I have a customer who I followed up with to see if he was happy with the work we did on his chimney 2mos back. He replied saying not only was he unhappy with it but that he thinks i damaged his wood deck’s finish. See pictures. NOTE: The white dots are leaves.
For context, I was soft washing his limestone chimney and to hit the back of it from the ground my SH/surfactant mix was rolling down the roof above the deck. There was a gutter catching almost all of it but I also covered the deck with tarps. Again, this was 2mo ago.
Reviewing this again, I’m not confident this is damage from me. The graying looks like natural color change from UV. The reddish parts sees like the finish is just about to turn gray. I can’t find many bleach damage photos for the life of me, but it seems like those would be much more white and blotchy. There may be a small white blotch at the right of the second photo. Otherwise, natural color fading.
Some thoughts here would be really appreciated. Thanks fellas.
I don’t really see any damage? Did you take before pics? Did you wet the wood down real good. I don’t use tarps to cover but even when we do roofs, we soak the decks down good and it seems to do the job. I soak them too if we do house wash too, just out of precaution. Not sure what to tell you, not sure why he wouldn’t have told you after the job. You having to call as a checkup then he says that, seems weird? Hope you get it resolved.
What it is is clean spots on the deck from the SH compared to the older dirty part of the deck that’s gray. Eventually it will turn gray again and all match. If the guy wants it to look uniform you may just have to wash his whole deck. There isn’t any damage though.
Put a little sodium hydroxide and SH and surfactant and downstream that deck then scrub it and pressure wash each board with 1,000 PSI , follow it with an oxalic rinse, it will knock their socks off. You might have to do the hydroxide phase in sections if it’s a big one. You don’t want/need it to dwell more than a couple minutes.
Ha you’re exactly right too much and you’re in stripping territory but a touch of it is good in a downstream mix to get that “crust” off the old wood on the surface. A stiff bristle brush is your friend and short dwell time and misting as you work with your pressure washer. Just a quarter cup will do ya. You do have to be careful with the hydroxide you can cause damage with it and you really ought to wear PPE and be conscious of property pro. It is a staple for pro deck cleaners though and is in nearly all of my deck cleaning mixes unless the decking is sub 1 year old.
What pros are recommending sodium hydroxide on bare wood?
Like you said, you have to be careful with it and can cause damage to property much more easily than SM or SH or Percarb. I’m not sure why anyone would take that risk when it’s not necessary. It’s strong stuff, can burn a person, and can damage things.
Have you actually tried it? A small amount of hydroxide in a downstream mix isn’t as big a deal as you are making it out to be. Yes, you have to be careful, but a lot of things we do you have to be careful. If you want me to walk you through the process more carefully, I can…but…. @Racer discusses it in his mega thread so I recommend you (and the original poster) start digging in that thread! That’s a good Sunday morning activity too
You just need to be careful what you’re recommending and how you’re recommending it.
You had one post where you told someone to use Sodium Hydroxide but you didn’t tell him to downstream it. Big difference between straight application and DSing. If he had followed that advice, he could’ve gotten himself into some trouble.
You’ve also changed the way you’ve done things on decks recently. So to come along and act like you know what you’re doing seems a bit pretentious.
And you took a cheap shot at a guy who has been cleaning decks as long if not longer than you on a thread. No need to take cheap shots. People, for the most part, have been very gracious to you on here.
You can downstream it or you can use a pump sprayer. All that matters is the final concentration. This is pretty low level stuff though. An uninteresting conversation was had by all!
I think the important takeaway is to always take lots of photos of the condition of everything in the area before you touch or do anything. You know… cover your butt. Also, in my view, tarps on decks aren’t the answer. Where they meet up against the house there will always be a chance for the runoff to leak under the tap, where you then CAN’T rinse it off.
Without any other info, to me it does look like the decking has been discolored from your SH runoff. I’d probably just offer to clean the homeowner’s deck to get things to look more uniform in appearance. Don’t beat yourself up over this, just learn and move on. We’ve all been there or somewhere similar.
To those implying that “discoloration isn’t damage,” I kind of disagree… and so does the homeowner. Getting the right color and appearance is a huge part of what we’re paid to do when cleaning bare wood. Leaving it blotchy isn’t cool.
Again, @mfortega17 , just learn and smooth it out and move on.
