plainpainter

Well, Ken I am willing to give the stuff a try - but plan on me harrassing you on the phone, lol!

I get your point Ken - but what do you think of a product like sikkens Cetol SRD? Is that product so bad? I have never tried it - my mainstay has been a product from a small paint company located in New Jersey, Muralo. And I use their Lumberjacket clear/natural deck stain with trans oxide pigments and tung oils. If I did get this woodtux stuff - do you have any color recipes - why do Beth and Rod talk about Warm Honey Gold, is their a recipe for that color?

You see railings on the left side of the house? That's a covered rear entrance/porch like 8 by 8 feet with double the amount of railings and spindles you see there plus deckboards that need another coat of latex porch and floor paint. It may be too late in the season for me to start experimenting with woodtux - I really don't feel like storing a 5 gallon container - or getting into the whole business of pigmenting stain, I have no clue where to start. Maybe next year I could experiment with different shades on samples of wood. But I don't know if I can stomach it now. Does Russell at least give formulas for several shades? Maybe a brochure with samples of how the different shades look? Not to mention what am I accomplishing by using a product like woodtux over a commonly carried product like Aussie oil, cabots, or penofin? If I had high profile customers with African Bubinga decks - and I wanted to score big time brownie points and keep a lucrative 5 grand deck job every other year - sure. But for most people with pressure treated - why not stick with the above quality products and sell on yearly maintenance?

Ken - do you know what the lightest shade of woodtux is? One gallon would definitely do this. But she has some railings on her rear door that needs some work too - maybe 2 gallons.

Here is a house I just pressure washed yesterday - some pics of the mold I had to remove - -Dan

Oh yeah - I'm all for raising rates - anyone who can afford to have an ipe deck constructed has a little too much money imo. If you don't charge them good money - especially for putting yourself at risk working with dangerous chemicals - who can you charge good money for? Not to mention with house pricing - I am sure nobody is getting filthy rich even with $4/sq.ft.

Rather than dinker around with my customers - I think I'll go work for Ken, how much you payin' Ken? Although the one thing that is true in this industry - is that even though on the surface someone may appear to be making $400/hr based on their pricing - by the time everyone is payed, materials are payed, bills are paid, the machinist is paid for overhauling your blown truck motor, etc - you never quite get anything close that hourly figure.

I love all the advice, but I do use good detergents, I am using TSP and nonylphenol non-ionic surfactants, just have to work out the ratios. I think I will try upping the nonylphenol. Steve Rowlet's citracleen uses sodium metasilicate and nonylphenol. I just have a ton of 6% bleach I don't feel like throwing away. And I do love the fact I haven't harmed any plants. So I will be looking into a better downstream injector, better wands, etc. My machine is small - but for someone like me that doesn't have a bunch of work scheduled, making $550 in 6 hrs time ain't half bad, even if I had to do some ladder work and scrubbing to get rid of some bad spots. If I had tons work scheduled then I could afford the better higher output machines - then I'd definitely make my operation leaner and meaner, get in and out in an hour and half, no ladders, bigger machine, buy pre-maid chems in bulk. I'll just have to wait. At least I am not applying chems with a pump up sprayer and scrubbing the whole house like I use to.

So Mike you are getting 1.2% bleach onto the house - and that works well for you? I could get that on my downstreamer that's 10:1 if I used straight 12% with my detergents added in w/o any water.

So even with as much as 2% bleach hitting the house - it still came down to using the correct caustic detergent - so I bet with my own mix, I should probably experiment with adding more detergent vs. getting stronger bleach, because I still had some 'stubborn' spots that needed brushing and reapplication. right now my mix is when it hits the house after downstreaming: 0.6% sodium hypochlorite 2.28% TSP 0.456% Nonylphenol Poly(oxyethylene) Question is Ken, how do you get 2% onto a house especially thru a 10:1 downstreamer? Even with 12% that's 1.2% that makes it onto the house.

LOL Ken - I have been downstreaming 6% bleach at 10:1 I guess all the TSP and nonylphenol has been saving my butt - I'll go to the hardware store and pick up 10% and try side by side with the same detergents. Sorry to hijack the thread - but about the TSP, go to your hardware store or local paint store - the latter always has the good stuff packaged by Savogran or something - other TSP's are sodium metasilicate in disguise which I am not so sure isn't a bad thing, but I am a traditionalist and have stuck with TSP for now.

