plainpainter

What's your business model, Jim? Do you stain a customers deck every year - or every other year? Aren't most of your decks hardwoods? Personally I am having most luck so far this spring with parrafinic stain on my pressure treated. But I liken that to the 'sponge' nature of the wood. I can see it leaching out every rainstorm still 5-6 months after application - but since the wood took so much stain - it's ok, but I just don't see hardwoods being able to soak up enough stain to last? I've probably emptied close to 5 gallons of stan in two applications on about 400 square feet of decking area. Can ipe soak up that much - and endure the constant rainstorms continually leaching it back out?

Here are a few more....

Remember that guy, Shane, from texas? I just remembered, if there was one person that never ever ever never had a complaint about his stain - it was him, I think he said he was using the same product for like 12+ years - never a complaint? What did he use, Baker's grey away? And here everyone else is testing a million products under the sun, jumping ship time after time - pledging allegiance to a 'better' stain product - and there is that one guy, still using bleach, still using the same product, still happy customers. What's he doing now? I bet the ******* is enjoying texas style spare ribs at his favorite grease pit.

I love that last word, lasts. Kind of says it all - don't it?

Here is a philosophical saying I just though up: Life is like a deck stain that doesn't live up to it's promise. You end up using it anyways.

I use to make 'good' money as an IT geek - wasn't a bad gig. The only problem about the 'buffer' analogy. Is that at some point if the harddrive klunks - even the cache will run dry........Good thing Scott has multiple 'harddrives' Western Digital, Maxwell, Fuji,ibm, seagate, etc.....

I know a guy just like that - he got put away for 5 years. He broke into and robbed over 40 homes before he was caught. People like that are criminals - if you want to remove them as your competition. Then make sure at town meetings they don't hack the police budget - as long as there are detectives, these guys will eventually be caught.

Not going to name names, but looked at a deck the other day - one yr. old application, and I am not liking the results. The prep was questionable - due to many reasons - but I got two more, where the prep was spot with a full 40 grit sand! And if those two decks don't blow me away, I am going to put down the staining brush and call it quits with deck resto - it will be official - nothing out there works. Customers sloshing on cabots and sikkens back in '00 have better looking decks than me.

If ESI was a harddrive in a computer - you can liken Scott to the buffer cache - ensuring a steady flow of data transfer.

Just looking to see what guys are charging{not in an absolute amounts} for maintenance deck staining on handrails and floors? I am talking a simple bleach or percarb clean on the deck - nothing too strong - and a thin coat to all railings and floor boards on a previously restored deck. If I break down my cost of stripping/defurring/staining/materials for a full strip job - and say I am charging $0.75/sq.ft. for stripping and neutralizing - what would you charge for a 'simple' maintenance wash - and should I keep my 'staining' rate the same? Is materials rate alot less as well? Just wanted some opinions. And what are some minimums would you stick to for a service like this? At least with woodtux - I could stain easily the same day.

Ok - I understand where you guys are going - but I was more thinking that if you came up with a price per square foot to strip and 'balance' - that wouldn't be the same price for a simple bleach/surfact and rinse? Am I correct? Say I charged $0.75 for just the stripping and 'balance' alone per sq. foot. I wouldn't charge that full amount for just a quickie wash with bleach and some dawn

This is a perfect example where you beat your chest out to the EPA - and tell them to puffer off. Reclaim Schmeslaim. They're going to bankrupt everyone with their -it's just freaking wash water, throw in some bleach and you neutralize any and all bio-hazard material from pigeon poo for example. I'd think it would be better for the city. What has happend to our society where they make it illegal to be clean?

I guess it's just good old fashioned 'bait 'n switch' as Scott pointed out. They talk about the attributes that it performs well - petrifying and preventing rot as the 'bait'. And the switch is that you put this stuff on your deck thinking there will be no maintenance involved.

Just curious what everyones' thoughts were on the subject of VOC laws when it comes to coatings. The thought process is that if less fumes exhaust into the atomoshpere - the better it is for the environment, right? Well what happens when we put on two consecutive coatings of 350ml/l VOC coating - that doesn't equal the performance of one pass of a 550ml/VOC coating? Double the time a Company truck was on the road servicing the deck, double the amount of caustics, surfactants, and acids that were applied to this deck, and double the amount of energy used up and pollutants at the factory end. And not to mention two consecutive coatings of 350 is really equivalent to one coating of 700ml/l. So what did the environment really gain? It looks like a loser to me.

