How to Wash Bricks and Concrete like a PRO! | Pressure Washing SECRETS

what's going on everybody Kyle here and I'm out here with my wash truck Medusa and today we are doing a beautiful driveway you can see how nasty this thing is it's absolutely gnarly uh black organic growth all over it we have a lot of brick work we're gonna do for this customer all of their stairs on their front porch area we're going to do some sidewalks um we're gonna wrap around the side of the house to the entryway for their garage and then we're also going to do some stairs on the back side of the house that are absolutely covered in organic growth it's like full-blown Moss back there so you're gonna see what a really hot mix could do when it comes to neutralizing that organic growth and really help helping to pre-treat this concrete and that's going to Aid you in being able to move at a faster rate with your Surface Cleaner I want to talk about Surface Cleaner because I see so much bad information out there whenever it comes to Flat work so one of the biggest questions I get I get calls all the time why am I getting lines whenever I'm washing concrete okay and I just hear all types of bad information so today we're going to talk about it all right so I'll show you guys the job right here the scope of today's work and I'll do a little bit of footage for you guys not much because I have to stay on on schedule but whenever we're finished washing today I'll show you the end result free of lines and then we'll talk about it whenever I get back to the shop today certain things you could do to mitigate having lines in in the concrete so let's take a look at this work right here all right so we have a beautiful home here beautiful manicured yard so we're going to be really careful that we don't burn up any grass it's a cooler day today so we're good and we've had some rain but you could just see how black this area is right here it's been a long time since they washed this driveway we also have some tanning stains in the back because the leaves falling on the concrete and stuff like that but it's just your standard wrap around driveway beautiful Lake over there let's check these stairs out you can see how bad they are just in the shade a lot and there's always moisture and stuff like that rain water coming down these stairs so lots of organic growth gonna move this mat this furniture right here but more of the same just a lot of black bricks customer is going to be very happy with the end result you can just see more of the same guys I just got done taking pictures because this is a great opportunity for before and after pitchers for marketing so if you have jobs that are really dirty like this make sure you take the time to get those pictures before you start washing there's been so many times in my experience where I finished a job and I'm like shoot I forgot to take the pictures so awesome Rose Garden right here you could tell they've been deadheading these roses how big they're getting and stuff like that it looks awesome all right let me walk around right here so I've already talked to the customer today she's inside she wanted to get out of my way that way I could get to work so just a lot of concrete not a lot but nice amount of concrete for a residential home but you can see the organic staining so this is going to make for great pitchers got a bunch of these flower petals coming down here so we're going to clean all of this up for them but check out these stairs right here just the amount of growth we're going to take care of these stairs all the way to the top and we're going to take care of the inner walls too see right there how bad it is on that back wall all right first things first everybody I'm going to lay down a pre-treatment and this is a big debate people debate about all the time whether you need a pre-treatment or not on really dirty driveways like this I always pre-treat and I do it with a pretty hot mix too I do that for a number of reasons most importantly it's going to go ahead and start getting to work on the organic growth so we're going to lay down I'm probably going to lay down like four percent onto the concrete and let it start going to work on those Organics that's going to help me move a little bit quicker with my Surface Cleaner I have several surface cleaners on this rig got a 28 inch big guy right here I have a 24 inch Ground Force I have a 20 inch be Whirlaway so I'm gonna grab the 24 inch you know it's going to make really quick work of this and I'm going to lay down my pre-treatment with my soft wash system so I utilize a gas soft wash system people call them a gas roof pump if if you're familiar with that term I like AR 45 that's my favorite pump heard great things about Comet too but on jobs like this where it's large large pieces of concrete this is where you want to have like big boy softwash equipment so I'm all for 12 volts I think they're great but whenever you step up to more professional grade equipment this is where it really shines because it's going to take me no time to to lay down a pre-treatment on all of this concrete all of the stairs and all of the stairs in the back I could probably do it no probably do it twice as fast as a 12 volt pump so that's where you get your money's worth