How to clean weatherboard siding on your house

Think your wood siding needs a fresh coat of paint? Maybe. Or it could be that your wood weatherboards simply needs a thorough cleaning. Homeowners have always prized wood for its unparalleled appearance, but like any siding material, it requires periodic maintenance. With wood in particular, the challenge is to avoid doing more harm than good. For instance, you might be tempted to clean weatherboards with a broom and scrubbing brush, thinking it would make quick work of things. Do so at your own risk. Using such a harsh abrasive tool can actually cause several types of damage, including stripped paint, gouged boards, and loosened caulk, besides, if you really want to give new life to your wood siding, it’s likely that water alone won’t do the trick—you’ll need a good soap to remove the dirt and kill the moss,mould and mildew on the weatherboards. 

If you are not familiar with the use of soaps and chemicals i would recommend hiring a professional house washing contractor. "Mr Troy Hillard from Wash Rite in New Zealand said in most cases most houses can be washed for under $300 so its worth while talking to a local house washing contractor if your unsure what soaps to use".

STEP 1 MATERIALS AND TOOLS
- Low Pressure High Volume Pressure washer
- Garden Hose
- House wash soaps
- Ladder

Shut all the windows. As you go about your preparations, keep an eye out for mold. Dirt can be unsightly, but mold can be truly problematic. Left unchecked, it often causes wood rot, particularly in wet, humid climates. Note any location where you discover mold, so you return to and concentrate on those spots later in the cleaning process.

STEP 2
Apply the house wash soaps through the chemical injection value in your Low pressure high volume pressure washer, Apply the soap from the bottom of the house and work your way upwards, Mr Hillard from Wash Rite recommends washing small sections of the house at a time as you don't want the soap to dry on the house. Let the soap dwell for 10 minutes and keep on apply light layers of soap just so the soap does not dry on the house in that 10 minute period.

STEP 3
Rinse of the house starting at the highest point and working your way down to the ground level, This will ensure no soap is left on the house.

Take extra time to rinse of the windows to prevent soap drying on the windows and leveling residue marks on the glass.

STEP 4

Finish up by walking around the house and making sure all sections of the house are clean, If there are any stubborn bits you may have to go back and do step 2 and 3 again on that section.

Ramp up for spring in the house washing and roof washing industry - Wash Rite

Spring is about to arrive

In New Zealand spring is just around the corner, You know its close when the flowers start to show and you have a few days in a row above 15 degrees Celsius. With just about a week till it officially starts you need to get ready if your not already. 

We at Wash Rite have our flyers printed, budget put aside to hit google adwords harder than ever, And we have extra staff assets in place to hand out flyers and business cards. We also have a professional marketing team to do all the SEO, newspaper and article side of things.

We will be updating the website and social media pages with spring related items to let our client base know the time has come to get there house washed. Make sure you check us out at www.washrite.co.nz and www.facebook.com/washritenz for all the wash rite latest news.

We will also be running specials with our real estate contacts as the house market should rise in spring and this is a good place for work and we work with some really good and nice people in the real estate market.

Some people ask why spring is a busy time of the year and its simple, warmer weather and still plenty of rain makes great moss and mould growing conditions and with the warmer weather more people are outside and notice how bad there house is looking. This will always make your phone ring off the hook.

Inline with this we market our softwash and low pressure wash house washing services very hard over this period. We also market the roof washing and moss and mould roof treatment services as well over this period. I also put a fair bit of work into the pest and spider spraying service as its a great seller and has great profit margins as well. You can find more info about these services at washrite.co.nz/services/ 

Now the phones ringing and the calendar is filling up take the time to get your clients to do reviews on your work on google and Facebook and this will help you down the track getting people to call you. You can see some of mine at http://washrite.co.nz/testimonials/ or at www.facebook.com/washritenz this is a slow process but it works well and you should put the time and effort into it and it will pay off big time.

Now spring is here so get out there and start making the money i know i will be.

Troy.

Internet presence for your house washing business - www.washrite.co.nz

The question i get asked all the time is how important is it to have a web presence for your business??

Well the simple answer is its very important, The first and major step you need to do is get a website built and get it up on google asap and than put some time and effort and money to optimize it to get the best results.

