A few months ago I did a softwashing job on a dark blue vinyl sided house. In spite of my tireless rinsing efforts, it wouldn’t stop drying with weird run/splotch marks. For full disclosure, I may have had too much surfactant (Dawn) in my mix and was using 12.5%sh at a 1:4 dilution and it was a hot sunny July day, but rinsed it to death. The end result was this:
In a previous post of this photo I was told that I’d have to replace the siding and it was permanently discolored. After months of trying to work with this client I finally got a chance to go back again and try some other chems. After some research here and other places I decided a 1:1 water:f13 gutter grenade would be a good place to start. My findings have left me scratching my head.
Here is an affected area with the splotch marks identified with painters tape:
Here it is after applying f13 with a rag and pretty promptly drying it:
So it seems that the f-13 is taking it off fine, but I discovered something bizzare— after doing a larger portion of siding and then drying it by hand, I left portion wet to air dry. It seems the marks are being left by the water? But I don’t know how or why it would happen after I soft washed. It is well water, is there something in it that is reacting?
Here are pics of the wet spot left to dry with time stamps showing it’s progression. All of the siding looks like this, does anyone know what’s happening here??
I also splashed some bottled water I had in my truck on there and there was no spotting that occurred. Is it possible the water is what is causing this?
Pics of Aquafina splash drying progression:
