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We sodium hypochlorite AKA SH to clean roofs. This is not something to downstream to clean. You may be able to xjet it but this may still not be strong enough. We will use a mixture of 50 percent water and 50 percent SH applied by dedicated pump.
Dedicated pumps can be
Need to apply a nice even coat from bottom to top of roof to keep our product to work properly and not to use eccess chemicals.
During the process of roof cleaning we need to make sure we all plants, grass, and surrounding areas wet with water.
SH will kill any and all organic materials including plant life.
Exterior window cleaning is something that we did as an add-on about three years ago. We're not window cleaners. I don't know all the ins and out about window cleaning, but I do know that this is a great add-on for a power washing business, and we upsell this probably 50% of the time, just by putting it in our package. People tend to go for that middle package.
That being said, window cleaning is pretty good money for what it is. We don't do exterior window cleaning by itself. We only add it to our packages. Because most people that want window cleaning, they actually want inside and out, and we prefer not to go inside customer's homes because of the added liability.
When we add window cleaning on we start around $100 for a small house, and then it goes up from there. For our middle package, added on to our typical house, we would charge an additional $250, for a service that takes less than half an hour to do, from pulling the hose out, washing the windows, everything.
We start with a hose reel coming off of the truck. The hose runs into a standard water tank. From there the water comes out of the water tank through a 12 v pump and into a De-I tank. The De-I tank reduces the Total Dissolved Soilds (TDS) in the water from over 200 to less than 15, then the hose goes through another hose reel with a super-swivel on it, then extends out to a water fed pole on the end that is held by the technician as they work.
The goal is to not only clean the windows, but to clean them spot-free. Leaving spots on windows is one of our top reasons we get callbacks from customers, and every callback not only wastes time, but lowers your customer satisfaction and eats into your profits, so leave those windows spot free!
The hose we prefer is the Flex Gorilla. it's flexible, tough, and works really well. We like the 200 ft length because it can extend all the way around the house, making it easier on our crew.
We recommend you have a swivel on your hose reel. We use the Super Swivel on most of our trucks, but sometimes you'll have a hose reel that comes with its own and that will work for you as well. You want a swivel that allows the hose to roll off & on the reel easily, and doesn't leak.
Getting the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in your water to less than 15 is what will keep spots from forming on the window. Normal water is greater than 200, which is why using a DeIonized Water Tank (or De-I Tank) is so important.
As i mentioned earlier, we do not go inside customers' homes, including removing screens. Most screens need to be taken out from the inside of the window, so we inform customers that they will need to remove them prior to their appointment. But why?
If you go into people's houses, you need to be bonded. If you have an employee who goes into a home and accidentally breaks something, or steals something, your company is liable. So, that's the primary reason why we stay outside of homes when we do our outside window cleaning.
I really do believe that exterior window cleaning is an awesome add-on for a pressure washing business, bringing in significant extra revenue for relatively little additional work.
It's also a great example of why I recommend offering your services in packages. The majority of customers will select the middle package, so make sure you have an odd-number to select from, and make sure that middle one is worth your time.
Some examples of things you can add-on to create packages: using warm water instead of cold water, adding exterior window cleaning to a service, adding driveway cleaning to a service, adding house wax on to a house washing service, etc.
When you are quoting any service, including roof cleaning, you need to make sure you charge your customers in a way that is competitive, but still covers not only your costs, but also the risk involved. With roof cleaning, there is a lot of risk. One thing to consider is that your insurance costs will be higher if your employees are going on to roofs. You'll also be using ladders, you're using stronger chemicals, etc. so there is significantly more liability in doing roof cleaning versus general house washing. When you quote, you need to take all of those factors into consideration.
Another consideration is that with a roof cleaning you will have a minimum of two technicians on a job. Whenever you have someone going up a ladder, you always want to have two people there. Safety first, always. Never put profits above the safety of your employees (or yourself!)
