I honestly don’t know if this is also a chimney, she said it’s a ‘belltower’ but it looks like soot to me.
Now the brick out front is a little more obvious what needs to be done, but the white sign gives me pause.
One more thing, I do not have a 12v yet.
Remember, you can always tape off the sign so that you don’t get anything directly on it. If it’s not too big I’d probably do a gentle hand washing with just soapy water. I think you’ve got the wall covered. The tower is out of my wheelhouse but @Historic could probably tell you what it is and how to approach it if he even gets on here anymore.
You renting a lift @dcbrock for that bell tower ? Awfully high, that’s a nope for me.
Cant yall use a light house wash or a degreaser on sign ?
That’s definitely just a bell tower. The grates around the top allow better sound. The stains from the top are similar to soot but from pollution, rain, metal erosion of the cap. There is no gutter system and where water travels down the tower, it drags the contamination with it.
Unfortunately with brick, you usually have to hit it with pressure to fully remove embedded stains. Soft washing can accomplish a lot, but more often than not, 2-3k pressure at 4+gpm is recommended. For the stains, I use Prosoco light or heavy duty restoration cleaner. Your normal SH, surfactant, etc, mix will most likely do fine as well. Test a small low area first obviously.
Around the cross and metal grates, it looks like a bit of rust so something with oxalic acid would work. Prosoco 600 also takes out rust stains. It requires multiple applications, brush agitation, rinse, repeat.
The sign really shouldn’t be difficult. Test your normal mix on a small area and see results. A good degreaser and some elbow grease would clean that off.
And I agree with @Hotshot that you’ll want a lift for this.
Excellent information there @Historic. Thanks for chiming in.
Hey @Historic while we got you here ,do you use HF acid on brick at any time, the Barc is Ph/ sulfuric acid blends ? Am I correct on that, We use HF,PH,Citric and IBF acids alot and HF does wonders for us as a rust and soot removal. Thanks for your input.
The belltower is optional, she said just whatever I can do with it, no rust removal or anything. I won’t be using a lift, at the most just a stepladder or 7’ wand and shooter tip to DS.
I don’t use Hydrofluoric acid. I stick with Hydrochloric/Muriatic. Not for any reason in particular, I just haven’t used it before. Even with muriatic, I’m always scared I’m going to etch the brick and anything metal like window frames.
I am really not familiar with what exactly is in F9 Barc and Prosoco reps are pretty secretive about it, for good reason I suppose.
I definitely need to try HF and see how it performs. How does it react with your equipment/sprayers? Does it destroy gaskets?
I buy 10 new 2 gallon poly sprayers from chapin a year around $15 a piece without viton seals and have different mixes of acids and degreasers in all of them , to be honest I believe that SH is far more corrosive than any of my soaps and acids but mine are more harmful to human contact. We also DS all our acids and soaps including HF and use the suttner 2315 guns with single braided HP hose’s with heat. We flush our DS and lines every day but the poly sprayers never get flushed or de pressurized. The only reason our sprayers get replaced is because the inner wall of the pump wears out due to sand and grit scratching up the priming wall and the cold winter pays a toll on the wand spraying trigger and lines.
I enjoy reading all you posts ,You have a niche that alot do not. Thanks for your reply Chris.
Reviving this thread, I got the job, Doing it next week. Just need to know if I can DS SH from the ground if it’ll do anything to this at all or do I need to break my 24’ ladder out and shoot some 3% with a pump-up?
Downstreaming won’t do anything to that. Be careful with that ladder. How high up is it? Hard to picture without a door or something for reference.
Not that high, my 24 would reach most of it.
