I know, I know probably a bad idea (let’s get that out of the way). More and more I’m seeing posts of folks using surface cleaners for fence cleaning or stripping. We have done a few fences and decks now (shout out to @Racer for the awesome tutorial thread) which turned out great. That said, on the nastier pacific northwest fences out this way, it is a slowww going process, even with a decent amount of SH and hydroxide.
More wondering, why the heck not? I have no doubt that there’s some slapstick, dumber than a summer watermelon folks out there that just take their surface cleaners to pine and cross their fingers with far too much pressure, but in supposing that if you get the right meg nozzles on there to reduce PSI to roughly 1,000, is there really any reason I’m missing why you couldn’t do that? Seems a lot faster than going a picket at a time (well, 1.5 with the 45 degree method).
Thoughts?
The only problem is, you won’t know if it worked good until you’ve tried it. Theres a point of no return.
“Best practice” is to wash with the grain. No way to do that with a rotating system.
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Ah gotcha, very valid point! I didn’t think about grain orientation.
I once saw a drunken hillbilly with 4 flat tires on their car, bent over at the gas station trying to inflate them. The tires were shredded. In the interests of the person’s safety and the safety of the public, I said to her “you can’t drive that car like that, those tires are shredded”. She responded, while the cigarette bounced around her mouth “watch me”. She did in fact drive out of the parking lot, rubber flying, wheels grinding, right up the road past the local cop.
Just because something can be done doesn’t mean something should be done.
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Ha! Ain’t that the truth. I guess the difference is you knew the reason those tires “shouldn’t have been used”. I couldn’t find a good reason not to use the surface cleaner, but some awesome replies here have suggested at least one good reason!
Someone will come up with a device to clean several boards at a time using a square or rectangular sprayer. I thought about modifying one of those push sidewalk water brooms into one then thought - why? Infinity nailed it about it being circular.
In my mind it would be like a surface cleaner shell around one of these things
water broom thingy
I have a company around me that does use the surface cleaner on decks. (I don’t know his criteria for which decks he uses the surface cleaner on, if it’s not all off them) but the deck I’ve seen him use it on turned out well.
That’s exactly like something I wanted to make! But I never thought about making it with multiple cleaning nozzles I always thought just one for more accessibility. I think both would have their place
We should call it the Water Fence Broom Thingee™ I’ll take a 10% royalty, thanks!
Yeah, I also thought about “training wheels” for a lance, so new people don’t get the nozzle any closer than 12" to a deck when stripping/rinsing. I mainly work solo so I thought why am I bothering with this. Plus people in my area just don’t want to pay for deck resto and stain, just clean and paint mostly.
I wouldnt think of it as training wheels more as a tool that makes it easier for me and more consistent. I think having that constant space in between would be helpful and you could make it heavy enough where it could be exactly like using a surface cleaner rather than having to hold the wand downward. It’s not necessary, people have been cleaning decks normally for way longer than I’ve been alive but one day when I have time I’d like to make one and see if it makes my life any easier
Interesting… looks poorly made but close to the right idea I’m thinking something more like the water broom idea where you could connect it to the end of a wand and less plastic
That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen. Soon we’ll be washing with segways.
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Hey buddy, you better back off. I had the segway idea first.
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If I ever see a segway at a garage sale me, a surface cleaner, and my Sawzall are going to make some things happen!
Segways, no too small and not as comfortable have yall seen one of the zero turn mowers set up with a surface cleaner for the deck of it?
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