In our market area, we recommend $500 just to show up at your house for a roof clean. For the risk that it takes, having two employees on site, climbing ladders, safety spraying the roof with chemicals, the know-how to not over spray, the expertise to not kill the customer's landscaping, and to get the job done well, we feel like that is the minimum charge that is reasonable.
We recommend you offer roof cleaning only as part of a package, as opposed to offering it as a stand alone service. Chances are, if they need a roof cleaning, they also need a house wash, because if it's growing on the north side of their roof, their siding is also likely growing something on the north side of their house.
If you offer a package, in our market area instead of getting say $500 for a roof clean, now you're getting $500 + $250 for the house wash. We'll knock a little off of the house wash because it's a package, but we're already there. It doesn't take us a long time to go ahead and do the house wash, the hoses are already out, and you need to water everything down to keep the landscaping from dying anyway, so why not add another service, do a housewash, and make another $250 on top of the roof clean?
Another thing to consider is that if you don't offer packages, you're missing out on selling additional services. Let's say a customer calls you for a roof clean. If that's only offered as a stand alone service, and that's what they have their eye on, chances are that's all you're going to get out of them. But if you mention your different packages, there's a good chance they'll recognize something else you offer as something they could use, and you've just bumped up your sale.
When you are deciding on what packages to offer, we recommend having at least three to choose from, because the fact is that most customers are going to select the middle package. Very few people are going to want to pay the highest price for the top package, but very few are also going to want the "cheap" one either. Your average customer is going to go for the middle of the road and select one of your middle packages.
So Package #1 might be roof clean + house wash. Package #2 you could add another service, so roof clean + house wash + exterior window clean. Your last package you want to add another service, so maybe it's roof clean + house wash + exterior window clean + sidwalk clean. None of those add a huge amount of time to your job, you're already there with the hoses & equipment, why not add on additional services and provide them with an entirely clean exterior while putting some extra money in your pocket?
The number one consideration in pricing a roof clean is the size of the roof, and we primarily look at the square footage of the house. Like I mentioned earlier, we start at $500 in our market area, and this would be for a 1,000 sq ft ranch. We go up around $100 per 1,000 square feet, so a 2,000 sq ft ranch would be $600. But what if it's a 2,000 sq ft two story? That's less roof area, so do we charge less? No. In my opinion the additional risk of going up another story negates any savings you would have by charging less for a smaller roof area. That is why, generally speaking, we charge based on square footage, regardless of how many stories the house is.
The only difference would be if you have these large custom-built ranch homes, maybe 3500 sq ft or higher, we may up the cost a bit because of the quantity of chemicals we are having to use to cover the larger roof area. But those homes are the exception, not the rule, so we can use the square foot rule for the vast majority of our customers.
The nice thing about modern technology is we can pretty easily provide a quote without ever actually looking at the house. We usually start by googling the address and checking the listing on several different real estate sites (realtor.com, zillow.com, etc.). That should give you a good idea of the total square footage, how many stories, etc. Next, we check with the local county. Our county has a Property Valuation Administration that we can look up online and it will tell us not only the total square footage, but how big the deck is, the driveway, etc. So by putting that information together, double checking to make sure it matches itself, we'll know everything we need to know to make an accurate quote without ever stepping foot on the property.
As a business owner, you have to make sure you are charging enough to make it worth your time to provide the service, and there are a lot of factors to consider. You have chemicals, equipment, insurance, wages, gas & trucks to get there, taxes, the list goes on & on. If you're operating as a real business, which I hope you are, you have to take all of this into consideration when you price your services. Be competitive with your market area, but don't give it away. You're here to make money by providing a service, make sure you do.
In this article we are going to discuss downstream injectors, covering how they work, some problems we have with them, and how we keep them on the truck so that I can replace them quickly and easily.
