for a multitude of reasons, chief among them is whatever I wash is going to go somewhat on the other side - and who knows the people living there will give me untold amounts of grief. I'd love to hear opinions and experiences with this. Obviously my 'minimum' would have to be severely enforced for this kind of job.

Rick - just got done a mahogany deck - and for a linseed oil type stain - it sure sinks into the wood! It's part mineral oil as you know - you should switch over. It is the cat's meow!

I think my reaction would be more of moist warm full feeling in my underwear. First you do it - then you say it.....****!!!!!!!

Someone just called me up asking to have their half of a duplex washed. In my area most duplexes are the result of folks with single homes that put a 100% increase in size addition and sell off half their home to make money before entirely moving out. It seems to be a popular trend in my area for folks that don't want to move out - yet make some money.

It's technically illegal to have a grille on a deck in my neck of the woods - too many homes went up in smoke because of them.

Rick the only need for ladder is cleaning gutters free of debris and dedicated window washing. Washing homes with a 4.5gpm machine is tit - bigger machines only expedite the process - but I've been washing averaging 2 hours per home with 4.5gpms. As well no need for a skid - because there is no need for hot water - I have never seen any test that proved gutters come cleaner with hot water. I have actually changed my chems slightly and 80% of gutters come perfect with no brushing using cold water. Hot water is only truly needed for concrete cleaning and washing fleets during the winter. Mount the hose reels upside down from the roof of your van and plumb your machine from inside on those house wash days - you are just a couple of hose reels away from having a succesful house washing business. Rick - I am telling you this - because I am big time 'woodie' - and trust me house washing is like bonus money for those days you can't work on wood. It's very complementary to your services. Another word of advice - don't advertize house washing - sell yourself as a wood specialist - and you will get customers asking you anyways - and it will be bonus money

Rick - I can understand not wanting to clean concrete - but what's so bad about washing a house? I actually like washing houses.

This is why I don't do wood exclusively - 4 out of those 5 days - you could have been making money washing homes.

Ok - that's good, just with the photo of the ladder up on the roof - it made me think you climbed it. Just remember with that much granule loss - there is little left between rain water from getting into the home - if you ever see a roof like that, it takes very little to disturb it. I know from experience - I have had friends go up on a 23+ yr. old roof to paint the dormers. Supposedly after they were done - they had damaged the roof - and were blamed for water intrusion. They had not seen any damage they had done - but the roof was old and crappy.

That roof came out a million times better than I would have expected. But a good job doesn't necessarily deserve praise. There is a lot that can go wrong with a roof, and by accepting that job you took on a lot of culpability had things gone wrong - and there was high probability of things going on with a roof like that. Next time let the homeowner shell out the clams for replacement - going up there 3 times is unacceptable - you put yourself at risk.

Dare I ask if you bothered to pick up your equipment - or did you just boogey and left everything? Wow a tornado during a job!

Doesn't A.C. already conform to California's strict standards, thus would be able to meet this standard? On a sidenote - if the government wants to bankrupt the wood business - let 'em. The people are the real government - if they feel passionately about something they can reverse any decision made by the feds. On another sidenote - I said for years on painting boards that trees yield terpenes and isoprenes in quantities that dwarfs what stain application could ever hope to do. Having these compounds has always been a natural phenomena - ever notice the blue haze on hilltops on the horizon? That's just Nature's VOC's being emmitted on hot summer days. You need oxides of nitrogen to complete the equation for creating smog - and that comes from cars. There will never be a reduction in ground level smog as long as the oxides are still being emitted from tailpipes - as there is plenty of natural VOC's to combine with them. I have never understood these VOC laws.

I was training my nephew on a big deck job - and because of equipment being repaired, I decided to teach him old school by brushing everything out. And let me tell you - it ain't hard to flick a brush accidently and deposit stain all over the siding even with a brush. I probably wasted more time with a rag soaked with VM&P cleaning up after myself and my nephew - then had I just plastic tarped the whole side of the house and just when to town. Screw the HVLP - when you tarp everything you can go to 'town' with an airless. Although in the right hands masonite boards do work well. I'd like to watch Scott Paul for a day and see how he stains so much. And this is all goes back to different business models. If you are a 'craftsman' looking to make a day's pay - that's one thing, you can bring all your expertise to every job. If you are an entrepreneur {yet knows how to stain} and would rather be in the office and making house calls and booking jobs - you need a 'system' in place that is easily trainable to a new crew every year. It's easy to forget how hard staining is - ever watch a homeowner try this? They get more stain in places where it shouldn't be than the actual wood they are staining - and 90% of most guys/gals are no different. If putting tarps everywhere lends itself to a succesful business model in which you don't have to rely on having qualified technicians - then that's good business sense. In interior painting - I can cut the meanest 'line' in the business - yet I have never found anyone that comes close to my skills. So if I could find a gizmo that yielded 85% of my results in the hands of an incompetent - you can bet I would adopt that for my business.

