Wood Building Suggestions

I was asked to see if I could clean a neglected wood building. So I went by today to do some test areas.
Looks like cedar siding on the gables and cedar boards over a very very worn out veneered plywood.

The plywood is very worn out

I picked what I thought was the worst area on the building and did an F18/F8 treatment
Before


After

I was surprised that the middle areas stayed dark. When I did a test to see if there was any sealer on the boards the edges on the left beaded while the rest didn’t.
So my thinking is that the only sealer left was on the left edges and that got stripped and brightened and that is why the edges look good.
There must be something else on the other areas or I am into the glue layer of the veneers.

Here is one small area I did on the gable. Even with just 5 minutes of dwell that was starting to clean up well

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions for me.
I was only at about 15 mintues of dwell time with 3oz to 1 gallon in a pump up sprayer.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Joe

Just went by after it had a while to dry.
Seemed to dry up decent.
I am wondering if a little stronger mix and a little more dwell will improve it?

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Joe,

That is some ugly wood! Hard to tell what is on it, does not look like an old stain, more like someone threw something foul from a bucket onto the wood.

Aside from an acid mix of 6 - 8 oz. per gal. to brighten, hard to say. If you have some sodium percarbonate based wood cleaner available, mix up a gal. at 6 - 8 oz./gal. and give it a shot. If there is little weathered or no previous stain left on the wood, it may clean up a bit better than sodium hydroxide.

Thanks for the feedback, I do have some precarb. I did a water test and the majority of the wood appeared to have no stain left on it, so I will try the precarb next time I run by there.
I appreciate the suggestion.
Joe

How would anyone go about cleaning this? It’s an out building customer asked me about cleaning

Your answer is above your post

Just wanted to see if there was any other suggestions

rpetry gave me great advise. I have since done 5 more buildings on this property. They get better and better as I get more adept at doing them. The mixes listed above work really well for me. Forget downstreaming or x jet. I tried both and neither worked well for me. 12 volt pump is the way to go. something not too fast 2 or 3 gal per minute. I tried to use my 7gpm roof pump and was fighting it a bit to not waste a bunch of chemical. Dwell time helps, keep it wet and let the chems work.
Joe

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@bubbad2u Could I mix it up in a pump sprayer and apply?

You could, it all depends on how big the building is the pump up sprayers are a pain. I have tried it a few times on decks and regretted it pretty quick. Hopefully rpetry will jump in, he is the real expert, my experience is limited. The problem I have had with pump ups if there is any size at all to the building is that it doesn’t give a nice even coat the really puts down the chemical.
There was a thread a while back that rpetry (I think) showed his portable sprayer that is built on a dolly.
Marine battery in a box, 3 gpm pump, 5 gal chem tank and about 20’ of hose to a pvc wand. Pretty slick and maybe $300 a really good investment to use on decks and buildings like this if they are not too big.
The Oxalic can be downstreamed the precarb needs to go through the pump.
Like I mentioned before I usually do a few of these buildings every fall on one property I work on, last year I cleaned them with the roof pump running through 200 of hose. It worked but not great, I had to fight it a little.
This year I am going to make a smaller portable unit and set up a system that I can run the smaller pump on my 200’ line if I wanted to, I think that will be helpful in the future.
Joe

Edit: Just looked back through my files. He suggested a 5gpm pump to someone that asked a similar question.

Oh yea I forgot to mention. The precarb will expand/bubble. So be really careful with the pump up sprayers. They can blow their top with that stuff. Don’t ask how I know…you can ask. It was a funny story.
Joe

Thanks I have a 1 or 1.5 gpm pump on a 15 gal tank I could use, I just wasn’t sure, and where did u find precarb and did u do 6oz or 8oz to a gal of water?

I bought mine from Pressure Tek. I think it is listed as F10
I started at 6oz and went from there. I think it is $50 for 10 pounds. It comes in 2lb containers.
So I mixed it at a 2lb container for every 5 gals of water.
Warm water is best. It takes a little while to dissolve.
Joe

OK how long do u let it set before rinsing

When you say precarb. What are you talking about specifically? Sorry for the dumb question. For wood I’ve mixed hydroxide with my SH and it worked well. Is that what you’re taking about. Or is it sodium percabonate?

Pretty sure that’s what they’re talking about, Nick. Technically, “percarb” would be a more accurate abbreviation :wink:

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With so many chemicals out there I wasn’t sure if this was a different one :joy:. I haven’t tried sodium Percarbonate yet. Have you? Is there a generic one available?

Yep, Sodium Precarbonate. I usually give it about 10-15 minutes depending on how dirty the building was. Being a vertical surface I would go around and give it a second spray after 6 or 7 minutes.
Joe