OK well i did my first roof today! Thats the plus side. It didnt turn out at first and not sure what i did, i was planning on not rinsing but was forced to. I just about crap down my leg really, i applied my mix of 55 gallon tank, 15gal SH, 40 gal water about 50 OZ of SC and alittle joy just for extra suds. I applied the entire roof started on the worst side and it turned all the mold white and was working great i thought…Well it didnt have as much suds as i thought it would and really went on clear for the most part, but still turing mold dark black. I did a complete house wash while i was letting the solution soak and then i thought i was ready to go home, WRONG… The roof was all yellow and black streaks it looked HORRIBLE. i dont know what i did wrong. Fortunatly, i rinsed every shingle (boy that sucked) and it came clean…What did i do?? I have a good pump set up but only a 3 GPM pump. lastly, i f’d up the price anyways cause i didnt know what i was doing and it was probably a 900 job(2 story prolly total house was 3500 SQ ft) i did it for 350( plus 250 for house wash) 600 dollars took me 5 hours UGGGG…
How fresh was your 12.5%?
My guess is you didn’t have enough simple cherry in the mix. The surfactant is just as important as the sh. If you don’t have enough surfactant it will not break the bond of the dirt and algae. Plus it allows your solution to stay in place longer. Over time you will learn how strong your mix needs to be. We arrive at jobs with a 25% sh solution in the tank. If the roof calls for a stronger solution we add sh. I have no idea how strong or fresh my sh is. It’s somewhere between 10 - 12% to me it’s a minor detail. I have been told and read that the 12% sh degrades to around 10% and then pretty much stays there. We get sh in every week but how long it has been on the shelf is beyond me. In the beginning don’t worry about how long it takes to do a job. Overtime 3 hour roof cleanings become 1.5 hour roof cleanings. The important part in the beginning is to do the job right. I remeber getting disgusted about how long jobs took first. Now we fly through them. Give me a call if you have any questions.
I have not a clue how old the 12.5 SH was. I have a local chemical supplier that go through quite a bit of it they say. It was in a 15 gallon jug and 12 on a pallet they get a new pallet everyweek. Simple Cherry cant go stale can it? I dont know, but im guessing after you clean a roof and it dries its supposed to look brand new right? Luckly in this case it still came clean just with elbow grease. I thought adding 1oz of SC to every gallon would be enough but i guess not,
You need more bleach.
Next time spray a section and see if it starts cleaning immediately. If if doesn’t then bump up the 12%.
I used Simple Cherry exclusively house washes for a long time but it is not ideal for roofs.
Thanks Thad, what is you use exclusive for roofs,you can PM the if you would rather. Since im only doing a few a month i would rather have something i know is going to work.
Yeah your simple cherry probably did not dissolve properly. Get yourself some roof snot or [URL=“http://www.powerwash.com/cleaning-chemicals-and-detergents/general-purpose-cleaning-chemicals-and-detergents/420-fresh-wash.html”]fresh wash, use the same mixture and you’ll be good to go. Remember you may have to make 3 applications to get it completely clean.
Your bleach was way to low and your surficant soap didnt hold the bleach or better yet Chlorine pool shock if thats what you were using. We just purchased some Fresh wash from www.powerwash.com to help the Chlorine stick longer on the roofs and not smell so bad.
Currently our roof mix is very strong. We use anywhere from 50%- 100% Chlorine with the surficant soap and apply it straight on a roof with a dedicated roof pump after we rinse the roof to get it nice and wet. With the chlorine sticking it cleans like crazy. Now if this was florida I would say you can leave the soap mixture on the roof and let the rain wash away the chlorine since it always rains in Florida. But out by me we will start with the roof, wetting the roof and then applying roof chemicals then do the whole house all the while keeping the roof damp so the soap doesnt dry on the roof. Then once the house is done we power rinse the roof to knock off all Lychen(Spell check is not working) and to have the roof completely done when we leave.
Pics below show the process. Hope this helps
John wow on the strength of your roof mix. We are using a 25% sh solution since going to fresh wash. On heavily stained roofs we usually up it to 33%…We are using less solution to clean roofs. Don’t know if that’s the fresh wash or changing my technique for applying.
Hey Clark I would say the Fresh wash definitely causes the use of less Sodium hypochlorite but what I found out years ago that we can be more aggressive with most types of cleaning because we hit things at very high dosages all the while where rinsing at 20 gpm. Years ago I new this guy around here who could do a condo complex in a day. He had the ability to put chemicals up and rinse at 40 gpm. His chemical sprayer was set at the same. Yes he went thru a ton of chemicals but his time at the job was cut 75% so that is a huge saver right there.
The typical Powerwasher I would not go as strong as we do because it has its risk factors… but it works for us.
Thanks John all good points on the benefits of more gpm for rinsing.
Don’t fret, my friend! Sometimes it takes two coats, sometimes 3 or 4! Rarely do we wash a roof and every stain comes right off on the first spray, especially if it’s really filthy.
If your SH was fresh, then try 17-20 gallons of SH per 55 gallon mixture and you’ll start to learn which roofs you need more on and also when you may need less.
Great advice. We go as low as aprox 33% mixture to just about 100%. I’d say our average is around 65%.
The 33% mixture we can use our x-jet but anything higher then that it’s Roof pump all the way.
I am new to this business but when I talked to Bob about his simple cherry product and how much to use on roofs, his rely was: “I do not reccomend SC for roofs. It is made for house washing and not roofs…Try Roof Snot for use on roofs”.
I could be wrong here because I haven’t used Roof Snot but I think Roof Snot is a soap surficant to be used so the sodium Hypochlorite can stick to the Roof so it can clean faster. You have to kill the mold spores on the roof and bleach/chlorine do just that. There’s soaps out there such as JOMAX where there really only an overpriced surficant that doesn’t work that well and they even tell you in there mix to add some bleach…
Bleach and especially Chlorine is vital in many cleaning applications especially roofs.
Good Luck
Thanks John,
Maybe I was remiss in not mentioning the bleach, I am currently having success with 30% along with the roof snot. The roof snot IS a surficant that hold the solution on the roof to allow it to work rather than just run off the roof.
Ladies and gentlemen meet the new village idiot. Welcome. I look forward to your expert advice and wonderful delivery.
Only thing i found interesting in this post is that the guy that the PWRA has teamed up with to teach classes for hundreds of dollars pressure washes roofs lol
.Hey we need some new blood in here. No one has asked or said anything too stupid in a couple of weeks. This guy is a prime candidate to replace awesome.
Somebody should msg him . I’m eagerly waiting his advice on so many things. Roof/ driveways / movies/ girls/ the birds and the bees. Hopefully he’ll stick around. I appreciate a guy that tells it like it is. Hahaha