We use the general pump downstream injector. It comes with a simple brass piece that we can put quick connects on each end. Quick connects are preferred because, quite frankly, things go bad and these are easy to replace. We typically get 6-8 weeks out of each one. Prices typically range from $15-20 each, plus the coupling, so you're spending about $35 every six weeks, which isn't too bad. There's also a kit you can get, where you can replace the ball & spring in there when needed. I prefer the quick connects, but there are people who prefer the it, so that's another route if you prefer.
The way the downstream injector works is you have pressure coming in, and going out. If you have low pressure going through, around 100 PSI or less, it allows the valve to remain open and will draw soap from the soap tank into your line. If you have high pressure the valve will shut off and no soap will be drawn.
The injectors only go one way. There is a little arrow on the injector that shows you the direction of the flow, and underneath it it shows you how many gallons per minute it is, and what size the injector is. You want to make sure your flow goes with the arrows. If you go the other way, you will not get soap and it will not work.
What are some issues we have with a downstream injector? If the hose that goes back into your tank gets pinched, it won't work. If the hose gets a hole in it, even a tiny one, it won't work. If any of the plumbings in the fittings on the tank get a little leak, it won't work. Anything that causes it to suck even a tiny bit of air into it, and it will not work.
How do you know if it's sucking air? One way to test this is to pull the hose off and pull the trigger on the gun. If you put your finger on there you should be able to feel if it's sucking on your finger. If it is, then you don't have a problem. If you don't feel it sucking on your finger then that means the ball valve is either gone or stuck, and usually if it's stuck it's about to go bad anyway. If the ball is stuck, then while you're pulling the trigger you can take a small item like a nail and push the ball down and you should hear it sucking again.
The ball & spring in the downstream injector is made out of metal. We use sodium hyprochloride, which will rust metal, another reason they usually don't work that long.
Now, some people prefer to use an X-Jet. They do last a long longer, but the cost is about 10x what you will pay for a downstream injector. An X-Jet will last you 2-3 years, but you also have to carry your bucket & hose around with you. With a downstream injector we can keep it all on the truck and not have to carry it around. That's why we prefer the downstream injector, but you do have people who swear by the X-Jet, as it is a good quality tool.
A downstream injector will get you one gallon of soap for every 10 gallons of water, but we're also diluting in our soap tank as well, so while we start with 12% sodium hyprochloride, we're only using about 0.75% when we actually clean, which is how we can clean around a house and not kill the landscaping.
An X-Jet can go stronger than a downstream injector. If you're doing mostly vinyl siding, a downstream injector is all you need. If you do a lot of stucco or brick, then an X-Jet might work better for you because it can go up to a 3:1 ratio on the soap, and you can put a pretty strong mixture in there, which is what is needed to kill the algae, molds, and other growths in those materials because they are more porous than siding.
You can start seeing the leaves here are starting to drop. It's a little late this year. They're probably not gonna fall mostly until November, just 'cause this year we've had a lot of rain in the Cincinnati area through this whole year. Usually, our rain stops about July, and so all the trees are dry. But this year, we've had rain every ... Almost every week we've had rain. Maybe there's been two weeks or three, two-week span, that we didn't have rain this year.
What that means is the trees are full, the trees are green. It's starting to get cold, they're already starting to freeze. And so you can start seeing some of the leaves are starting to drop. It's just part of the great Cincinnati weather how this works.
With that being said, please like and subscribe to my channel. I'd appreciate it very much. I'm trying to grow it to 10,000. I'd appreciate that very much. What we need to know. Here are some factors that we use to quote gutter cleaning. One factor is is it a one-story or a two-story? We do do different gutter pricings on them.
The other issue we may factor in is does it have gutter guards? If it has gutter guards, that's gonna take a lot of time. We gotta remove them or we're gonna try to spray underneath of them and make a mess. If they got gutter guards, that's almost an extra 100 bucks. That's just the fact of it. Your hands are gonna be all tore up. You gotta get a drill up there, and then put them all back and make sure that you don't damage them.