You know, Jon, you are risking Doolittle's friendship by coming back here.

i hope that isn't a downstream mix! That mix is great if applied straight - even if it is store bought 6% - probably too much soap if applied straight.

No offense to you guys, because I love woodcare - but why do you focus your business so much on wood? Even back in the day when I was primarily an exterior painter, and even during the good seasons - I always thought the logistics of working around Mother Nature sucked the big bananna. I'll never stop my efforts to advertize house washing and other washing services. To me deck care is a way of securing more contract dollars with less proposals - one $1,500 deck is less work than trying to secure five $300 house washes. But still - there is a magic ratio of washing jobs to deck care. Almost like a retirement portfolio - you have your stock mutual fund, your Real Estate Investment trust fund, and your bond fund - and it's up to you to keep a good 'balancing' act between the three types of investment vehicles. Decks are great in their own way - but I think always pursuing growth in house washing pays back in multitudes. You know what all the investment gurus say - don't put all your 'eggs' in one basket!

Maybe Russell should sell it to the Navy so they can coat ol' Iron sides in Boston Harbor a.k.a. the U.S.S. Constitution. Or how about the Mayflower? That's alot of wet hull wood! My first deck I think took 6 weeks to complete - I've got another deck that just needs the mahogany deck boards sanded and a stain - and it's been weeks and weeks and weeks. And I have a feeling folks don't understand that wood can't be stained just because the sun pokes it's head out for one morning. Jim - you are underestimating the rains. I had a huge exterior painting summer in '05. Then the summer of '06 was a washout and killed the momentum of my business - and then summer of '07 was a really bad washout. I think '08 was the best summer in the past 4 seasons? Although that isn't saying very much.

You know william - I may just get a big 'Blue' unloader and unload both machines into the one unloader - and set it up like you explained. The more I tinker with this setup the less it makes sense.

William - your eyes must have bulged out reading this thread - LOL!

hmmmm.....funny that..... The 'maintenance' wash pricing is for the downstreamed 'juice' - definitely doesn't do as good a job. But I want the 'maintenance' money each year - so the results are the results

Looks absolutely gorgeous - you mind if I call for the exact recipe? I own a floor sander - and I've decided that from now on to sand everything - the work is 10x better. When I was using woodtux - sanding was the only thing between blotchy orangey appearance and a deeper more even brownish hue.

Not to change the topic, but is it just me that finds it annoying that these hardwood boards are so wide? I am doing a mahogany deck with the same width boards and they're all cupped like crazy! It would be one thing if they were quarter sawn - but flat grain cuts are always going to cup - it's better to have narrower boards. Back to topic - yeah that job sucks. But even though they will be paying you 3x - are you still going to have the same profit margin had they gone with you initially?

Don't remind me - the 'mathematics' of measuring for some reason broke down on me, I think I did that deck for half of what it's worth. And everything that can go wrong went wrong on that deck. Pressure washer broke halfway through the job - and I was down to 200psi. My airless was still not fixed. Because it wasn't appropriately cleaned - I had to do much more than normal sanding. My floor sander I bought off ebay broke on the second day of sanding and on and on and on. I eventually decided it was a learning experience and one I was training my nephew on. If you notice I stained the underside of the upper story deck as well. At least the osborn brush - which was a first for me on this deck came through - but it wears extremely fast. I think that sucker ate 12 gallons hand brushed! Anyways - Jon - thanks. I think we'll all have better luck with this manufacturer over the 'previous' one. The one thing I found out though, this isn't a one coat style stain. I had a system for getting woodtux perfect on one coat - this stuff after the first coat is still extremely blotchy, unless on extremely new wood where you have to pad off the extra. It also looks reddish for some reason after only one coat?

Here are another couple of photos....

As to the middle picture - since I had to deal with deck furniture and rains that went on forever, I stained the deck in sections. Again - in the middle picture the right half the stain has sat there for 2 weeks curing - where as in the left half - the stain is a only a day old - as well the right half has a thin layer of sawdust that got on it as we were sanded the left half. If I have one gripe about the work - it's that I was training my nephew on this job and we were hand brushing everything out - and the way his brush strokes were going on - it puddled more every three feet or so - other than that he picked up on a lot of things amazingly fast. But it's a small gripe - from looking at the 2 week old work - even those 'undulations' in the way the stain is applied has totally faded away. As to the reddish color - this stain is extremely red up on the first coat - the second application the reddishness disappears. And this pressure treated is extremely beat to death. Where as Jon's is covered and not as weathered - weathered ptp always seems to have deeper brownish tones when finished.