whenever you spend a little bit more you get a lot more performance and a lot more capability so let me get to that [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] guys I just walked back over here and I wanted to show you some video of these stairs that I pre-treated a lot of the blacks are already coming off the wall without even having to do pressure you can look at some of this organic growth back here all of this Moss it's slowly turning white so we're killing this stuff off guys it's already getting neutralized it's going to make our life a lot easier and uh there's a lot of trees back here I just blew all the leaves out of here before I started doing my uh treatment and you could already see leaves are following and stuff like that so that's going to be a constant struggle today but that's why you bring a leaf blower so let me get back to it now it's time for some moderate pressure fillers we're going to start removing all of this Moss it's going to be really easy because the bleach has already started working on it and it's releasing from the stone so just a little bit of moderate pressure is going to clean out all of the black that's in the grout that you see as well as all of the Moss that's growing on these stairs back here [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] look at me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now that our concrete is pre-treated we're gonna get to work with our Surface Cleaner so the biggest thing is don't go too fast that's one of the biggest mistakes that people make and that's going to create lines and you're not going to have a good finished product we'll talk more about surface cleaning later in the video step four come back and cut in areas that you may have missed with your Surface Cleaner and you can see how dirty this concrete still is we just worked our way around from the back of the house and this driveway looks absolutely beautiful it looks brand new right here and we haven't even pre-treated there ain't even any lines in there and stuff like that that goes to show you if you do things the right way you're not going to have all these headaches at the end of a job but let me come up here show you guys what we're gonna do Pro tip always start at The High Ground so we're going to go up here we've already pre-treated earlier the stairs we're going to pressure wash the steps get the rest of this uh grime off of these bricks then all that dirty stuff is going to run down you know it's going to take the path of least resistance so then we're going to go ahead after we do the stairs then we will finish pressure washing and taking all this down downhill and we will do the same on this side guys so I spent a little bit of time a little bit more time than I thought at the back of the house doing some filming so the pre-treatment has already dried that's okay you do not have to come back and pre-treat again you've already done your stuff it's already working on all of these Organics all you have to do is wet the concrete you never really want to be running a Surface Cleaner on dry concrete can you yes but go ahead and wet it down because wetting down the surface is going to make a night and day difference when it comes to how efficient you could be because of the speed at which you could clean so let me get to it [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] it's almost a wrap we're about 80 percent done I just finished up with a Surface Cleaner and I used my wand to rinse out the driveway get all of that dirt and grime that was on top of the surface rinse that out clean and now I've just stretched out some hose we're going to start doing our pre-treatment or I'm sorry our post treatment but let me spin this camera around so you guys could see look how clean everything looks and what do we not see lines all right I see so many times time time and time again on other people's work other people's before and after pictures and I get hundreds of questions and dozens of calls every month this is like one of the most popular questions how do I wash a driveway without getting Stripes so if you have the right machine you have the right tips and you have good flow and you do a good post treatment and I'm sorry pre-treatment and post treatment you won't have lines we haven't even done the post treatment yet and look looks great so we're still going to lay down a post treatment that way we can get it as clean as we can we don't want to just clean the surface we want to get down as deep as we can into the concrete it's porous on the surface so that sodium hypochlorite is going to get in there and do its thing we're also going to re-spray down the bricks where we washed but just night and day this is going to make for some really good before and after pictures here we go looks brand new lastly after we put down our pose treatment and if you're wondering I'm probably going to spray like a three percent so that's a good it's it's not lava like I would spray on a roof like five percent or something like that but it's enough to get in there and really clean the concrete people ask all the time can you just post treat and leave and uh I recommend that everybody rinses afterwards you know you never know if they're going to let dogs out of the house or