Try and upsell them on the ramp. It wouldn’t take any time at all to clean it.
Do the aluminum ramp for free. I did a 300 sq ft aluminum deck the other day in 15min.
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got a pic of the deck. If you’re just using a strong hw mix don’t worry about pre-wetting.
No sir I didn’t take any photos. When do you typically pre wet vs not pre wetting ?
If you’re using stronger chem. Hw mix I barely pre-wet the plants
If you pre wet the wood, then you gotta come back another day when it is dried to clean it properly
Ok thanks. I won’t pre wet then. Do y’all typically do the decks before or after doing the house wash ? And also, the owner has a separate deck they didn’t want to have cleaned. Is there anyway to prevent my house wash leaving clean spots on the deck they don’t wish to have cleaned from over spray or run off ? I typically don’t do decks because they’re time consuming however this is for a family friend so I made an exception and told them I would give it a shot
@racer when you say “adjusted square feet” how do you calculate that for railings and steps? Just measure as if they were solid like the decking?
Extremely hard to please customer $100+ 
Is it + or x 100?
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@Racer
Rick, I know this an old post and I’ve had it saved for awhile. I have a deck I’m doing and I will be following this same process. The deck in the post is similar to mine in that it’s raised off the ground and against the wall of the home. One thing I missed reading in your post is what steps you took with the house. Did you wet the house down first to avoid streaking from the SH hitting it? I have a large deck but there is an entire walk out basement under it.
Any advice on how I should avoid the over spray and possible streaking from my HW mix hitting the house?
My plan was to wet everything down really well and pump spray my HW mix for the areas close to the house to contain my mix. Then DS the rest as I’m spraying away from the house. I would apply the same process with the oxalic. Any advice would be great! Thanks
Just pre-wet and post rinse the siding and nearby windows and you’ll be fine.
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You could tape off the areas with plastic too
Since it’s wood siding, probably pre-wetting and rinsing quickly will do it but for peace of mind, for less than $20 and 15min worth of work you can just tape it off with some thin plastic sheeting underneath, same you’d have to do if you were going to be staining it.
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Looking for some advice on what I could have done better on this one. Some spots they hit with pressure against the grain. Then a noticeable difference along edge of house where my house wash ran into deck. Gonna start tarping to fix that
Asked homeowner to send pics of deck when dry they haven’t for back to me.
Some boards are 15 years old and the steps are about 2.
Tropical storm while cleaning it so I tried hitting with the the cleaner when it was pouring
- drp wood restorer metasilicate hydroxide mix at about 6-7 parts water 1 part chem
- dwell about 10 min
- rinse with 4gom 2510 tip about 800psi from 12-18 inches away
- ox about 10 oz/gallon
After
Use some SH. Look how well your house wash mix cleaned it near the house. You can even use pump up or 12v and bump the mix up some. I wouldn’t go over 2% though. Once clean I would hit it with some more ox.
The wash cleaned it really well no fuzz I thought the metasilicate would do better, maybe could of went stronger.
Also thought maybe some of it need more pressure to remove some of that film.
The difference between where the grill was and the rest of the deck is dramatic. Would be nice if it all came out like that
Yeah, you probably ought to get closer with your nozzle. I usually use 1000 psi and get close enough to where it covers a 6" board width. Nozzle is maybe 6" away from the wood. I go a tad over one board so it gets the edge of one side.
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Deck is still dirty. That’s part of the reason difference where grill was sitting. Hit with straight SH out of your machine, you should be getting about 1% net. If not use a pump up or 12v, but as Brain said, wouldn’t go over 2% and probably don’t need that. If that’s PT pine, which is what it looks like, can easily go up on pressure to 1300-1500psi. On decks that old, remember you need to knock off some of the old dead wood. Don’t worry about the Ox till you get it clean. Dry pics would help.
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