The big day has come! I have bought a new van a brand new pressure washing rig and it’s time to start doing house washes to add to my window cleaning company.
I have paid good money to be a part of Doug Rucker school and have been reading a lot on here. A couple of things I would like some clarification on. I asked my mentor about a good mix for house washing… He said to just fill a full five gallon pale of SH and downstream it… This seems strong considering I have 12.5 and based off what I’m reading here sometimes the mixes are 60 SH to 40 water then it’s down streamed. I’m kind of nervous being my first job so maybe some mix advice guys?
I also would love to hear some tips on what order to do things! Here is a list of what I am doing for this client
Interior exterior window cleaning
House wash
Gutter washing… Is this a part of house washing? Always assumed to do the gutters is extra.
Driveway
Aside from what order you would attack this in can you maybe give some preferred pressures on those surfaces? I have a 5.5gpm 2500 machine!
Where do you live? Depending on how bad mildew is, will determine your mix. For your machine you’re probably pulling about a 12-1 ratio. Check it and see, will take you 3 min.
You’re probably right on the money with a 60-40 SH to water mix. The majority of houses can be cleaned with about a net out of injector mix way less than 1%. I’d start with what you think. The mildew should start disappearing in about 5-7 min. Much longer than that, add more SH or just hit again.
Cleaning the exterior of gutters is included in HW. For about 98% of the clients that is enough. A few may want gutter brightening, in which case that’s extra. I hate doing that, pretty time consuming and a pain, especially with the size homes I do. I tell them I can, but have to use strong chemical, etc and that the tiger striping will probably come back in a year or so anyway. Sometimes if really bad I’ll hit with about a 3% mix out of my 12V but that’s rare.
I nearly always work from the rear of the home to the front. That way all your hoses are back near truck, etc. You don’t want to do a drive and then be walking, dragging hoses back and forth across. You’d have to rinse it again. So drive is always last thing I do.
The only variance in washing back to front is in the summer and it’s really hot, then I’ll lead the sun. In other words, I want to wash it before the side gets direct sun or really hot, otherwise mix will dry really quick. I’ll usually wet before hand if sun has been on for awhile and it’s hot. You can get around, but you have to rinse really quick, especially windows. Almost before mix has time to work in some cases.
I would do the window cleaning last. Why clean them and then spot them all back up. That’s like wiping before you poop =P As far as pressures, get a JRod set up from pressure tek. You should have an option to put your machines GPM in there and they will send you nozzles if I remember right.
I do a lot of window cleaning/house wash combos. I always do interior windows first, since I am the cleanest when I first get to the job. Don’t want to tract a bunch of dirt in the house.
Then house wash and the great thing is this will do most of the cleaning on the outside of the windows.
Then the driveway, finally clean the outside of the windows and they should need much more than a quick scrub and rinse if you have a WFP. If not it will still go quick. That’s how I do it anyway.
Hope it goes well for you. You’ll learn a lot that’s for sure.
Great info thanks man!! Will definetly do that in regards to the windows! What mix do you use?! And what window solution do you use? I use gg4 with a splash of Unger window cleaner for suds
Thanks for the massive post… It’s unreal the time people will put in for others. I understood almost everything you Said and I just ordered that nozzle. In regards to finding my ratio on my cehm injector you said it would take 3 minutes… I’m lost on how to find that out and what I really means for some reason it’s confusing me.
Also when you say a three percent mix out of your 12 do you mean you have three percent bleach and 97 percent water that is applied directly threw your pump and separate tank where this mix is stored?
For the m5ds nozzle I’m guessing I simply pull the chem injector or even fill the pale with some water to clean it out before rinsing?
I have a jrod set up right now but this md5s nozzle looks ffrigfen unreal!
I do alot of house wash with exterior window upsells… WFP is awesome when the glass is hydrophillic… if the house has a lot of hydrophobic windows then it can become a headache.
I just got a rinsebar with fan jets from detroit sponge and it seems to be working okay for hydrophobic glass.
You use two pencils and two fans at the same time? how do you like it?
And Yes, I don’t do any inside windows anymore…customers remove screens and hit the windows with a wfp after a house wash takes 30 minutes. Honestly I’ve been getting $5 per pane outside only…No screens no tracks…just glass.The going rate where I am in MI is $3 in/out screens and tracks. Most customers go for it because they dont want spotted windows after the house wash and they dont feel like spending their entire day calling window cleaners and no one answers their phones.
I recently did my first wash using a 5.5 2500’as well. I had a 60/40 mix and it wasn’t quite strong enough to get everything, next time I’ll put my injector right in 1gal of SH, @ 12.5% that will get me about a 1% mix. I found that the rinse nozzles suck and don’t shoot far. I used the 2540 and the 0040 to soap and rinse.
I’m having a hard time understanding what people mean when they say put a gallon of 12.5 percent bleach in a bucket and they will be getting 1 percent… Does that mean that the chemical injectle pulls 12-1 which means that your 12.5 percent bleach is now 1 percent coming out mixed with the water? This is a headache for me that I’m simply not understanding. Help please!
People make it harder then it should be. Take a five gallon bucket, add 2 gal bleach, 3 gal water and 4 oz elemonator or surfectant of choice. Downstream on siding. If the algae disappears around the 7 min mark, your mix is perfect. If not, add more bleach until it does. After a few times, you’ll be able to look at a house and guess weather or not it needs “a bit more bleach” from the get go. Thays just how I do it.
I like four jets, I feel like the fans are better on some windows and the jets are better on some windows. This way I get the best of both worlds. I don’t mind using the extra water because tds is low here and I get better rinse with more water. To me rinse is everything.
Plus there always seems to be a little dirt stuck in the cracks that you do not dislodge with the HW so when that dirt comes out the extra volume of water helps it rinse down the siding and off the house.
I used to charge the same as you $5 per window for the outside. Screens must be removed or there is and extra charge. But I have been trying to go to all square foot pricing this year. I am really liking that better.
At this point I am still doing some inside windows, but it is becoming less and less. I even bid WC jobs I/O by the square foot, as long as the house is under 4500 sq. ft. Hopefully next year I can make the move to and exterior only company, but this year I still need the extra work that the insides bring. And a lot of my customers are repeats so some of those I will probably always do on the inside just because I have been for the past 5-6 years and they are priced well.
It is a learning experience for sure as to what works for your company and what doesn’t. I am also really working to apply Squid’s advice to price everything even if they call for a HW I send them a price for the roof, driveway, windows, whatever I think will be profitable. That has worked out is some really nice jobs that turned into a big ticket.
Joe
How do you find out square footage of house? Most home owners know there square footage but is there a certain tool or something that helps you measure it exactly?
When you say surfactant of choice… And elemonator… What do you mean like dawn or some kind of soap added to the bleach?? I have heard of elemonator before I have also heard of people using roof snot! I am from Canada so don’t real know where to get this stuff!
No, to get stronger than a 1% you’re going to have to use a pump up sprayer or a 12volt pump or something that applies whatever mix you have directly wothout any further dilution.
Take a bucket and time for a minute or even 30 seconds. See how much you have in bucket. multiply by oz which is 128 per gal. Then hook up your DS and put it in some soapy water or something so that you can tell when it starts pulling. Once it does measure how many oz it pulls in the same 1 min. Use a calibrated container to pull from, like a large measuring cup or big plastic pitcher. Divide the difference
Just for example - say you pump 5 gal of water in a min Thats 5*128=640 oz.
Then say doing same time you pull 40 oz of your mix - 640/40 = 16-1
