Cleaning a Driveway

:laughing:

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Just for kicks, turn both of them perpendicular to bar and run it. Then youā€™ll know why.

Having them turned the right way not only helps your cleaning spread, it also helps the speed of bar so you get more revolutions.

I feel like the kid who just found out heā€™s adopted. Used it today, works great.

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Thank you, @Racer, for taking the time to make this video. For an inexperienced person like myself, this video helped me out a lot!

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They are some invaluable tips in that vid . It is long but well worth it . The walking perpendicular to eyesight was the first jewel i heard him speak . Glad to see this vid is still up even though it is so old.

LOL, 4 years old. Technique hasnā€™t changed.

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Well, you had it mastered even back then, lol. The sludge sucker is now on the ā€œget one to try outā€ listā€¦

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Itā€™s one of those things you may only need every couple of months, but when you do, itā€™s really good to have. Go somewhere and buy 30-50ā€™ piece of that flat firehose you see everywhere for cheap and band it to the end. It takes up very little extra room and youā€™ll usually need it. The 25-30ā€™ that comes with it, generally not enough in my experience, to get whatever youā€™re pumping far enough away. If you donā€™t need just loosen hose clamp and slide it off. Like this, I just cut the fitting off and slid on and clamped - https://www.harborfreight.com/2-in-x-25-ft-pvc-discharge-hose-63414.html

I may have gone with 3", Iā€™ll have to look

@Racer newbie here, (thanks for the education :slight_smile: ), just finished my first driveway and Iā€™m going over my SC setup. I noticed you had a ball valve before the gun. Iā€™m thinking of removing the gun all together and just using the ball valve to turn the water flow on/off (Iā€™ve got a pump bypass for when my hand is off the trigger). My thinking is to reduce strain and fatigue on my hand. Any thoughts on whether this is a good idea?

Got a pic of your setup now? The setup I was using in video the same as I use now. Does your surface cleaner have a gun on it now. What SC are you using?

ATM Iā€™m using a 16" mosmatic SC with a lance attached to a gun (and a 4GMP 13HP Honda GX390 @ 4000psi). The 16inch doesā€™t have handles like the whirl-a-way, so Iā€™ve got one hand on the gun and the other on the lance to hold it steady and manoeuvrer it.
When I upgrade to 8GPM Iā€™ll get an 18 or 20 inch with handles. I figured if I removed the gun and plugged a BV into the lance I could switch the water flow on/off as needed and still protect the pump as itā€™s got a bypass that dumps the water when iā€™m off the trigger. Also, I could disconnect from the SC lance and use the BV with a fan tip to rinse as I go along the sections I just washed. (Iā€™ll post a pic when Iā€™m next in front of the setup).

Newbie question: So you said in the video that you didnā€™t pre-treat because it had rained and everything was already wet. It sort of begs the question: why waste chems pre-treating in the first place? why not just wet the surface down, clean it, then post-treat on all jobs?

Pretreating helps lift up some of the dirt with the soap and bleach, although itā€™s mainly reserved for super bad concrete. I mainly wet, surface clean and post treat as necessary with 2-3%.

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Huh. Good to know, I thought pre-treating was just a standard process no matter how dirty it was. And I didnā€™t realize a post treat was that hot I thought it was like housewash strength. Do you usually blow-dry flatwork with a leafblower after or just let it dry on its own?

Sometimes you can get away with housewash post treat if the stripes are faint. Some of my jobs are so dirty a stronger mix is needed.

You donā€™t need a leafblower unless there is a lot of debris before the job, and even then a HP fan tip is just as effective.

Ok sweet, thanks for the tips

Thereā€™s some difference in wetting something for 2 min versus soaking it for 10 hours. Try it with a dirty dish dish with dried on food sometime.

On residential I pre-treat with my HW mix 99.5% of the time and post treat with the same, 98% of the time. It costs hardly anything other than about 5min of your time.

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10 4, Iā€™ll try a little of both. Thanks for the reply

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Key statement there. Try different things and see what works for you the best and most consistently. As in most things, experience counts.

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I love this analogy so much. Works for hot water, pressure, soap etc.
another part of me hates it because doing the dishes is on my least favorite activities list