plainpainter

Then you have probably rolled your eyes on several occasions - I can't be the only guy that has been asked that question.

Jeff - it's also about education. Guys sell 'hot' water washing as the only way to remove the stuff. Did you see the above photos? That's cold water on a cold day with the right chems!!!!! I run into homeowners who are recipients of these suburban white trash slack jawed contractors - and I see how their 12 year old vinyl looks like it has aged at least 25-30+ years! And then they ask if I wash with hot water? And I am like - are you kidding me? You want me to blast 180 degree water at high pressure with straight 12%?!?!!? That could clean the barnacles off a whale! Why anyone would fall prey to these idiots - but yeah it's our job to educate our consumers about professionals and professional techniques.

Jeff - there are plenty of whores around here - I told Jarrod some of the pricing of my competitors, and he said they were as bad as the #'s in Michigan. There is nobody else pushing the professionalism of pressure washing - lots of guys with expensive rigs, but then work for dirt cheap. They eventually go out of business - but not before they have totally diminished the true value of what we do in the homeowners eyes.

I think the reason folks have the perception that homes in New Englad don't get that dirty is because for the most part right through the 70's - most homes were still sporting a good layer of lead based paints. As homes became more and more vinyl'd and the use of non-leaded paints - New England has been showing it's true colors, mainly black and green. The roofs too are absolutely pitiful.

The afters.....

Wild cherry didn't do it? I throw in a cup of F-13 into my simple cherry/love mix for homes like that - two cups if I think it's really really really bad. I guess perhaps a hot tank is what would be needed in this instance.

What would have been interesting is to have seen a coat of readyseal first - and then topcoat with that stuff - and seen how long it lasts then! I wonder if that Defy stain would work well on ipe, it's water based and epoxy fortified?

To be brutally honest - I think business sucks right now - the customers I do get have been absolutely wonderful people, probably better than I have ever had. Just not enough of them - and with winter right around the corner - I am extremely worried about my options....

Rick - what is 633ADD? Is there an msds sheet with that product? Is it butyl?

Even to this day - my decks aren't completely free of the dreaded grey - there will be a board here and there stuck in the corner that for some reason didn't clean up. And Jim is right - break out the orbital sander and sand it off. It's just that it seem so pervasive in your pictures - that I would give it another wash - how strong was your efc-38 mix?

Rick one way manufacturers get oil and water to mix is they add a surfactant to the mix. One end of a surfactant is hydrophobic and the other is hydrophillic - this property enables water and oil to mix - just clean your greasy dishes and you have seen this effect first hand. The other way which I don't understand too well is that they have simply engineered some alkyd molecules that accepts water as it's 'solvent'. If you go back far enough back in time - latex/acrylic binders didn't work with water at all. The first latexes had mineral spirits for the first generation of products. Only after much engineering and re-engineering did latex finally find home in water. But it's been this way since the 50's - so naturally our intuition has been that latex and water mix - but it wasn't always that way. You may be asking how come they didn't do the same for oils? Well most manufactueres for the last 30 years havent invested any company resources into the manufacture of oil based products - latex is suppose to replace oils, right? It's only recently that companies see that there are certain properties that just can't be easily duplicated with latexes - and the technology is there to make oil based paints waterbourne. I am seeing more and more paint companies re-introduce oil based trim paints again in the face of ever tightening VOC laws. Oils are here to stay whether or not it's spirits or water in the can. It wasn't too long ago - that you could only use turpentine for oil based paints - there too an alkyd had to be manufactured that would accept mineral spirits in addition to turpentine.

That's just UV damaged/greyed wood fibers that you haven't completely removed - go back and give it another efc-38 wash.

Rick - these guys refer to their surfactant 'package' which may or may not included detergent builders along with detergents as a 'soap'. Basically it's the base before they decide what to do with it - add sodium hydroxide and voila you have HD-80, or add oxalic acid and voila you have citralic brightener. The only difference being they may adjust the detergent 'builder' to be in the same ph range as the final product so a bucket of citralic won't contain TSP or STPP along with some surfactant, but may contain SAPP or whatever. I agree with your readyseal and citric acid - you don't need to be concerned with what we're doing. And I like the idea of adding Vitamin C to a deck and not rinsing. Vitamin C will also De-Chlorinate bleach! You can clean a nasty deck with bleach and acid rinse with Citric acid and not have bleach residues! But I would advise applying the citric acid directly to the dwelling bleach prior to rinsing.

Rick - most companies mix in surfactants with the acids for performance reasons, I think. Ask Russell why he does it, he knows better than I do.