As you will see from my website www.washrite.co.nz its basic but it tells you we are a house wash, softwash, pressure wash and roof wash company and where we operate and that's Hamilton New Zealand. All the basic's. Now you have to get that website out there and best way to do that is to get anyone else you know that has a website link your site to there's and list your site on every business directory you can find.

I also highly recommend getting a Facebook page up and going, You can link your website to your page and this will help google pick up your site, With your Facebook page you need to have as much house wash based content on there that you can. This will help drive google to your content rich website. Check out my Facebook page for idea's www.facebook.com/washritenz

These are the first two steps on building a web presence to help grow your house wash business. 

Hope this helps the new guy in the house wash or pressure wash business.

Thanks

Troy Hillard

Wash Rite 

www.washrite.co.nz

How to deal with a customer complaint !!

Its not very often that we at Wash Rite gets any sort of complaint but we have gotten 2 in the past month so i thought i would go through the two complaints and run through how we handled it and what we done about the two complaints.

The first one come through our website www.washrite.co.nz and was about how one of our service's vehicles left a tyre mark on the clients grass. 

When we received the complaint the first thing we did was call the client and tell them we will be out there straight away which they seemed happy to hear. On the way to the clients address i went via my house and grabbed a bad of grass seed i had in my garage and went to see the client.

Upon arriving i could see what the client was talking about. It seems the service vehicle went of the end of the driveway and the tyre made a mark due to the ground been wet due to a large amount of recent rain. I grabbed the bag of grass seed out of my truck re seeded it and the client was happy. Problem solved.

The second complaint come via phone and from the time i picked up the phone call a lady started to scream, swear and hell at me, After a minute or two i gathered what her complaint was about. It seemed that we did a roof clean on the house next door to her house, These two houses are joined and share a common wall, The job was done about 1 year ago or so. We went back 3 months after the job and took a picture and you could tell a massive difference between her roof been uncleaned and our clients roof now clean. Our out sourced social media company uploaded the picture to our Facebook account and the lady who's roof was not cleaned was very very unhappy that the picture made her house look bad. She was also unhappy about the comment the social media company put with the picture, " One roof cleaned the other owner did not want there's cleaned" or something very close to that. Needless she was unhappy and she wanted any reference to her taken down , 

What we did with this complaint was is to email our out sourced social media company asking to remove any reference to her which they did within 15 minutes, I also emailed the lady complaining to offer a free roof clean / treatment which she agreed to but have not herd from her to book it in. Now this is the best or worst part which ever way you see it. I believe she has complained to the New Zealand Advertising complaints authority about the post.

Now with these two complaints i believe we done everything we could to keep both party's happy, one of them where happy and one was not. So the moral of this story is you cant keep everyone happy all the time.

Thanks

Troy Hillard

Wash Rite - House Wash

www.washrite.co.nz

$1000 A Day Pressure Washing Business

I get asked all time how do i make $1000 profit pressure washing?

First and foremost to make $1000 a day in the pressure washing industry it takes hard work, Every stage from promoting your business , quoting, and customer relations through to doing the work it all takes hard work and effort. So if your scared of hard work and lots of effort stop reading NOW!!!

The first step in making $1000 a day is lots and lots of advertising, There are heaps of ways to advertise your business from expensive ways to methods that are free but you need to promote yourself.

Once your phone starts ringing you you can smile as getting the phone to ring is by far the hardest part of business in my opinion. Now its time to get out there a quote on the job at hand. Before you arrive on site to see the home owner or business owner you should have done your research to know what the market rates are from pressure washing in your area. When you quote never be the cheap option i always try and be middle of the road if not on the higher end of the market prices but what i do is i always offer references from recent jobs i have done and i always throw in a free service even if the free service is to clean the exterior windows for free or do a slow acting moss and mould treatment on there driveway, these free services have a cost of sale to me of around $40 so very little.

Once you have given the home owner or business owner the formal quote you need to follow up with them to try and close the sale, I normally call around them around 48 hrs after the quote was given, This shows your very interested in getting there work and that you have good communication skills as there is a big issue in this industry of people not communicating with the clients well enough so make it a point of difference that you communicate excellent with the client and word will spread.

Now if all went well the client has accepted the quote and you have booked the job in on a set day and time. Now next big thing is to be on time and have all the equipment needed ready to go so no delays when your on site.

