We have been so busy I haven’t had a ton of time to write. Here are a couple interesting items from the past several weeks in bullet points:
- Stairwells can we a real time suck if they have poor drainage. In the past we have used a shopvac to pull the water out of the bottom. No longer! We have purchased a sludge sucker for our teams to use… it should make removing water a breeze.
- Composite decking can be tricky, especially some of the older installs. You have to use a chemical mix and very low pressure. In the past couple of weeks I have seen some decks that were damaged by improper cleaning. You should NEVER use a surface cleaner on a deck.
- I love passing on cleaning knowledge to anyone that will listen. Most recently I meet a couple at Home Depot that were checking out pressure washing equipment. I struck up a conversation and gave them some pointers… hopefully it saved them some time.
That’s all I have for now. Once things slow down, I will be posting more.
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A great day washing two amazing homes today.
We started the day
off doing a deck wash and partial home wash. The home owners were very kind and
interested in our cleaning techniques. They also made the best sweet tea! We
used an acid wash to get the deck back to its best. This home had aluminum siding
and fortunately no oxidation on it… made life so much easier!
The second home was
a 4,000 SF beast. The peak on one side was three stories high and had a hill
fading away from it. I was barely able to hit the peak! It also had a screened
in porch with exterior railing that needed cleaning. This is always tough
because we don’t want to over spray into the porch. We managed it well and the
home came out looking amazing!
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Today was a day of lessons learned. We washed an amazing home out in Mount Airy that was located on 20 acres of land… it is beautiful country out there. Here are the bullet points of lessons learned:
1 – Never run out of Nitrile gloves… bleach stings on exposed skin. I can’t believe I used to not wear a respirator.
2 – Always scope out a roof from all angles before cleaning. I lugged a huge ladder around three sides of the home before I realized I could have cleaned the entire roof from the fourth side because it had basically no pitch.
3 – Clients can be real cool. I was able to share a beer and watch some baseball with my client today after the job was complete.
4 – Always keep a back up soft wash pump on hand. Mine began to crap out and it made the wash much more difficult.
5 – Houses that have wells can be difficult because of lack of water flow. This home was running at just under 4gpm and my machine was struggling.
All that being said, it was a successful day with a happy client.
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Today we had the pleasure of performing a house wash, as well as pressure washing the driveway and front walk way. This beautiful home was getting prepped for going on the market and the owners wanted it looking its best.
The house was a unique challenge as it had aluminum siding that had some oxidation on it. If you’re not careful with aluminum siding that has oxidation, you could end up with a total restoration job on your hands. You want to use as little pressure as possible, as not to disturb the paint on the siding. We used our 12 volt dedicated pump to apply chemical at 60 psi… the cleaning mix went on beautifully! We then used just a garden hose and water from the spigot to rinse the chemical off. We had to rinse the sides several times, but it was well worth the extra care and effort. The finished product was just what the client wanted.
The driveway and walk way were uneventful. They came really clean with our BE surface cleaned being driven by our 4 gpm pressure washer. At one point I looked up and one of our local competitors had pulled up to check out our work… I gave a friendly wave and he drove off.
All in all, it was an awesome day and a happy client.