I’ve seen a ton of threads on here about removing the runoff from a window frame onto the brick window sill. This house is old, it has had several windows in it over the years, all of them painted white or grey apparently. Needless to say, I tried one restore, hd britenol, SH (while cleaning), a turbo (well off the surface), and some goof off graffiti remover that I just happened to have. Nothing budged it.
I’m going to try some f9 barc (since 2 threads on here have indicated success), maybe some graffiti remover, but I am inclined to try muriatic acid and brush or maybe xylene.
Thoughts?
Lazy guy mumblings: Got my butt kicked working on a steep and narrow brick and stone staircase going into the basement on this house. Half inch thick moss at the bottom on the walls, landing, stair. Used a shovel to clean up steps and landing first. Man did I get dirty. Turned out pretty good after repeated applications of 3%, 6% etc. Couldn’t use the turbo on a lance, no room to move or turn. Using the suttner still gave me blow back no matter which way I turned or angled. I fnally said lets light er up and get er done lol and took a man shower.
I spent a good amount of time turboing brick today, thick moss all over, ivy remnants on brick in places, man, I’m too fat for jobs like this. Turbo might be going bad, starting out in one stream, then goes to rotating.
Ive used F9 on vinyl shutter run off onto brick. Cleaned it really well, made it fairly strong but i don’t remember exactly. Few applications with a decent dwell time and keeping it wet.
I’ve had good luck with xylene. There’s another stripper that comes in gel form that would be better for thicker layers of paint and especially in a small area like a window sill because you have to brush it on. Do you have hot water?
For that guy being such a knucklehead he did give us one of the all time best quotes on here and for that I thank him.
Yeah they do that. Bang that sucker on the ground a time or two and point it straight down and she’ll fire off. If you’re using a small machine like 4 or 5.5 don’t waste your money on the fancy turbos. Just go to Lowe’s and get their $40 ones and toss them when you’ve finally had enough of banging it around.
Those fancy ones claim you can point them any direction. I call baloney. I’ve filled up a couple five gallon buckets with worn out turbos and they definitely have to be pointed downward to get any kind of longevity out of them.
I’ve done some limited turboing, never this much. Man is that slow going.
Lessons learned on this job: If they just laid black mulch in the flower beds expect that crap to go everywhere when trying to turbo the lower portion of the brick. If they have ivy remnants on the brick charge more. That stuff did not want to let go. That black mulch went everywhere and it was new.
I also thought after 2 days of rain it would be wet and “stick” better…I was WRONG. Still learning.
I always get these 20+ year no maintenance houses and they always take way more time than I thought. Maybe I should stop thinking cleaning and start thinking restoration. I never get a house that takes 1.5 hours. That would be awesome.
do you buy the repair kits for them or just buy replacements. I have mixed feelings about buying repair parts for most of the tools I have used in my life, it normally seems better to just replace them. The exception for me are the pads under random orbital sanders, I replace them often and they function just fine (the Velcro wears out on them).
A new turbo is like 60 and the replacement ceramic is about 30.
Rebuild doesn’t really last/work. I decided long ago that buying an extra of something just bought you a couple of weeks until you bought again. I buy a dozen turbos and when I’m down to 6 or 7 still working I get another dozen. They are like injectors. They may last a week or a year.
Here is what I did, how I did it, and the outcome - for those who care or want to know. I’m looking for feedback, especially tips on how to shorten this process up.
Brick window sills are 70 years old. Multiple windows were in and out. Window sills were house washed twice and hit with the turbo. I used f9 barc after reading many posts, talking to three masons, calling eacho chem, reading sds sheets and the f9 cookbook.
My process: house wash 2x then turbo kind of a little off (not trying to destory the mortar, caulking, or brick. Each window sill I did I pre wet the underside of the window (where the runoff would go) and misted the window glass and frame with water… I applied f9 with a pump up, waited about 40 seconds to 50 seconds (directions say no more than a minute) and then reapplied. I rinsed (pressure washed). Very little response to chems. I applied f9 twice as before then scrubbed with a small brush (to get into the angles without destroying the window screens like I would have with a deck brush). I then rinsed. Some improvement. I reapplied f9 twice again, brushed again and pressure washed again. Very noticeable improvement. I could have done it again and probably made it a little better, but the homeowner and I had a talk about cost/benefit analysis and he agreed that where it was at was good enough.
Here are some pics. I posted the agitation parts so people could see what I mean by when it is ready to rinse off and when it isn’t. When it kind of forms a lather its coming off, and if it doesn’t some will come off but the majority will remain.
I did 12 windows sills, took about 4 hours in total. We stopped there as he was happy and didn’t care about the other 5. As I tell people if your happy then I’m happy, if you pay I stay and if you don’t I leave (short version.
I gotta save some loot, thanks for the info. I thought maybe the 5100 psi ones would be a little more robust. Must not be. While doing his place the neighbor came down and wants their retaining wall around the drive turbo’d. That thing gets a little heavy after awhile. Couple of hours turboing and I’ll have big guns like this:
Apply F9 to dry surface - 3 applications with about 3 min between. Let sit about 5 min - Washed off with about 400 psi with my M5ds nozzle - Total time about 15 min each.
Here I go with 20 questions again. Sorry if this is annoying, but the devil is in the details they say.
Is this real brick or a fascia? Is the brick real porous or is it smoother (pictures make it seem smoother)? I’m finding that the more porous (rougher textured brick) doesn’t seem to release. I don’t have a ton of experience in this. I am a little hesistant to just throw f9 at these ( I’ll call it runoff) issues.
From a group of guys/masons who do brick restoration projects:
Be careful with acid on brick you can ruin it. Glazed brick vs. porous brick makes a huge difference they say. They also told me that you can cause a silicate to form on certain bricks with a strong acid, and it won’t come off. We didn’t talk for hours, just some issues were discussed in about 15 minutes. They are busy this time of year and I didn’t want to take up too much time so that they would answer dumb questions again in the future.
I don’t know what is in f9 secret sauce, but I can smell the acid when I use it. I’ve used it several times and I know it has acid in it (besides the smell). I was just going to cut some muriatic with water and test it, until I received their warnings. In my instant case, F9 did not remove it off of some areas even with brushing and repeated applications. You could almost cut it off with a knife. But that is 70 years of runoff accumulation.
On a side note, I have used oxalic and f9 to remove rust on the same substrate. For some reason the f9 doesn’t seem to leave the yellow haze color that oxalic will on lighter colored painted metals. I would love to know why.