Now down to the $$$$$$ , What to charge. In my area a average house size is 200m2 or 1800 ft2 and we would charge around $395.00 for a house wash, We always try and up sell two services at least on every house wash, these are a moss and mould roof treatment which would be another $160.00 and the last service is a driveway pressure clean which would be around $150.00 so a total cost to the customer would be $705, Now we try and complete two of these every day so a daily total of $1410.00.

Now we need to work out our cost of sale for the day to work out our profile, We would use around $25 of chemical on each house and $45 of chemical on each roof and $25 of chemical on each driveway and about $10 fuel for the pump so a total of $105 cost per house so a total of $210 cost for the day, Once we take out our daily business costs which in our business averages $150.00 per day which covers insurance, advertising, and office expenses you will be left with $1050.00.

The figures provided are an average as some day you will make more and some make less and your costs per day will change daily and even more if you have break downs.

As i stated in the first part of this the hardest thing is to get your phone to ring as you need to be doing as many quotes as you can as the more you do the more chance some will accept and offer you the work.

I will post shortly a post on how i get my phone to ring none stop all day every day.

For more information about making money pressure washing or softwash check out this

God Bless and happy pressure washing

Troy

Wash Rite NZ
www.washrite.co.nz

http://washrite.co.nz/services/

Soft wash vs Pressure Washing

The big difference in most house washing or exterior wash company's is the method they use to wash your house,

1st option is soft wash, The method of soft washing is you applicate your chemical / soap mix onto the house with a low pressure pump, Some of the cheap and nasty company's will use a bertiolini type weed sprayer with a longer hose attached, You see farmers with this style of pump on there quad bikes. You can also use motorized diaphragm pumps as well. The pros for this type of cleaning is the equipment is cheap dirt cheap so the cost to wash the house should be about $1.50 per m2 and the fact that it is gentile on the paint from a pressure point of view. I also believe that soft washing is great for roof cleaning and there is no kick back from the pump while on the roof. Now the cons, The biggest is the strength of chemicals used and the type of chemicals used and that needs to be used to wash your house from moss and mould and dirt. The typical soft wash company that uses 12v electric pumps will use a 15% chlorine mix on your house with a small amount of surfactant to make the mix foam up. If your house is real dirty these company's like to put caustic soda in the mix but be warned caustic soda is the main ingredient in paint stripper and oven cleaner!!!! I would also directly request NO CAUSTIC TO BE USED ON MY HOUSE.
So if you chose a soft wash method ask a few questions what % of chlorine is in your mix when it hits my house and will you ever use caustic soda on my house?? Most company's with soft, chemical, chem, or gentile in there name use these chemicals so be aware now in saying this if these chemicals are used in the right dose and in the right format than there will be no issue what so ever. It all comes down to training.

Picture is a soft rig doing a roof treatment on a hospital roof

2nd option is pressure washing, Company's that use a pressure washer still use chlorine to wash your house but they use a method called down stream injection which just means the chemical is injected into the water stream, Most contractors use a mix that when it hits your house its around 3% to 5% chlorirne which is a lot less than the soft wash only company's that are around 15% and higher in some cases.
When using a pressure washer you have the option of dialing up the pressure if needed to get some hard to remove dirt. The pressure washer can be dialed down low or dialed up very high so this gives the user a higher rate of flexibility to get the job done and done right. In the hands of an inexperienced user the pressure washer can cause damage to sidding's

A pressure wash company is more likely to give you an instant result and the surface is cleaned than and there. A down side of a pressure washing method is the cost of equipment. The equipment alone can cost you $10000 not including the vehicle where a soft wash set up can be brought for $2000

Now my option on whats better - Well both we at Wash Rite have pressure washing equipment and soft wash equipment in each and every service vehicle as each method has its place as long as the person using it is well trained up on best practice. We do extensive training on both sets of equipment before anyone is aloud to use it on a clients house. Training is key in this industry without a doubt, The big problem in our industry is there are heaps of so called bucket bobs out there working from home with no training and very little experience and they cause damage regardless of the method they use. I see it almost daily. http://washrite.co.nz/services/

Picture is of a pressure washer washing a house

If you have any questions we would love to help so feel free to look us up at www.washrite.co.nz or call on 0800101216

Troy Hillard
Wash Rite NZ
www.washrite.co.nz
Hamiltons Premier house wash company.

http://washrite.co.nz/request-a-quote/