Beth just got done reading the first article - I find it very interesting about the height of manufacture of ozone, which occurs most during hot summer days just after noon. And as you probably know the formation of this ground level smog is the combination of nitrous oxides emitted from car tailpipes and certain organic compounds like hydrocarbons - or what most people here know by the acronym V.O.C. My personal problem with the whole 'reduction' of VOC's arguement - is that it will exactly 0,zip,zero, nada impact on the total manufacture of smog emissions. Why may you ask? Good question. Hardwood trees manufacture and emit a Volatile Organic compound called Isoprenes - and evergreen trees emit another Volatile Organic compound called Terpenes. Interestingly enough their manufacturing of these compounds occur exactly the same time that this article states that smog is produced. You can see these terpenes and isoprenes emitted from trees on distant hilltops, as a thin veil blue cast. The amount of these VOC's that the sum total that all the trees in our forests and neighborhoods emit is far greater amounts than all the coatings industry bestows upon us. One person once claimed to me - trees are not polluting our eco-system! And this is quite true - the emissions of these hydrocarbon VOC's that trees exude is totally natural - what isn't natural is the presence of nitrous oxides emitted from car exhaust. As long as there is car exhaust - there will be ground level smog. There will always be an excess of isoprenes and terpenes hydrocarbon emissions being emitted from trees to combine with all the nitrous oxides car exhaust to form ground level smog. And reducing VOC emissions from coatings will at best reduce smog formation during winter - as trees emit very little emission during this time. But as evidenced by the above article - this smog manufacture is predominantly during the summertime - which would suggest to me, that coatings VOC's in themselves don't register as a serious contributor to smog. Because if they were - and we were to assume the use of coatings doesn't stop during the winter months, those months that trees don't emit hydrocarbons, then we should be seeing detectable amounts of smog during the winter months as well. The indication that this smog is greatest during summer months - is just a very strong indication this interaction of VOC's and nitrous oxides - is due mainly from VOC's from trees along with the interaction of nitrous oxides from tailpipe emissions.

Another thing to think about - plastics, basically trash is making it into our oceans - and they are eroding. This plastic breaks apart, gets grinded down into smaller and smaller pieces. This one guy showed on the tv showed some plastic 'sand' - basically a conglomerate of plastic waste ground so fine that it looks like sand. And his worry is that in the next few decades - this grinding action will continue until these bits of plastic are at the molecular level - and now will get incorporated into the food chain - imagine fish swimming around the oceans with molecular bits of plastic dispersed within it's tissues - our food supply will become a hybrid of natural/plastic origins.

Beth I don't argue about pollution harming our planet - I am just suggesting that looking at the VOC's on the side of a can lead to a 'myopic' opinion of what product is more 'pollutive' to our environment. I am just saying take a product from it's origins as a crude product all the way through manufacturing to it's final resting place on a store shelf - is a low VOC product truly better for the environment? You yourself said these coatings don't perform as well. This implies that customer may have you on their properties twice as often - isn't already a larger biological footprint? Servicing a customer twice for the amount of time a better product only needed you once - requires above all else, twice the fuel to get your vehicles there, twice the amount of time pressure washers are eating gas, twice the manufacturing - because they are using twice as much product than previously. Just take a few steps back, and does a lower VOC product truly do the environment good? Look at it another way. Say there are a million decks - and in 2 years time 5 million gallons of stain is sold to use on these decks. If you make a product worse by lessening the VOC's then potentially what took 5 million gallons of stain now takes double that 10 million gallons in the exact same time frame! Thus now instead of having 5 million gallons exhausting into the atmosphere - now you have 10 million gallons of the 'reduced' emissions stain - is this really better?

I agree Jim - everything we do is bad for the environment. But I think there should be some way of evaluating the sum total of what we do as a society. Perhaps VOC's are bad - but how bad are plastic latex non-biodegradable resins in our dumps? These synthetic resins are derived from petroleum with lots of manufacturing before it finally comes to rest in a latex LOW-VOC can of paint or stain. But oil based stains can be totally natural, with little to no manufacturing i.e. linseed oil, turpentine - all resources that are naturally occuring.

it's the same basic technology - if you go to Deck Stains Deck Cleaners Staining Wood Decking Sealers Concrete Paver Restoration you can find the same class of product, called 'cretowood'.

Same product - different company hawking it - or same company with changed name.

Well I have to disagree with you on the whole global warming. For me on the east coast - global warming will melt the ice caps and destroy the 'Gulf' stream - which is what brings our temperate climate. If this Gulf stream disappears like many global predictions models suspect - than it will get much colder especially where I am living. Perhaps Global 'Warming' isn't a good term instead Global 'Change' would be better?

As everyone knows - everything you do related to your business needs to be appropriately accounted for. Today I had a call to do an estimate which included washing vinyl siding, some sheds, and a trex deck cleaning - total came out to $700. I spent an hour and a half driving and doing the estimate. I will now take notes on my drive times and estimation times - if you do 3 estimates - and your closing rate is roughly a third - then it's possible to do 4 and half hours of driving and estimation time to just get one job. Although this is based on just this one estimate - we'll see how it averages out. I am also going to keep a 'closing' statistics town by town. If some towns just don't pay - then I will know not to bother even driving - or do heavier pre-qualification.

Now you guys are advising about quotes over the phone - I thought that was the worst kind of practice? Don't you need to meet a customer in order to sell to them? Granted I didn't really do a great job selling that day.

I will be seperating closing rate statistics as well based on where they came from i.e. yellow pages, classifieds, referal. And perhaps different categories - be it a typical house washing customer, vs. a roof washing, or a deck restoration. The thing I faltered on today was closing the deal. The lady of the house set the appointment up, the husband was there - he takes the estimate and says he will run it by his wife. I think I will also categorize these 'bait 'n switch' couples. I don't think meeting with this guy was any better than leaving an estimate in a mailbox. I will do a callback - but pretty upset at not knowing what to do in these instances.

I don't think Russell really wants the 'retail' end of the business. If we support guys like Scott - he can take care of the warehousing and distribution end - and leave Russell to the manufacturing.