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 to be available only in powdered(or flake or bead) form in 50 lb bags. will they mix up well enough to apply with a chemical injector? what strength do i want to mix up--how much chemical to how much water? are there commercial preparations that contain these chemicals that i could use instead of trying to mix the powders. one chemical supplier recommended "big ripper" and "legend degreaser" as containing between the two of them all the chemicals i mentioned except for the acid. any opinions on those? they are in the $5 to $6/gal range. i don't know what stength the various chemicals are in those products. i'm figuring to use the 12% liquid chlorine as my base and add the other chemicals to that in whatever proportion seems consistent with past cleaning recipes already posted in this forum. any specific recommendations for proportions are welcomed and encouraged.
the same place said i could use muriatic acid(which they carry in a liquid) as a neutralizer instead of oxalic(also said that citric was too dangerous to be messing with for these purposes). will the muriatic do the trick?
second, i'm a one-man operation and really don't need 50 lb bags of anything. again, i guess the best way to solve that problem is a premixed product, but i'm open to any suggestions.
i've read the various posts on using bleach vs sodium hydroxide vs oxalic acid(as a cleaner, i think) on wood, but am not sure of the bases for the competing opinions. also, the chemicals i listed above are extracted from several different recipes, so some may be redundant to others, or be incompatible to others. any guidance in that regard will be much appreciated.
thanks folks.
richard
first, most everything beyond liquid chlorine seems to be available only in powdered(or flake or bead) form in 50 lb bags. will they mix up well enough to apply with a chemical injector? what strength do i want to mix up--how much chemical to how much water? are there commercial preparations that contain these chemicals that i could use instead of trying to mix the powders. one chemical supplier recommended "big ripper" and "legend degreaser" as containing between the two of them all the chemicals i mentioned except for the acid. any opinions on those? they are in the $5 to $6/gal range. i don't know what stength the various chemicals are in those products. i'm figuring to use the 12% liquid chlorine as my base and add the other chemicals to that in whatever proportion seems consistent with past cleaning recipes already posted in this forum. any specific recommendations for proportions are welcomed and encouraged.
the same place said i could use muriatic acid(which they carry in a liquid) as a neutralizer instead of oxalic(also said that citric was too dangerous to be messing with for these purposes). will the muriatic do the trick?
second, i'm a one-man operation and really don't need 50 lb bags of anything. again, i guess the best way to solve that problem is a premixed product, but i'm open to any suggestions.
i've read the various posts on using bleach vs sodium hydroxide vs oxalic acid(as a cleaner, i think) on wood, but am not sure of the bases for the competing opinions. also, the chemicals i listed above are extracted from several different recipes, so some may be redundant to others, or be incompatible to others. any guidance in that regard will be much appreciated.
thanks folks.
richard