Stay Clean

The cheapest way to start is a 12 volt kit from pressuretek.com. If you go air its $200 for kevin's pump, 500 for the compressor, 200 for the hose, and another 100 for the odds and end stuff to make it all work. That's 1000. And you don't even know if the people with the dirty roofs want or are willing to pay for their roofs to be clean. They may say it looks just fine to them. So you could spend this money and have nobody willing to pay you to use it. Never know.

Don't overthink the simple things. 1 chem tank, 1 mix tank, 1 water tank if you pressure wash. Every house I have cleaned has had a water faucet outside, use it. A 25 gal or a 525 gal tank doesn't matter to any of us, that's up to you on how big your tanks are and if you have the space for them. Mix whatever ratio you need using your pump then spray all of it where you want to clean. Make more if needed. Bam, done, simple.

I did shake my head and walk away from that job. I have personal standards and wont work for someone if they aren't willing to pay me what I believe I'm worth. You're right, all the part timers in the business must do it as a hobby and probably don't intend to make any income at all to support their own families. They must do it for fun on their days off from their real full time jobs. They should all start out like you must have done with top of the line equipment, a website, #1 google ranking, and a big company with employees to do all the work they will have from day one. I'm not sure who you are referring to when you talk about "you part timers" and say "do not ask me for advise or help" but I have read this thread again and don't see where anyone has asked for your advise or help. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If anyone has asked for your advise or help you can simply ignore them and not respond. If this offends anyone, well too bad. Take it up with me in a private message.

That sounds about right. All the shingles I get look like a fresh paved asphalt road and they need at least two hits and sometimes touch ups after that. Otherwise a gray shingle will be orange after just one hit. Tile roofs are the only reason I have an air pump. Just for the reason that I need to get it dialed down to a 10 nozzle to watch the runoff. Metal roofs are rare for me, maybe 1 or 2 a year. If I can hit it from a ladder they aren't that bad but if I have to walk on it I charge double for them because of the safety aspect with all the gear and extra time needed. Those things are like a slip and slide.

yep. no gutters = pita. I'd rather work slow and steady rather than hopping around quickly on fragile slippery tiles 2 stories high. Flat tiles are much easier but barrel tiles are a nightmare and take extra work because of their rounded shape. And no dead moss to rinse off down here. How much mix does an average 2000sq ft moss covered roof take?

From what I hear maybe snow removal from the roof might be a better business right now Gene lol. To put it in perspective last week I saw 3 other roof cleaners/pressure cleaners in the same neighborhood I was in within the 2 hours I was there. I couldn't name them all but ill bet money there's well over 100 in my county alone.

That's just it, you could have the biggest pump in the world and it would do you no good on a barrel tile roof with no gutters. This is why Chris runs 1/2" pumps. He does these roofs every day and that is all you need for doing these style roofs. Find one and spray it with your 20 or 40 gpm pump and see what happens. What will happen is 90% of that chemical will be on the ground because the shape of those tiles takes anything more than a light mist and runs it down the roof. Not to mention all the mix that will then be wasted and left to kill the plants below. Ill bet Chuck sprayed that roof in 3-5 hours with about 100 gals of 50% mix. If it was asphalt shingle it would be more like 2-3 hours and 200 gals of 30% mix. At least that's the way its been in my experience. Then that monster rig/pump would be effective. The price problem down here is just too many people cleaning and customers that are uniformed of the non-pressure method and/or just don't care to pay for the quality. Instead they would rather have it blasted by a pressure washer guy every 2 years for half the price and they are oblivious.

Barrel tile is much more involved vs a shingle. You have to walk it 99% of the time, you have the front edge of each tile to worry about being clean, and you have to try not to break them and their shape makes runoff a sure thing. It might be able to be done in 1 day but I planned for 2 days with just me spraying. Yes, cheap people are stubborn, that's how they keep all their money. She will have no problem finding that price down here from someone. Yes Ted that roof is ridiculous. The sheer size and shape of it is crazy. Not a typical A-frame shingle house from up north. Thanks to Hank for posting the snapshot of the map. Granted our SH is half the price it is up north but we aren't doing half the work either. Its sad but something we have to accept down here to get work sometimes. As Chuck said, people do it for extra money, price below market, do half azz work, take the money and run. That's why prices are in the gutter (so to speak lol).

Although half of you are under snow and not cleaning right now, some of us are able to clean if we want to work for pennies. 20 St George Pl Palm Beach Gardens, FL. Look it up. Around 10,000sqft barrel tile with full gutter system, newer roof, 4 years old, single story but high ceilings. She said my price was way off and that her old roof was cleaned for under $1000(with non-pressure and a licensed and insured company). I told her to call them back lol. The richest are the cheapest! Would you do it for that price?

Yeah a white sweater. Then the dots turn into holes after a wash or two.

Your 5/8" garden hose suction line is the problem. too much restriction on that 1" pump. its like sucking a milkshake from a coffee straw. get rid of that hose thing you have and put 1.5" hose on it and do the test again.

