So I’ve read and searched many threads, especially the deck 101 post. I don’t see a definite answer to my question… what are proper mix ratios for sodium percarbonate, sodium metasilicate and sodium hydroxide? Both for cleaning and stripping.
Specifically, I would like to clean a few decks, both wood and trex, that have a lot of lichen, mold, etc.
Sodium Percarbonate 8 ounces per gallon. You can go more if you can get it to fully dissolve. It won’t hurt anything.
Sodium Metasilcate 8 ounces per gallon.
Sodium Hydroxide for stripping 8-12 ounces per gallon.
For composite I just use about 1%-2% sh and rinse with low pressure.
Wood cleaning I do differently than anyone else so I won’t comment on that. Composite I always start at 2% but have had a few cases where it was so neglected that a 4% was necessary. Be sure to educate the customer if its been power washed that some of the fibers will be white after the cleaning but fade back in shortly. I keep the surface wet and rinse with 150 to 250 psi. Most times I am also washing the house so I will treat the deck with my soft wash system (pre-wetting it if its not extremely dirty). Then while its dwelling I downstream the house and use my downstream mix to mist the deck as to keep the chems active and not to dry. Rinse the house and finish off by rinsing the deck. You can fade/ oxidize composite so its best if the surface is very dirty to work in the shade but do what you can. Good luck!
How do you clean wood?
We use sixONEslix wood cleaner/brightener most of the time if I have it on hand.
I don’t know what that is. Could you give some info?
Did I miss another joke?
Yes you did. 
There was a video circulating where one guy was cleaning wood fences with a miracle product and a lot of guys were wondering what he was using. He stated he is not using SH at all and stated somewhere either his business name or the product which was the word sixONEslix 
That was going on for some time and quite funny, still no one was able to figure out what he used on the wood fence.
Geeze. I guess I need to waste more time on here?
It was stated that he was using Sh. 1.5 to 2% and what the additive is remains unknown.
Sorry been a busy week and I didn’t get email notification about your reply. Like I say we do wood cleaning differently thanks to a spill we had on a flat bed trailer while cleaning the shop. There are many ways to skin a cat so try them all.
Ahh I see. You don’t want to give away your secret ingredient.
I help guys out so much. I send people free stuff I custom built. Spend hrs on the phone and or video chat helping even late at night. Have guys come from other states to work and train with me. I love helping but there are a select few things we do and custom pieces of equipment that I keep secret. Its a small world and doesn’t take long until word gets to the guy right down the road. I wash for the love of the game and telling everyone everything you know makes it hard to win. This winter some things will be in the works for sure I just hate parting ways with the things that make us unique especially until its protected property I own. One piece of equipment we have I found it was discontinued so I bought up the entire market supply so no one could have the same as me lol.
I don’t agree with that or at least when it comes to cleaning. I kind of get where you’re coming from but most of us on here don’t look at it like that. People are going to hire you because of you and your company not the products you use. Most don’t care what you use as long as you give them great results. It doesn’t take some secret ingredient to make wood look great or at least enough to help you win more deck or fence jobs over a competitor. Nine times out of ten they’re going to go with the company they feel most comfortable with. I charge considerably more than anyone around me cleaning decks but I land a majority of them and don’t use anything special. Wood can only get so clean and look so good. If I had to guess the ingredients are probably similar to what some of us use anyways. I think the stuff would have to work so good and make the wood look considerably better than what regular chems do and I just don’t see that happening. I’ve been wrong many times before though.
How about you sell me an unmarked container so I can compare side by side to how I clean wood. Maybe I’ll change my tune after seeing how great it works.
No dude I get it. I wasn’t being a ■■■■. Everyone to be competitive. No hard feelings from this guy🤷🏼♂️ (I couldn’t find the guy who’s got two thumbs pointing back at himself)
I never said it does a better job than some other methods. There are several ways to care for wood properly and its a very time consuming task. If you know what your doing your projects will turn out with an end product thats just as good as mine. Proper wood care takes more than one chemical and several stages as you know. I can one stage it in most cases now and not have the adverse affects. Same wonderful product that used to take forever now takes 1/4 the time. Now if you figure that out and get 1,000’s of phone calls, break an industry record with 2.4 million views. Then have people trying to rip you off and then sabotage your personal business page would you turn around and give it out for free or would you file for a patent, copyrights and or keep it all to yourself? I start giving it away and fish window will be doing decks for $6. My employee happened to just bust the camera out one day and post it up on my page then I wake up in the morning and have calls and voice mails from every country and in every language you can think of. Now here again I just try to help a guy with input on cleaning composite and here we go again. I live in the 616 area code and thats my website as well so I named my cleaner sixONEslix, thats what it was called before anyone knew about it and at work thats what we call it. So if people ask I say to them the same thing I say everyday, the name of the cleaner. Keep doing wood cleaning the way you are and do great work, it keeps the prices nice and high I like that.
If you’re going to patent a product I don’t blame you for wanting to keep it a secret. That’s a whole different story. When you posted you made it sound like you’re just using some off the shelf product since you posted what seemed like a name of a product that can be purchased. Not too mention that it wasn’t the first time we’ve heard the name around here.
It was more than that. You typed a teaser how you do wood differently and that got people curious. You can’t some to a forum of professional exterior cleaning companies where we’re always trying to improve our methods, post the name of some cleaner that nobody has every heard of, and not expect to get questioned about it. Heck yeah we’re going to ask about it.
I get not wanting to let it out there but there are chems that can do similar to what you’re talking about and even posts with pictures on here. Not saying it works as good as what you mix up but I still believe customers will hire you because of you not your product. If you did patent it and, you really had 2.4 million views and 1000’s of phone calls, have you thought about putting it out on the market? I’m sure you have but with homeowners always looking for an “easy button” you’d probably do pretty good with it.