if they have kids inside the last thing you want is a kid coming out here Barefoot and walking through puddles of sodium hypochlorite so I rinse everything down and that also allows me to Wet any uh foliage in the area any plants or flowers and stuff like that she has an awesome Rose Garden on the opposite side of the house so there is overspray when you're spraying on concrete and stuff like that it Mists up and it's in the air so just coming back and rinsing the concrete with clean water and rinsing any plants that are that are in the area you're going to have a happier customer so do the right thing I know it looks great but don't just roll up your hose reels and get out of there treat it like it's your own house and we will be out of here in the next 15 minutes thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] all right guys one last thing I almost forgot and it's the last and final step before you leave I use the leaf blower guys this is a Husqvarna right here I prefer steel but my last one went out and I had to get this husky right here but you could work your butt off for a couple hours and do everything right but if you don't come back and it's the little tiny details that customers really pay attention to if some areas don't have good runoff or you saw back in the back where there's a lot of like trees with flowers I've cleaned everything but the trees are like there's all types of flowers on the ground and stuff like that it will literally take me about three or four minutes with this leaf blower to go around the whole property any areas that didn't have good drainage and and you're rinsing the concrete and stuff like that and a little bit of dirt comes out of the The Mulch beds and stuff you could blow it right back into the mulch beds with this because if you just keep spraying it more water is just going to flush out more dirt and mulch so this you could blow all the dirt back into the mulch beds you could blow any flowers out of the way that are on the concrete and overall you're going to have a much better looking project whenever the customer comes outside to pay you so don't skip this step if you don't have this little Pro tip for you last thing I'm going to do is get payment from the customer and then I'll pull out of this neighborhood and we'll talk about either outside of the neighborhood or back at the shop we'll talk about all the equipment used today just so we could go a little bit more in depth about why I choose the equipment I have and uh that will be a wrap let's do it all right everybody we're back at the shop now so now let's Deep dive into why so many people are getting lines whenever they're pressure washing first and foremost one of the biggest issues I talked about this a little bit earlier in the video is people moving their Surface Cleaner too fast by all means if you have a huge machine like a big machine like I got and you have a massive Surface Cleaner and tons of flow you could definitely afford to move your Surface Cleaner faster a lot faster than the average Joe but for a lot of you guys it just it just comes down to slowing down you need to slow down whenever your surface cleaning because you're trying to go too fast and whenever you get done and you rinse that driveway off sure enough you're going to have a lot of lines so slow down the other thing that creates lines is overlap right which is fine it's just like mowing grass you're going to overly overlap a little bit but what you're seeing for a lot of you guys is where you've inadvertently you know because of the Surface Cleaner tips a certain area has been cleaned more or had high pressure on it longer than other areas so you're gonna naturally you're gonna see those lines so that could be avoided by what we talked about in the video pre and post treatments so make sure you're doing your pre-treatment make sure you're doing your post treatment all right can you get away with it without doing a pre-treatment absolutely I always still recommend wetting down the driveway first but I always pre-treat right I wash every day so I know what I'm talking about I could wash circles around a lot of people that are out there training courses and doing all types of other stuff online and I know what I'm talking about do your pre-treatment today I wasn't really concerned with the grass we had a lot of rain and it was a cold morning we just had a cold snap so wasn't as concerned with the grass but if you guys do go hot make sure you wet down the grass and stuff like that that way you don't have the the chance of Browning it up and killing grass and stuff like that but lay down a hot mix let it start going to work and then after you pressure wash that driveway make sure you do your post treatment like we talked about the driveway is porous you got to get that chemical down there because we're not just cleaning the surface of the concrete we want to get down deep that way that driveway stays cleaner a lot longer another thing I want to talk about is a Surface Cleaner and we'll go around and we'll talk about all of the equipment used but one of the biggest issues people have is they don't have the right Surface Cleaner for their pressure washer and I see this all too often with new guys people get this is a low barrier to