I was there like 5 or 6 hours - honestly I don't know how you guys get the work done so fast. But then again a couple of gallons of 12% is like 4 gallons of 6% and I used 1.5 gallons of 6% - so maybe that's why it required more brushing - I'll try bringing more of my bleach mix and see if a more 'liberal' application will speed up the job. But the artillery fungus is different, unlike other mildew which you see melt right off - this stuff doesn't melt off - you have to brush it, re-apply, dwell, brush some more - and then poof it's gone, the regular mildew just comes off no problem. And I will have to investigate getting a gun extension - the tops of those dormers is as high that I can downstream from the ground - So I had to use a 20 footer around the house

Anyone have any thoughts about how much they may have charged, and how much chemical they think would have done the job vs. what it took me, just really curious.

I don't think the front roof is not uniform - perhaps it was the photo. All I know is that in the two valleys there was about 10 years of leaf pile up turned to mud that I got off the roof. Yes the bricks out back remained green - but she's having me come back to do more work like strip that deck and restain it - she did want her front bricks cleaned, and that I did. About the etching, I find with lots of rinsing it isn't a problem especialy since I put nonylphenol into the mix. I will however check the little roof again - but this is slate, it doesn't get discolored like ordinary asphalt roofing. The back roof doesn't look non-uniform, does it? -Dan

I'm scared about going onto a slate roof - don't exactly know what equipment to use that will not damage the slate. And I imagine it's slippery as heck when it's wet. -Dan

More finished product photos. I used a 1.4 gallon of clorox bleach added TSP and tergitol NP-9 along with about a quart of Olympic's Mildew check, because I wanted some compound that would remain on the house to continue fighting the spores. So with 10-1 downstreamer that's about 15 gallons of solution that made it onto the house, garage, and shed. The driveway side of the house for some reason had that artillery fungus, so I had to brush and reapply chemicals and dwell - but it finally came off - had to brush some spots here and there especially the dormers in the back - took altogether by myself about 5 hours and I made $550. -Dan

Here are some pics of the finished product.

here are some more pics along with my really cool pressure washing setup - actually thanks to Bob from pressuretek - I have come a long way in terms of downstreaming.

Just curious - how much did you charge to do that deck? -Dan

If it's black it ain't bleach! Bleach makes things turn white. -Dan

Frank - I always estimate a job by time and then work backwards to figure out my costs per sq. foot. I do agree that sq. feet of decking and railing is like comparing apples to oranges. How about keeping track of two different sq. footages. One for deck area and the other for railings - and work out your workrates and product useage for both situations seperately. I.E. let's say you charge $1.25/sq.ft. to clean and stain decking area - how about a seperate entry where you charge let's say $1.75/sq.ft. or railing area. If I take a certain amount of time to do railing I will be able to figure out a 'workrate' for it and then use that rate to estimate future projects. I guess sq. foot pricing is a holdover from G.C.'s wanting a quick and easy way to figure out how much it costs to build a house for estimation purposes. One Tiler once told me when you are tiling the jamb or corner of a shower stall - how do you figure that into sq. ft. pricing? There's no area, it's just a straight line. -Dan

Ken I know the guy is a complete Fugazi, I bet he hauls his hot water skid with him everywhere he goes - and just uses the cold water pressure washer when nobody is looking - hee hee. Come to think of it - I haven't seen his trucks around much lately. And I just got a house washing job the other day! -Dan

There's a pressure washer in my area that has a big hot water skid. And his marketing tactics include 'educating' homeowners that nothing but hot water pressure washing will remove the mold and mildew from the sides of homes - and that the rest of us with our cold water pressure washers are a bunch of idiots. So....you could buy a skid unit with a shiny aluminum tank and use the same marketing tactics, although educated homeowners will know you're just blowing lots of hot steam. Maybe hot water pressure washing on vinyl sided homes will work great with less chems. But I have never found that it takes much chems to get mildew and dirt from a house even with my puny cold water pressure washer. -Dan

I have on of those 2 gal plus machines that I downstream at 10:1 directly from a 6% clorox bottle, but I add tsp and nonylphenol to that bottle of tsp and it knocks all the mildew right off every house I have ever done in minutes! I also add that mildew check to the bleach, never have any problems. -Dan

I actually make my house wash from bleach, tergitol, and tsp - and then add mildew check to it - only because I want that compound that will stick to the house and prevent further regrowth for a while. Jomax uses dowicide, or 0-phenylphenyl, a main ingredient in lysol - if I can get a hold of a drum of that stuff I will start using that instead.