You've got the right idea. Put it on 2x4s and slide it up the ramp rolling it on pvc pipe. Worst case is get a couple guys to pull it up with a rope and a few pushing it. Done deal. The only bad thing I see about buying 2 small compressors is the space they will take up. Maybe you can find an auto shop or have a friend with a giant compressor in the garage and test your pump at different cfm to see what you gain from the extra air. You might find that one wheelbarrow compressor is all you need.

Honestly I don't know what the % is and never thought to ask. One pool store down here can do over 1000 gals a week in the summer so its fresh. I simply pull up outside the store and fill my tanks with as much as I want. No jugs or 5 gal buckets or 55 gal drums. A turn of the ball valve and in the tank it goes. Most big stores have 1000-1500 gal tanks inside with hoses gravity fed to outside filling stations.

Haha 49 miles is fairly close? I don't think I've even went that far to clean a roof. Thank god there's a pool store every mile around here; cheap, local, and fresh. Delivery will probably be as much as the sh costs. Don't buy too much to save on delivery and then end up with 100 gals of salt water in a month either.

Yes it is the same system for nozzles. Example nozzle 2530... 25 is the angle, 30 is the size. On an electric pump the smallest nozzle you will want is one that doesn't cycle the pump on and off when your spraying wide open. Ex. 5gpm pump will be a #30, maybe a #20 at smallest. Bigger nozzle = less pressure = more flow = shorter spray distance. Typical softwash nozzles range between 10 and 60.

Me too. Same pump. Thumbs up. As a side note to this, how often (if ever) should you need to rebuild/replace the internals of these pumps? How long does it last on average? and where do you get the replacement parts from? I know Chris T has used these a lot and it seems like Beacon has quite a few of them so any suggestions guys?

Why don't you just buy a helicopter with a dump bucket and hover over the roof? No hoses or pumps needed.

YES, and in my experiences it's been the 1% that are the cheapest and least appreciative of what you do.

This topic hasn't been beat to death before at all, lol. I think we can all agree it doesn't matter what the other guy does as long as what each of us does works for us. So with that I'll say good luck Gene, hope it works better for you.

I don't think I've ever disagreed with you before Chris but I'm going to have to in my particular case. Maybe it's because of my location or maybe its because I'm not branded and developed like you are. More often than not I don't get calls to clean ONLY the roof. Its the roof AND the driveway or pool deck. While I'm on the roof cleaning using non-pressure methods, I can have the ground guy doing his thing with the pressure washer on the flatwork. All of my customers understand the different methods of cleaning and it doesn't bother them. To me it's not JUST roof cleaning, its more of an all inclusive exterior cleaning. Its like having a phillips head screwdriver in the toolbox without a flathead next to it. Its just a different tool in the toolbox to use for a different screw. I wont paint your house or cut your grass but if i cant clean the roof and the driveway then it's likely I wont get that job because they will call someone else who can bundle it so they don't have to call two separate cleaners. That's a missed opportunity and missed revenue. The big roof cleaning company in my area has a pressure cleaning setup on each of their 10-12 trucks so their doing something right. I also know for a fact I'm not the only one on here that does this so maybe some of them will share their thoughts as well. I'm not a marketing expert so I won't make a comment on that but I can see Bruce's line of thinking about potentially sending a confusing message.

+1 Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade is a graveyard for most start ups because we get pennies on the dollar here. Everyone and there mother is a pressure cleaner or lawn guy or a pool man. At least we have pool stores on every corner.

30-35 cents... in south Florida that's like a seeing a unicorn or bigfoot

It's Bruce Jr. LOL. By the time you get done rinsing the last part with the garden hose does it start to grow back on the part you did first, haha... big time killer but definitely required. Nice job with the carpet.

I like one of the other videos where we see a tile roof being cleaned with a caption that reads as follows, "Chemical roof cleaning kill plants!"... Yes thank you captain obvious. If you do some research on roof cleaning you will learn that it is in fact a plant on the roof surface. Therefore killing the plant is the goal in roof cleaning. As opposed to just rinsing some of it from the surface with water. "Does NOT remove dirt/debri"... Well that doesn't really apply to roof cleaning since dirt/debri are not the main cause of the black coloration of a roof. Again its a living plant on the roof surface. "It bleaches the color of the tile and your roof look faded!"... Along with the bad wording, this statement is false. Every roof I've ever cleaned with chemicals went back to its natural color and a faded tile roof is caused by high pressure washing year after year removing a layer from the surface each time it is cleaned "Rots your base sheet"... How does it reach the base sheet? "Corrodes your metal"... What metal? Not a smart idea to show up on a non pressure roof cleaning forum and say here's an alternative to toxic chemicals when in one of the videos you have a yellow 2.5 gallon jug next to your pressure washer. The exhaust from that machine is also toxic but you don't run it in your house and breathe in the fumes now do you. Although maybe you should try it and let us know how that goes for you.

YO make... to make