We hate gutter guards. Gutter guards suck and I hate gutter guards. Just 'cause they got gutter guards on them doesn't mean they won't get leaves in them. They still will get leaves in them. I know people on here will upsell gutter guards, and that's fine if you wanna go back and upsell gutter guards. I look at it this way. You can upsell gutter guards or we come clean your gutters out every year. Some people just wanna put gutter guards on. Guess what? If they wanna put gutter guards on, you put gutter guards on.
But that being said. One-story and two. Again, you have to know your numbers so that you can bid appropriately. I've done $79 gutter cleanings when I first started. I used to be 79 and 129 or 79 and 99. I did do that, and you can make a lot of money at that. Most gutter clean outs don't take very long. There are some that do, but most gutter clean outs, you can go up to the downspout, pull out a bunch of crud that's blocking the downspout. A football, a tennis ball. All that good stuff up there that the kids thrown up there. And now their gutters are clean. Of course, they don't wanna get on a ladder. They're scared to death of the ladder. Guess what? You just made 100 bucks for 10 minutes worth of work. That's good money, I can't be wrong. But you can also get more than that out of them.
Last year, we were at 159 and 199. This year, we're even more than that. During off season, we're getting 229 and 269. If they're bigger houses, more than that. Way more than that. Don't think that people won't pay for gutter clean outs -- they will. You gotta quote it. Now, you can out quote yourself, don't get me wrong. If you can't get leads, that's another problem. You need to make sure you got leads coming in. If you're only getting 10 leads, you're probably gonna be at the 79 and 99, because you gotta have lead flow.
Now, how do you get lead flow? By spending money. Or by putting out flyers, which is spending money, 'cause you're gonna have to either take time or you're gonna have to pay somebody to go out and do that. That's all part of your cost. The part of your cost is your gas to go there, your 40-foot ladder, because you're not gonna only be able to get a 28. Sometimes you gotta have that stupid 40 for that backyard, three-story piece of crap lead trees all over it. Sucky trees. That's part of that.
With that, make sure you're charging enough. You don't know if it's a three-story back there, so you're probably gonna charge the $99 or the little bit more for a two-story, and in reality, it's a three-story in the back. Been there, done that.
Those are some things that you need to do. And then on the other thing of lead flow, how are you getting your leads? Are you sending out mailers? Well, that's all cost that goes into how much you need to charge so you can run a legit business. It's about running a legit business, not running fly of your seat, because you know what happens when you run fly of the seat. Eventually, you miscalculate something really bad over and over, and you go out of business. Or you're working a whole lot of hours and not making no money. If you're gonna work a whole lot of hours and not make no money, go work at McDonald's. At least you're gonna make $15 an hour. You're not gonna be up on a ladder and you're not gonna be getting your hands all cut up and all that kinda stuff. Make it worth your time to go out and make money.
I have a tool in this video right here -- I'll put it at the end -- that makes gutter cleaning easy. It's a great video. Make sure you watch it. Also, I'm gonna put a link down here for something else for wintertime that we do, and that's Christmas lights. I started a whole 'nother channel, so I'll send you over to that playlist of that channel. Go over there and watch those videos. Thank you and have a great day.
So that's gonna go to the right to my system and that's the basics of a root pulp.
Now, there is one other thing we can do here. I'm here, and that is Go from My pressure line here from our press on in here, and it's gonna go to a thing called accumulator is, I'll put a picture in it on the video, what accumulator is and what that does is evil, the pressure to build up in there, and it keeps this pump from running so much. We don't use it, but we probably should. I have used it in the past, I just decided that I I don't know, I just didn't do 'em. There are about 100 bucks, and it's one of those things that I probably should be using it, but I don't... With that being said, these pumps here I know people say, "Well why don't you just go to error, why don't you go to booster these come for 200 at the this pumps right here, these tools in a going on cheaper, you can... Don't have to pay a dollar for it, it but I can get a whole lot of these pumps for the same price of the bigger pumps.
