First ever house wash!

well some spots have gone away with the rain…and I can wipe it off with a wet cloth and they disapear so im not sure its oxidation

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Its dried soap/dirty water that comes out of the window frames when the house is drying. If the siding was white it would be an orangish color. Rinse and rinse. I always rinse one wall and move on the next wall…then Come back and hit below the windows on the previous wall once everything has finished dripping out of the window. Only re hit eye level and below…fan it and don’t get the window wet or you’ll be back to square one

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Ok great thanks for the advice!

Fan it? What does that mean?

John Lange’s youtube channel has a video he posted today of a house wash with vinyl siding & the exact same thing happened.

He said to replicate rain with the pressure washer by not standing too close & letting the drops fall down (like letting gravity take the jetting water & rain down on it). Is that what you meant by fanning?

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I watch John Lange too. Hes awesome. Super helpful.

For sure, he seems like a good dude and very knowledgeable.

Question for you Crypes, I know you used a 12.5% SH and water mix on that vinyl siding. I was taking a cruise in my area today and I noticed a lot of the houses including mine has these walls. The texture is very hard and bumpy. Check it out: https://imgur.com/gallery/bB3RsnY

Again, the question is, is the SH/water/elemonator mixture a “universal” house washing recipe for all textures. I know in the photo you posted of your first wash (By the way congratulations man. Honestly it looks really good) the siding is vinyl… but in the photos that I had posted in imgur there are two different textures. The bumpy texture and then the last 2 pics it looks like actual wood.

Thanks and have a good day.

I watched some of his videos. Clown. Foul mouthed. Do not ever wash like him and spray against the siding and force water or soap behind vinyl siding.

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Yeah @Innocentbystander I wouldn’t think you’d like him very much lol, his videos would drive you mad.

I’m still a newb myself man but that might maybe be stucko ? And wood ? Hard to tell, but I’m not sure myself if that mix is “universal” necessarily or not. In my area in new York, most houses are vinyl siding or aluminum siding. We get nasty weather / winters up here. Not allot of stucko

Also in the nice areas up here we see a lot of hardy plank

A ton of hardiplank in the NW followed by vinyl and t1-11. Almost no stucco and only some brick mostly as accent.

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What state are you in sasquatch ?

A lot of stucco where I am from. Some vinyl but most of the videos I’ve been watching are people washing vinyl housing.

From my research it sounds like stucco is harder to work with because if there are cracks or chips in the stucco and you spray it water can get deep down inside those cracks and damage the inside at one point or another. Therefore I’ve read that it is recommended to patch or/seal any cracks days prior to pressure washing. Which as you probably are thinking… that’s just more work for me to do. If it was my own house that’d be fine but to come to someones house on two separate occasions, days apart, that’s time consuming.

Oregon but it would be similar in Washington and Northern California.

If there were cracks I would upsell that service. If there were a lot I would pass on the house. Warning: I am a newbie.

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If there are cracks in stucco tell the customer via email or written estimate that I recommend repairing cracks before washing because water may get behind cracks. If they say wash it I am satisfied I notified them and have their written consent to wash.

Just to clarify. Please bare with me…

So i find a few cracks here & there. I inform customer & let them know that I’d have to repair them prior to pressure washing & explaining why “it’ll lead to damage if the water gets in the cracks blah blah… I’ll repair them today & they need to dry for a few days. I’ll come back on ______.”

As in do the repair for however much (what would you say is a fair price) and THEN x amount of days later come back to pressure wash?

Much appreciated. Just making sure thats okay customer service (coming back days later to actually do what they wanted to have done initially).

If you have to wait for patchwork to dry what’s the alternative? You can’t wash it when the stucco is still wet so either you wash the house a couple days later or you don’t do the patchwork and wash it today. You have to let the customer decide what they want to do and that will likely depend on the cost.

As far as what to charge you have to try and estimate how long it will take you and charge accordingly so you hit whatever you have set for your hourly wage. Nobody can tell you how much to charge for patching stucco without knowing how many cracks there are or how long the repair will take.

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I wouldn’t repair the cracks myself. Most people will just have you clean the house with the cracks still there.

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I use 3 ounces of surfactant for 15 gl of mix those cracks will bleed white for sure years ago had to re rinse 100 units due to hairline cracks in efis bleeding occurred after a day & we were gone lesson learned