Started on the patio home project today. Thankfully we have ~2 days of sub 80f weather before the 100’s come back Tuesday. We did the upper and lower gutters plus all walkways, 21 units today before my back and arm gave up.
Popped a hose but thankfully had the other 100’ separate so kept going after changing that out. I used 23 gallons of SH today, a new record lol. Thank God my 12v works well, some of the attic vents were not responding to HW mix at all.
We calculated at a slightly less crazy pace I’ll have another 7 days to go unless more people add on their patios or whatever gets thrown at me.
I’m doing the front facing gutters/soffits up and down, plus the walkways going to the front door. We talked with the HOA maintenance head overseeing our project, he now wants a bid on doing the back of at least half the units as they are covered in spider webs.
Things I learned today…
My 12v wand is leaking and was running down to my hand. I think my gloves were chafing, so got some pretty good welts with ~3% concentration. Ouch. I’ll be using nitrile gloves underneath from now on. Aquaphor is niiiice.
@Innocentbystander suggested I plug the gun into the surface cleaner, works like a charm and save a lot of time and effort. As he is fond of saying, “no ball valve needed”.
I discovered that I don’t really need a wand to softwash, so jrod straight on gun and STILL no heavy ball valve. My shooter tip still reaches 2 story gutters just fine. Things went pretty darn quick today with this method, I even low pressure rinse the concrete walkways this way. It’s almost cheating, I can stand in one spot and get most of the front this way.
I do have one problem, without the swivel on the ball valve the hose gets twisted easily so that slows me down a little.
I’m using about 20 gallons a day, crazy for me lol.
Have you just been ignoring my ramblings all these years? To keep your house from twisting order house with a swivel on one end. Most actually come that way. Swivel goes on live end, no more twisted hose. 6in wand will get you to those three story gutters and will make a huge difference on rinsing concrete and any washing.
I run just the jrod plugged into the gun 90% of the time. If I need to get a smidge higher I have a couple 6" SS pipe nipples with quick connects and as IBS said it really does help. Anything higher than that and it’s either a 36" wand or 72". And I wash a ton of houses built on a mountainside and can still reach the peaks on 90% of them with no wand whatsoever.
Jrod directly into gun on my smaller unit keeps me hitting 2 - 2.5 story gutters all day long if there isn’t a stiff breeze. I have a 48” wand I attach to my surface cleaner or for any ground wanding/fence/deck work I have to do. I’ll look into a shorter wand to see if that’ll get me just a bit further than the gun to jrod.
Six inches is all that is needed to straighten the stream of water. Adding a 4 ft wand just add 4 more get off reach. Stream straightening is negated after six inches
If you can ever find them! I had to order mine from Amazon because all I could ever find at HD or Lowe’s was the brass and we all know that’s just not gonna last very long. But, yes, very cheap. Worth every penny to save your wrist and elbow from the beating of using a standard lance.