Hello, I’m doing house soft washing for a client with very hard water, and am running into water spots after rinsing, when the water dries, and leaves mineral deposits on the soffits, gutters, and fascia of the house.
This is a brand new house, and I went back and cleaned again, because initially I thought I didn’t rinse well enough. However, after an “OCD” rinse, the spotting showed again after it dried, and I settled on probably hard water.
I’ve purchased a few inline filtering systems to attach to the hose, but I suspect those wont work. I’m kind of freaking out about this, and would like to solve this issue.
I’m looking for a cheap solution for this:
I’ve come up with a few things, and wondering if anyone else has thoughts on this?
Buying a RODI filtering system for my pressure washer to filter the water before it enters my pressure washer, and rinsing with that.
Buying a Waterfed pole system, and washing the house as normal, then wiping the siding with waterfed pole.
Washing the house as normal, then wiping the black areas with cloths to clean it up.
I also do window cleaning, so buying a water fed pole system wouldn’t go to waste. Although if there are cheaper options, that would be much preferred.
I’ve also thought about buying just a deionizing system, however, I know depending on the hardness of the water, those won’t do the job of a RODI system, and so I wouldn’t want to purchase one of those and only have the water spots be cut down slightly, I want some sort of complete solve for this.
A couple last resorts I’ve thought of are:
Hiring another house washing/soft washing company with filters to wash the house.
Could you fill a tote with normal water, bring it on jobsite and rinse with that?
Otherwise the waterfed pole may be good, especially since you’ll use it on other jobs. @Infinity may be able to advise with that. Can’t seem to tag him.
I deal with this all the time, the hardness where I am at is 31 GPG (stupid high) with a TDS of around 1200. You have a couple options:
I now fill my buffer tank with soft water at my house, only costs me a few bucks to fill 300-400 gallons. I wash black/dark houses all the time and zero spotting. I used to fill it with my home RO system, but when it comes to siding softened water is good enough for no spotting.
Use DI resin. I wouldnt recommend this because its overkill for siding, and if your TDS is pretty high which it probably is, you will burn through resin super fast and it would be cost prohibitive.
Before I had access to soft water at home, I bought a portable water softener (it goes inline between your tank and the customers tap) and it also does the trick. I used the H20 mobile brand: https://www.amazon.com/Mobile-Soft-Water-Portable-Head-Instructions-Applications/dp/B00NQ9I5WC/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&keywords=portable+water+softener&qid=1632405330&sr=8-10
This is probably your best bet if you cant haul water. You recharge it with regular table salt. To figure out how much water you can soften between recharges, find your cities hardness level (Mine is 31gpg) and divide 16,000 by it for this model. So in my case I could get roughly 500 gallons, or 1000 gallons with the 32,000 grain model. Costs about $3 to recharge, and you just pour the salt in the top and trickle water through it for 20 mins, good to go. I keep the 32000 grain on my trailer so all water that goes through my equipment is softened no matter where I am, hard water wrecks everything.
There are small deionizing units that people use for car washing I’ve seen, designed to remove water spots, and those are about $400 with resin, howeve, I’m not 100% sure that’d work, and I wouldn’t want to sink that money into it and have it not work.
I’m going to try to use these inline hose filters that found on amazon, and try and wipe all the black guttering, fascia, soffits with microfibers after rinsing. Probably will be alot of work, but it seems viable.
In the future, though, I’d like a solution to this, so I don’t have to use that method.
Not especially, it makes pretty good money, and I try to get as much house washing/window cleaning/pressure washing jobs I can throughout the summer. I’ve just never ran into this problem.
Awesome! That’s sort of the route I was going to go with, I’ve seen units like that around, I just wasnt sure if I could do it off deionized water, or if the water might be too hard and have to be RODI’d. Sounds promising, if that’s worked for you.
Even if I could bring water with me, I’m using a downstream method, rather than 12V, so I’d have no way to pull it anyways.
Not sure what you mean?
My washer is really nice, for me, and has always worked well and made me money. I don’t think you understand that the washer can’t pull from a tote, you need a 12V system to do that, which I don’t have. I may be mistaken, I certainly don’t know everything, but washers usually are exclusive to needing water from a spigot, or from a tank with a pump.
Certainly open to suggestions for a more “professional” setup.
Also, the not being snarky or anything, even if the text can come off that way, super glad people are taking the time to help out
You are mistaken.
Run a short hose from bottom of elevated tote to pressure washer on the ground. Gravity will work with your pump until you can use professional grade equipment.