entry business so all types of people get into this business with some piece of pressure washer from Lowe's and then they buy some big ass Surface Cleaner because they they're like I want a big Surface Cleaner I want to get this driveway done quick and let's face it your pressure washer don't have enough ass behind it does it have enough volume to push this Surface Cleaner so A good rule of thumb is four inches per gallon of minute for your machine so if you had a like an entry level machine like a professional grade machine but an entry level machine like four gallons a minute let's just do the math four times four four eight twelve sixteen so a four gallon a minute machine is ideally going to be paired well with a 16 inch Surface Cleaner this isn't the Golden Rule you know you could definitely go plus or minus with your Surface Cleaner a lot of that comes into play Whenever you adjust your tip sizes so I'm not going to touch base on tip sizes on this video contact whoever you buy your equipment from your surface cleaners your tips and make sure that you have the proper tips for your Surface Cleaner But A good rule of thumb is four inches of Surface Cleaner per gallon a minute of your machine all right so if you had a eight gallon a minute machine 30 you could push the 32 inch Surface Cleaner plus or minus depending on your tips so one last thing in regards to tips just like we talked about having the correct size tip it's also very important that you have fresh tips all right so in the spring and summer time for my Surface cleaners I'm swapping my tips out every four weeks all right and that might go that might be plus or minus depending on how many driveway washes I have but on across the board every four weeks I'm swapping my tips when I slow down closer to winter time I'm still swapping them out every two months so how many of you let's just be real how many of you right now are watching and you got into this industry like a year ago and you ain't changed your tips one time uh probably a bunch of people so hit the Thumbs Up Button if that's you swap your tips out have a bag of extras in your truck I cannot stress to you enough how quickly these tips wear out and also a lot of people are having clog tips and that could also lead to striping and circles and stuff like that in in the driveway whenever you're finished so take care of your equipment swap it out frequently I think that's a lot of the big reasons why you guys are having lines and seeing lines in your concrete so I hope this video helped let's talk a little bit about the equipment I used and I'm getting off of here all right so like I previously said in the video this is a whisper wash 24 inch ground force great Surface Cleaner right here I think whisper wash makes the best surface cleaners in the industry I love how this one has casters on it definitely makes it easy to go side to side when I'm washing or if I'm turning around and stuff like that it makes it super easy I actually prefer using this one to the big guy that I have on the truck so this is my favorite Surface Cleaner this is also a great option right here more of like an introduction level Surface Cleaner I use this with my five and a half gallon a minute machine as a backup but this is a be Whirlaway so it's a lot cheaper but I would definitely recommend spend a little bit more money get a professional grade Surface Cleaner whenever you're doing surface cleaning you transition a lot guys so I'm always swapping between a trigger gun and a Surface Cleaner trigger gun Surface Cleaner if you don't want to constantly have to turn off your pressure washer to transition between your Surface Cleaner and your trigger gun ensure that you buy one of these high pressure ball valves this is a must-have piece of equipment guys I'm talking to the new guys I'm sure a lot of you guys already know what this is but this valve right here this high pressure valve you could just turn it off and that's going to stop the flow to your Surface Cleaner and then you could safely transition to your trigger gun or vice versa if you were running the gun you could transition to your Surface Cleaner without turning your machine off and without having to depressurize your system so definitely a must-have another thing is a must-have guys beside your trigger gun is running a lance right here I have an M5 twist but I have a j I have several J rods I use too but this is not a long Lance this is definitely a smaller Lance but still a must-have guys especially when it comes to rinsing off the driveway in the summertime I do a lot more rinsing and I do it more frequently because the last thing you want is all that dirt and grime that's brought to the surface from your Surface Cleaner drying back into that Porous concrete so you want to frequently rinse off your driveway as you're working your way down the concrete but this saves your back having a lance and stuff like that so you're not having to leave constantly bend over with just a trigger gun or just a ball valve when you're rinsing So Pro tip get yourself a lamp it's a must-have another reason why I use a lance every day is every single day I'm washing bricks guys so whether it's the front steps to someone's house or it's at a commercial setting and stuff like that