You're talking 1800-2000, some more that... And so that's why I can get a of these pumps.
Now, I go through about one or two. A year, so a, you do the next I butt.
So like I said, I... We just got half an is here and then Alan here and, like I said, you can actually take a bill as a flex grill, a garden house and stick on here too, and make a fitting that will actually just pop in here and that with your darkest I hope that helps you out.
I'll do a diagram too, if that might help you out, I'll put it in that I'll have it in my video here. We're all having on the website down below.
Actually that's probably where I'll put it. Is the website down below it'll be pressure. Washington training probably roof claim, and that's where I'll have both how or a roof pump and how to build a roof pump and I'll just put it all on one page, in that way, it'll make it easier that way, but if you have any questions less, I hope you all have a great day. And like I say, I'm here to help you grow and to make your business better and successful if you need any marketing, help.
Check me out. Or signed anything like that? Hope you have a great day, thanks.
Click here for the list of all parts you will need to setup a roof pump setup.
Alright, so I wanna show you this in pieces versus on the truck. It's hard to show sometimes on the truck, but the first thing we have to hear you can do it two ways.
This is a seven down a minute pump, you can get smaller, there's a five and a half down if you wanna go a little bit cheaper. This one here's about, I believe it's like 200 a...
I do 200. for this pump, you can't go cheaper, you can get a smaller pump for 8-00 can do a 55 gallon per minute, so it works. Just, Destin, here is 100 psi. I do like going to 100 psi.
Here's the box for here, if you could see it here, but I... You don't care about that. So do you wanna know how to play it?
So if you wanna know how to wire it, check out my other video right up here I will show you how to war and I will also have that video at the end that you will be able to... And I do a detailed thing of how to wire a root pump. So was that being said? We're gonna start out with our suction first, our section line is going to be, I always use three-quarter-inch suction lines, for this, and the reason why is it will flow better, and if you... You use half that going out, but I use three quarter coming in... And this helps flow max of that pump because we're giving that pump the most that it needs to be able to keep flowing.
So with that being said, we use hard section, I'll have all the links below either in either in the description or there'll be a page on my pressure washing training, and all of the links will be in there, but... So I use hard suction.
Three-quarter inch you will need a three-quarter inch barbed to half inch and PT and PT on the paper, it's got an arrow right here showing that it flows in this wind flows out.
So with that, you just screw the half inch a three-quarter to half engine there and you put that on there, up in the description right here, I'll have another video of how you can get these on here. Sometimes I was used plastic. You can use brands, but brass will rock and it all deteriorate and break a plastic. On the other hand, it'll get brittle to and break but it usually tends to last a lot longer. I try to get the scheduled 8 fittings, here, and that usually tends to help do it, longer, but with the classic they don't like to slide in very good.
So what you wanna do is heat it up and I allow it to come on here in A... You can check out my other video if you need further but I take a heat gun, you can stick it into tail pipe and get that hot.
You don't wanna tell a date, just break, but you want it warm enough so that you can... I usually try to lubricate the plastic and it'll just slide on there. It's pretty tight that hard.
The next thing you wanna do is is put the tape on here.
I tried this in here. Now, warning do not over tighten this, right here, if you over-take this here, you will crack it right here and feet bracket there, it will not work on my section hot, I try to go basically straight from pump into host right in the tank.
If you're gonna have problems with all it takes is just any of these, like sometimes this vibrate loose and it don't take much and you lose suction, and then it won't work.
So was that me and said? The next thing I do is, is I come out through my pressure side right, I hear and you can either use a 90 or a straight... I just had a 90.Their hand inch by half inch you screw them in there, they're like, that a way.
And again, you wanna use threat tape and you don't wanna over time over time in a, in the...
You will break them.
So East through that in there now I, there's some guys and I may try it I may not act in an do one thing, neurobiolo.
