Just curious what everyone’s rinsing technique is to avoid streaking or a poor rinse what works for y’all
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I rinse in an octagon pattern, overlapping by precisely 6" as I’m moving. Typically either 31 or 32 octagons per side.
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I like to use the upwind method to keep water from getting my clothes wet.
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- Spray water on siding
- ???
- Profit!
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Top down. Try not to blow water behind the siding. Rinse well done.
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Not too much soap
Top to bottom
Never into seams
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Joking aside, if it’s vinyl I rinse at an angle and make sure I’m shooting with the overlap to my benefit (so the water doesn’t go behind). I try my hardest not to rinse face-on and above for the same reason. Callbacks suck, and dripping vinyl is an easy way to get one.
Also never hit perforated soffits dead on or linger too long on them.
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Start at the peak, rinse in a pyramid pattern. Once I’m about 1/4 way down I move over to one side and rinse at a 45 degree angle with the shooter tip. Past 2/3rd point I switch to my LP fan tip.
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I should shoot some video of this sometime, but this is my usual rinse pattern. Same as you, working with the overlaps to avoid weepers. I work across the siding in a diagonal pattern, like so:
5° nozzle is preferred, until I get above 2 stories.
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That would be interesting to see
It helps a lot when you’re chasing larger debris, like cobwebs and stuff, off the siding. Rinsing side to side seems to just push stuff around, and would take me longer to get a thorough rinse.
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That’s actually a really good illustration of how I do it as well. Top to bottom, fanning it from one side to the other. You get sort of a moving wall of grime and suds falling down the wall and you can easily see you are thoroughly rinsing and not missing anything. I’m pretty close to the siding as well, that way I can be looking up and making sure all the black buildup that gets under the lips is gone. Always in the direction where the wind is at your back, but that should be obvious
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i do it similar to infinity, but i also shoot from the side angle. i just got used to doing it that way for the most part since there isn’t much room between the houses I had been doing.
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Honestly if you’re talking about rinsing vinyl siding if you’re spraying it with water it rinses easily. If you’re seeing blotchy patches after drying the siding is probably oxidized. Oxidation means the siding is old and the finish is failing and happens on cement board siding as well as vinyl. If you rub your fingers on the siding and a chalky residue, the same color as the siding, comes off on your fingers, you have oxidation. This is something you need to discover BEFORE washing a customers house. Explain to them it can’t be removed without heavy physical scrubbing and even then you may not get it all off. If you don’t, they may blame you for messing up their house.
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As promised:
I’m taking my time in this video, as there is a lot of junk coming out of the window frames and sills that take time to chase down the siding. But the angled approach seems to help move this debris down the siding more quickly.
-Machine is also throttled down to around 6gpm due to working off a well at this location.
(I already rinsed the top half of the wall prior to shooting the video)
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Question for you folk in here! I washed my mother in laws house the other day for some practice and brownie points. Her vinyl siding seemed to have two holes on the under lip of each piece… is this normal for vinyl siding? It made rinsing extremely hard as any little bit of water that went into these holes had really mucky water rushing out of it after. 
One simply cannot properly rinse without their shirt tail being tucked in.
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Wax on wax off. If you ain’t washing mr miagi style your doing it wrong!
Those are called weep holes. They are expressly designed for the purpose of letting trapped water out. If you got dirty water drizzling out of them, you went too heavy with pressure or angle of approach. Realistically, it’ll happen occasionally, even for practiced washers. The key is to go back for a very gentle final rinse (just misting the siding, basically), after the weep holes have had a little time to drain out.
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