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i've got a house with severly mildewed wood eaves and chalky aluminun siding. bleach cocktail gets mildew but takes paint off of siding. from reading in archives, it looks like any chemical, or even just pressure, will take chalky paint off of aluminum siding. anyone got any ideas about how...

i've got a house that is stained grey, as opposed to painted grey, that i've been asked to prep for a new coat of stain(i won't be doing the staining). is there anything special i need to know about these colored, paint-like stains? is there a particular chemical i should use to make it more...

i'm ready to replace my 3500 psi, 4gpm, 13 hp honda engine, cold water devilbiss pressure washer. at present, my work is exclusively residential and i don't anticipate pursuing commercial work, but i'd certainly take any opportunity that fell into my lap if i had the necessary equipment...

i'm due to clean a roof on an old stone cabin in the woods. it has city water, but output seems to be about 3.5 gpm's. my 4 gpm machine is supposed to have a water supply of 5 gpm's, according to the manual. i don't have a water tank. is there something i can jerry-rig for this one-time...

is there anything special about an asphalt-shingled roof that i need to know about before cleaning it? i plan on using one of the new quats. thanks for any info/thoughts you might have. richard

i've been asked to get the smell out of a garage in which three large dogs were kept for many years. my inclination is to use something like pine sol followed perhaps by an odor eliminator like odo-ban. my search of the board didn't turn up any past threads on the subject. i've not seen the...

i'm gonna be cleaning the wood framing inside a screend-in porch the floor of which is plywood covered by an indoor-outdoor carpet that is wall-to-wall but not secured to the floor. the wood is in excellent shape--the dirt i'll be cleaning off is indoor dirt--no mildew, no crap from trees, no...

howdy folks i'm about to give a quote on a 6000+ sq ft composite driveway--by composite i mean the type with pea gravel stuck to the surface. i need advice on what sort of chemical(s) will effectively loosen the grunge so that i can keep the pressure down without being forced to go at a...

hi guys can any of you suggest a way to eliminate vapor/condensation inside double-paned windows? it's a fairly considerable amount. customer says it disappears at night but is visible during the day. i washed his house--very little pressure on the window itself, but a ton of water ran...

i need some advice, folks. i've been asked for a quote on cleaning some windows that still have paint around the edges from the last time the frames were painted. there are two related problems. first, the frames were inadequately prepped before they were painted and they were heavily coated...

is there anything i should be neutralizing ion addition to decks? painted wood houses? aluminum siding? bricks? any other post-cleaning applications needed for various surfaces? when is it appropriate to use a wax bath, and can i do it with a cold water washer or is hot water required...

this must be a common problem, but i've not seen it discussed, even in a moderately extensive search in the archives. after soaping down the deck--clorox, with a cup of liquid tide and about a cup of new dawn--through the downstream injector, 15 minutes of dwell and a thorough washing with a 25...

i have twice encountered a green growth on cement walks that would flat not come off. the first time i used undiluted, fresh liquid chlorine--12.5%--with 15 minutes of dwell time and a 15 degree nozzle at point blank range. the next time, i kept it drenched in fresh bleach--6%--for a full 1/2...

hi guys and gals just read in a thread about a year old about using Limonene as a house wash. didn't see any mention of it in a fairly recent thread in which a number of house wash formulas were shared. what is Limonene, where is it obtained, is it materially identical to other citric...

anybody know of a non-bleach product that will kill mildew? a deck i recently washed had some seriously tough mildew. in places, i was able to kill it with bleach only by using highly concentrated bleach--and that made the wood lighter in that area, requiring me to redo the deck with the...

i practiced on my own house to prepare for my first job pressure washing a house. i didn't get jack for dwell time. i noticed from an answer to another thread today that my first mistake was using liquid tide in my wash--2 gals bleach, i cup liquid tide and a squirt of liquid cascade. will...

hi folks i've got a couple of general questions and then a real poser. first, what pressure can one safely use on a car? is there any reason not to use a pressure washer on a car? is there any benefit to using a pressure washer on a car? now the tough one. we have beside our driveway a...

here's one that really doesn't fit under pressure washing, but ya'll are some ingenious sons of guns so i'm gonna run it past ya'll. i'm trying to clean up some severly rusted steel slats--they used to be in a grating of the type you see in greenhouses or elsewhere to provide a dry standing...

i've been calling around town looking for some of the chemicals mentioned in this forum for cleaning decks and houses. the chemicals are: sodium hydroxide, tsp, sodium metasilicate, and oxalic or citric acid. i've run into 2 problems. first, most everything beyond liquid chlorine seems...

i've been pressure washing roughly a month--flat pavement and a few decks so far. i use a cold water devilbiss 3500,4gpm, with a honda 13hp engine. i've now been asked to do my first house, one story, wood(board and batten(sp?), not shingle), and roughly 2000 sq ft. it's for my brother's...