Rick - what you have to understand is for us citralic users, we are buying a product with buffers and surfactants, basically a 'soap' mixed with our acids. You are using a 'straight' acid product. I don't think it wise to use an acid with a 'soap' mixed in and leave it there on the deck. I personally believe in an acid product with buffers and surfactants mixed into it. As well, when you neutralize the 'offspring' are 'salts' - and I don't want to mess around with what these 'salts' could do to a finish. Perhaps by using a straight citric acid vs. these other oxalic phosphorus brightening products, you don't have the same issues. And not to mention - a deck that has been thoroughly rinsed after the stripper application - what is really left to neutralize? I use to do full building paint removal with diedrich products left on overnight - and we always neutralized the product prior to removing. A citric acid applied to a deck after a thorough rinsing is perhaps not really neutralizing anything in all reality - and you are introducing Vitamin C into the wood, right? So maybe that's a really good thing to do. But for these oxalic products with buffers - it's a different story. Incidently - Vitamin C neutralizes bleach residue in much the same way as Sodium Sulfite if you can believe it!!!!!!

Beth - I wouldn't know, never worked on an ipe deck - Mohogany has been the closest wood I have worked on. But I am kind of spoiled - I downstream strippers and citralic - I can cover a huge deck in 2 minutes flat with oxalic - and then go to town rinsing real quick.

By the time you have added citralic to a deck - you've pounded it with caustics, re-wetted it with caustics to keep the stripping/cleaning active - and then flooded a deck with water to rinse. By that time your deck is heavily saturated - a quick application of citralic will have completed it's job in ten minutes flat - there will be absolutely no drying issues at that point. Your only concern is to rinse off the deck quick enough to keep the citralic from over-neutralizing, that is if you mix it at it's prescribed strengths - which is far too strong for my taste buds.

I have been pondering this lately - I remember when I was out giving estimates for residential exterior re-paints - I would lose 75%-80% of my estimates. But once I won an estimate - I had work for like 4-6 weeks on average. In the pressure washing business - I am giving homeowners free estimates for house washing jobs that are like $300 plus an upgrade for washing gutters - and still I am losing like 80% of the estimates. And it occured to me - I have to go and meet with homeowners and give estimates 20 times as more often for the same gross sales compared to exterior painting. And lately I am finding it kind of ridiculous that homeowners are getting multiple estimates for a housewash! I am at the point where I am about to decide good economy or bad, that I ain't driving around giving free estimates for any work worth less than $500 - it just seems to make less and less sense. This thought got cemented in my mind when a homeowner asked me for an estimate - told her my minimum - and then gave her an estimate that was about the minimum I told her over the phone. And she still gave me the - I am having another contractor come here tomorrow - I'll give you a call!??!! Of course she never did.

500 is larger than 100 - so twp 500 is obviously better.

Seems like all the buzz has been about Armstrong Clark these days - without much resistance. Remember all the woodtux posts of yesteryears? Does anyone use woodtux anymore? It's all I have been using since I don't feel like experimenting anymore for the latest and greatest. Is anyone passionate about the stain they are using this year?

Chuck I kind of disagree with what you are saying - if you soak and soak the wood, as long as the water isn't puddled - then any cleaner you apply won't be diluted. I do this because I have noticed that decks that are drenching wet - no longer accept anymore moisture - and it allows the cleaner to stay on the surface and clean more effectively. It also has the added benefit of not furring wood as much either - the chemicals aren't diving deep into the wood where they aren't needed.

I didn't think that a simple cherry house wash with bleach could harm a latex solid stained deck. The homeowner wanted me to hit the deck - it was a rental property, didn't really consider doing a thorough job, especially after he popped it on me after money exchanged hands. So I downstreamed the house - let the deck dwell - hit it again after 30 minutes. Then I rinsed with a #15 tip - and my god, half the latex solid stain came right off the wood! I was amazed and sobered at the same time - so yeah, pre-wet and keep it rinsed!

Well this was a make or break year for Russell, I think. Perhaps he has finally made it? With no more issues on these websites. I will refrain from the AC - as I can't juggle so many different brands without losing my mind. And I just haven't had coverage issues with woodtux even on older decks. And I don't understand the different subtleties when it comes to higher percentages of parafinnic oil for re-conditioning older decks? I know Jim explained it once - but to me even a linseed oil based product that dives deep inside the wood, doesn't 'through' cure like wtw - why isn't that considered conditioning?

This is a big Fenner Beef with this product - good luck!

Charlie - what is it about AC that makes it superior to Woodtux for older drier decks?