Or ever. Get super good at 3 things. Say no to everything else.
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I’m good at talking nonsense, avoiding work and falling off motorbikes.
LIKE A BOSS
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ok, couple of things. I agree with Steve, I never use more chemical than necessary. Depending on which surfactant I’m using I rarely go more than 80% SH with my 8gpm machine and it pulls 18-1. On a rare occasion if a house is really dirty, like the one Squid shows above I may go straight SH, but still only pulling 18-1.
So you probably have some weak bleach and you need more soap. Snotmenade is 1oz per gal for direct application. If your injector pulling 10-1 you need to up it to about 7oz per gallon. Try just mixing a fiver of surfactant and straight bleach and see what happens. Just don’t spray on flowers. Pre and post rinse bushes. Other than that not going to hurt anything. See what happens. You’re making this a lot harder than it needs to be. Have you not practiced on your on or some friends houses? Waiting to get to a customers to try out not a good thing.
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Were you using that 10% bleach? If so, it was probably old and down around 6-8%. By adding water you cut it even more. If going back tomorrow, test it with a pump up sprayer.
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I could be wrong but I think the average house wash sh% that people use is right around 1%. With your dilution you are getting around .8% on that siding where if you went straight 12.5 with no dilution you would be around 1.2%. I would try downstreaming straight 12.5% for problem areas like this and see what happens. Also as mentioned above, if your bleach is old it can lose strength pretty easily.
Plus ∞.
If I understand correctly, @RiseNshine99, you’re only seeing the stubborn staining below the eaves? Some people call this phenomenon “fallout”, as it is from years and years of inorganic pollutants settling on the house and not getting rinsed off by the rain.
An acid like EacoChem’s OneRestore would probably do the trick. But I’ve seen some staining on vinyl siding that that stuff won’t even touch. Vinyl is non-porous to most substances, but apparently there are some things that can impregnate the vinyl and completely discolor it.
What I explain to my customers is that my softwash process removes organic contaminants on their siding in the safest way possible. The green, black, and brown growth on their siding should disappear entirely. But inorganic stains from poorly placed exhaust vents, damage from sun exposure (oxidation on gutters or siding), or build up from atmospheric pollution will most likely remain. I also cannot remove artillery “shotgun” fungus, safely.
It’s all about setting proper expectations. I try and live by the phrase, “under-promise, over-deliver”.
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The bleach was bought from a chemical guy in town who has been around for years. I buy it in carboys (20L, 5 gallons).
Fatjoe, I had enough left of the 12.5 to take a crack at that small front. Today I have to use the 10.8% liquid chlorine cause of the shortage in ottawa of SH.
Game plan for today, go all out. I am going to put four gallons of liquid chlorine, no water and an insane amount of the snotmenade. What is a fiver racer? Five ounces or is this an American measuring word for something more then five ounces. Also yes I practiced but probably not as much as I should have. The videos of you guys destroying dirt on vinyl and how easy it is, that with the fact that I bought a top of the line machine and setup that I wouldn’t need to practice much. My big concern was plants and not damaging other surfaces assuming that the dirt and grime would just bleed off the vinyl. I am not trying to make this difficult believe me hahaha I threw the towel in on this last job cause scrubbing didnt even work. I am going to be adding all of the stuff Alex_Lacey mentioned in to my pre job sheet I send to the customer with the quote. If you get to a house, and attempt to clean it like I did, do you still charge them? I said dont worry about the price since next to nothing came off. I will let you guys know how today goes downstreaming it straight with a ton of surfactant. Hopefully I can start posting in here about successes sometime this century!
/
Fiver - 5 gallons
Good luck. Let us know how it goes
So you want me to put 7 ounces for every gallon. So 35 ounces of snotmenade?
If you’re only making up 4 gal of mix then add 25-28 oz
You want light to medium suds coming out
Just prewet everything if you are concerned about plants.
Wowzer, that’s a lot of soap. I use 1 cup in five gallons of mix and sometimes I think I’m in a bubble bath.
So the dirt came off! I just have some pretty bad streaks that have dried. At least the dirt came off.
Your learning, just try not to learn on a customers house. You will get the hang of it, eventually. I probably cleaned somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 places before I touched a paying customers house. Reviews can make you or break you starting out. Good luck with the next!
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I am about 1 cup per 65 gallons using elemanator
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2 for 2 on stuff I want to pin to the top of the forum. Lol.
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Are we talking baking cup or solo cup?
I just dump in what seems right but the guys have a 12 ounce ceramic coffee mug on each truck.
No!
Put the right amount in lol.
Surfactant has two jobs when House washing
-
Suspend the dirt in the water. (Like washing grease dishes in plain water vs soapy water, you know the effect)
-
Make your bleach stick the wall so it can work for longer. No surfactant… your bleach runs off the wall like water.
Surfactant sticks to the wall.
More surfactant more sticks more to the wall.
Insane amounts of surfactant will drive you Insane while you spend 16x longer desperately trying to rinse this sticky bubbley crap off these bloody ■■■■■■■■■ why did I put so much soap on these walls rrraaaarggggghhhhhh !!!
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