So the next thing is, is your pressure hose you can use two different types, you can use all times of different houses. This year is the... And shoot, I can I think for a time I put the ring on here in the bottom my letters 'cause I'm getting it wrong.
And then you also have the reinforced hose this house after time will break down faster than this house but this house here, it's hard on your hand you back got a work gloves by the time you get "sarmiento ITER than on your hands and that and this is rubbing it will do that.
Talking about that.
I remember guys, we are using... So I record belief in the...
I don't get this stuff is dangerous. So make sure your years and good hoses and good stuff because if it blows out and get in your eye, it can make you go bid and it can be bad on you. So remember, chemical safety is very important. I always remember that this stuff that you're playing with is not just A... And you don't drink it, like some people that I know in the industry and tried to show you to do it, but we don't do that.
So these are two types of houses. Some people are actually starting to use. The Flex agree of 5 toes.
I mean I'm not against it, that stuff.
The Tate it does, it does... All right, and I've had pretty good luck down a bit. Out of a water hose a... So what that mean, said the next thing I... So I'm gonna show you two different ways here.
So what I do is on a lot of my pumps and even my husband, I have my pressure line coming here, and it goes over to where my house really is.
And with that being said, I have a quick connect on it, I screw my quick connect in there and I have a quick connect on my real house. Or if you just winding it up. And what that does is it allows me to break this.
Sometimes, if you have all that hose on there, it takes a hard time to, I bleed these off or to get the air out of them, to get them prime, so that's why it's nice to have a short thing here that I can do it. And actually, so what I do sometimes is because this is on my truck, what I do is I put this down here, I shot off found, and then I put this on there, in that way, I got a shuttle valve to keep it from running out of my truck.
So what I do is, as it comes out here, right here and goes into this quick connect mouth from that quick connect mouth, I hook it on to the the other side of that where it's gonna go in here and he goes to this right here.
You can use this small valve.
I kind of went to these ball outs, and you can put a pipe out here and make them a little bit nicer farther away or so you take a three-quarter to corner at through it in there, take your quick connect holder in Quick Connect, and screw it in there. And of course, he's gonna take all this and then we got a day right here so that way I can spray it on the roof.
So that's gonna go to the right to my system and that's the basics of a root pulp.
Now, there is one other thing we can do here. I'm here, and that is Go from My pressure line here from our press on in here, and it's gonna go to a thing called accumulator is, I'll put a picture in it on the video, what accumulator is and what that does is evil, the pressure to build up in there, and it keeps this pump from running so much. We don't use it, but we probably should. I have used it in the past, I just decided that I I don't know, I just didn't do 'em. There are about 100 bucks, and it's one of those things that I probably should be using it, but I don't... With that being said, these pumps here I know people say, "Well why don't you just go to error, why don't you go to booster these come for 200 at the this pumps right here, these tools in a going on cheaper, you can... Don't have to pay a dollar for it, it but I can get a whole lot of these pumps for the same price of the bigger pumps.
You're talking 1800-2000, some more that... And so that's why I can get a of these pumps.
Now, I go through about one or two. A year, so a, you do the next I butt.
So like I said, I... We just got half an is here and then Alan here and, like I said, you can actually take a bill as a flex grill, a garden house and stick on here too, and make a fitting that will actually just pop in here and that with your darkest I hope that helps you out.
I'll do a diagram too, if that might help you out, I'll put it in that I'll have it in my video here. We're all having on the website down below.
Actually that's probably where I'll put it. Is the website down below it'll be pressure. Washington training probably roof claim, and that's where I'll have both how or a roof pump and how to build a roof pump and I'll just put it all on one page, in that way, it'll make it easier that way, but if you have any questions less, I hope you all have a great day. And like I say, I'm here to help you grow and to make your business better and successful if you need any marketing, help.
Check me out. Or signed anything like that? Hope you have a great day, thanks.