Lance is going to create distance between you and the surface you're washing it's going to greatly reduce the amount of splashback that you have and it's also going to increase your safety because you're farther away from any debris that is going to be flying off like broken brick or mortar and stuff like that coming back and hitting you in the face so I have several different size lances for different applications so definitely invest in several of those go to your pressure washing store and pick up a couple different lengths for yourself all right next up is the pressure washer this is the Workhorse of any pressure washing rig right here it's what you're going to use day in day out the one that I used in the video is an igx 800 this is definitely a big machine it's tied to an 11 gallon per minute pump so high flow like we talked about PSI is important but what's more important is gallon per minute volume so this is a high volume machine right here that really helps me out I couldn't wash without something like this because I'm doing bigger and bigger jobs commercial and even on just big residential jobs like that it makes your day so easy when you have the right equipment for the job this might be overkill for somebody if you if you're just getting into the industry and you're starting a company or or you're just doing this on the side and stuff like that this is a great option right here I recommend for anybody that's trying to run a company the smallest you want to go with is a five and a half gallon a minute machine so this is a igx 630 right here five and a half gallons a minute so this is a great machine if you're just getting into it entry level right here it's going to set you up right but if you're really trying to go after it and go hard and you're planning on doing a lot of washing a lot of house washes a lot of driveways um I always recommend people at least get a eight gallon a minute machine if you don't you're going to be kicking yourself in the ass eight gallon minutes the way to go I know there's some restrictions you know if you have maybe you don't have room for a big buffer tank or something like that maybe this is this is the way to go for you but just know that you're going to not have the same capabilities and performance as something big like eight gallon a minute or something like this when it comes to pressure washing and house washes you can see I'm running all Hondas guys um there's a lot of Manufacturers out there that that you know have machines that people are tying pumps to for pressure washers but on my rigs I'm only going to put Hondas on the rig guys they're tried and true I've just had bad experience with other machines so Honda last Honda is reliable that's why I go this route this is the soft wash system we talked about earlier stay tuned we got another video coming on the ar-45 why I think it's the most ideal most professional soft wash system you could have when it comes to Performance and capabilities this thing can't be touched like something like this or a comet so video coming on that if you're looking into getting a soft wash system I think gas roof pumps definitely the way to go the way of the future all right y'all that's a wrap if you enjoyed the content please give the video a thumbs up it really helps my channel get these videos out there to people like you that just want some help there's so much garbage trash information out there and there's so many people that are just trying to take advantage of new people in the industry I'm just out here trying to help people I want to pay it forward I want to get good information and out there in the industry so help spread this video by giving it a thumbs up if you're new to the channel don't miss out on new content make sure you hit subscribe and then make sure you hit that notification Bell because we got a lot more videos coming out and you don't want to miss out on those videos we've just recently switched the channel from my name Kyle McGuire to softwashtv I got a lot of video ideas and a lot of things planned to create content so we got a lot of content coming I'm just super motivated I got a lot more ideas and footage coming out for you guys takes a lot of energy but I'm doing it for y'all so I will talk to y'all later but to celebrate rebranding the Channel I want to do a lot of giveaways on the channel let's do it I'll do a giveaway for a brand new uh stretch of high pressure gray non-marking hose I'll even throw the quick connects in there for you so all you have to do is leave a comment on the video I always leave this at the end of the video that way the the true supporters can get in on the giveaway but leave a comment it and we'll let it run for two weeks and I'll put it in the randomizer if it's if it lands on 20 I'll go down to the 20th Comet and that's the winner if it lands on 10 I'll go down to the 10th comment and if that's the winner I'll ship you out a brand new stretch of high pressure hose with brand new stainless steel quick connects that's what my way of giving back to y'all so y'all take care I will talk to you later peace

Channel: SOFTWASH TV

Views: 247,619

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Id: qEQDAGHqN-A

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 14 2022