How to clean a privacy fence?

I don't do sealing and staining or anything, but doing residential cleaning, I run into fences like this one a lot. Searching the forums, I found that sodium percarbonite or a weak mix of bleach will clean wood. And then rinse with about 1000 PSI. That's all I could find though. I don't know how strong to mix bleach, whether to DS it, or directly spray it, or where to get sodium percarbonite. Unless I can just use Oxi Clean? I'd probably prefer to use bleach, since percarb cleaners have a limited shelf life, and I don't do much wood. Any help would be appreciated. I know too much bleach can damage wood, so I'd hate to try and figure this one out by experimenting.

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Josh on something like that a mix sh and caustic beads followed with an acid to netralize the wood and you would be good to go.When you put a base chemical on wood in cleans it very well and also darkens it beyond its natural color thats what the acid is for.Shane from woodsavers of texas has great pics of the work he does.If you get that fence take before and afters it would be a good one to put in an album for you.Russ Jonhnson should be able to get you the caustic beads.

Kiloman said:

Josh on something like that a mix sh and caustic beads followed with an acid to netralize the wood and you would be good to go.When you put a base chemical on wood in cleans it very well and also darkens it beyond its natural color thats what the acid is for.Shane from woodsavers of texas has great pics of the work he does.If you get that fence take before and afters it would be a good one to put in an album for you.Russ Jonhnson should be able to get you the caustic beads.

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Thanks for the advice, Hal. Can you tell me how much SH/caustic to mix in a fiver, and how much oxalic acid powder?

On the caustic i usually go 2 pounds per five gallons on something like that wood you have shown.Either put it on with a pump up or deticated pump.You can go 2.5 gallons of sh will do the trick.So here you go fill bucket 1/2 with sh then 1/2 water then get like a big plastic measuring cup and do 16 oz twice that will =2 pounds pour it in slowly as you stir.This amount of caustic will raise the temp but you want get the mix that hot.Do this slow and wear gloves as glasses this stuff will burn the crap out of ya.On the acid i can down stream it like 16 oz per 3 gallons.I just use the brightner from the truck acid since i have it already there.That ox needs to be mixed with warm water and get it fully disolved oryou will have a cloggged injector for sure.

Kiloman said:

On the caustic i usually go 2 pounds per five gallons on something like that wood you have shown.Either put it on with a pump up or deticated pump.You can go 2.5 gallons of sh will do the trick.So here you go fill bucket 1/2 with sh then 1/2 water then get like a big plastic measuring cup and do 16 oz twice that will =2 pounds pour it in slowly as you stir.This amount of caustic will raise the temp but you want get the mix that hot.Do this slow and wear gloves as glasses this stuff will burn the crap out of ya.On the acid i can down stream it like 16 oz per 3 gallons.I just use the brightner from the truck acid since i have it already there.That ox needs to be mixed with warm water and get it fully disolved oryou will have a cloggged injector for sure.

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Thanks so much! That's a huge help!

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I don't know about you Josh, but I'm gonna write that in my Chem notebook. Thanks Hal.

Kiloman said:

On the caustic i usually go 2 pounds per five gallons on something like that wood you have shown.Either put it on with a pump up or deticated pump.You can go 2.5 gallons of sh will do the trick.So here you go fill bucket 1/2 with sh then 1/2 water then get like a big plastic measuring cup and do 16 oz twice that will =2 pounds pour it in slowly as you stir.This amount of caustic will raise the temp but you want get the mix that hot.Do this slow and wear gloves as glasses this stuff will burn the crap out of ya.On the acid i can down stream it like 16 oz per 3 gallons.I just use the brightner from the truck acid since i have it already there.That ox needs to be mixed with warm water and get it fully disolved oryou will have a cloggged injector for sure.

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Okay, a few more questions I thought of... Should I mix a little roof snot or some kind of surfactant with the cleaning mix and/or the acid? Do you rinse between cleaning and neutralizing, or apply acid directly over the cleaning mix? Do you need to rinse again after applying the acid, or is the acid neutralized enough for it not to matter?

I REALLY appreciate the help. I've tried to research it myself, but most of the information I seem to find it seems very vague.

Yes you must not mix sh with acid it will put off terrible fumes that could hurt you please remember that.You must apply the sh/caustic mix first and then use light pressure 800-1000psi max with a wide tip.Once this is done the wood will appear dark then apply your acid and it will turn right before your eyes like.Good luck and be safe the surfactant would help but it might get knocked out of the mix because of the high caustic.

JDhomeservices said:

I don't do sealing and staining or anything, but doing residential cleaning, I run into fences like this one a lot. Searching the forums, I found that sodium percarbonite or a weak mix of bleach will clean wood. And then rinse with about 1000 PSI. That's all I could find though. I don't know how strong to mix bleach, whether to DS it, or directly spray it, or where to get sodium percarbonite. Unless I can just use Oxi Clean? I'd probably prefer to use bleach, since percarb cleaners have a limited shelf life, and I don't do much wood. Any help would be appreciated. I know too much bleach can damage wood, so I'd hate to try and figure this one out by experimenting.

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That looks like a pressure treated fence and should clean nice with Hal's mix.

I'll show you in another post how I cleaned a 3 yr old cedar fence...

My house actually has a smaller version a that type of fence that you posted ... I was able to clean it just fine using regular cold water no chemicals (this was back before I even thought about doing this for a career). The results weren't that bad at all ... it took like forever and it sure didn't come back with this nice clean shine but it definitely looked cleaned and heck of a lot better (no damage was done to the fence). I definitely look forward in seeing how well applying the suggested advice here compares to the regular cold water process that I did, lol. Looking forward in being able to attend one of the Wood Restoration courses later down the line but right now I know that is not one of the services that we'll be prepared to offer. One thing is taking a risk on my own property and another thing is putting a client's property at risk. Thanks again to everyone for sharing their experience and knowledge on this topic.

Kiloman said:

On the caustic i usually go 2 pounds per five gallons on something like that wood you have shown.Either put it on with a pump up or deticated pump.You can go 2.5 gallons of sh will do the trick.So here you go fill bucket 1/2 with sh then 1/2 water then get like a big plastic measuring cup and do 16 oz twice that will =2 pounds pour it in slowly as you stir.This amount of caustic will raise the temp but you want get the mix that hot.Do this slow and wear gloves as glasses this stuff will burn the crap out of ya.On the acid i can down stream it like 16 oz per 3 gallons.I just use the brightner from the truck acid since i have it already there.That ox needs to be mixed with warm water and get it fully disolved oryou will have a cloggged injector for sure.

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Great post.

Do lots of people use caustic to clean wood? This is the first time i've seen it being used to clean wood as I've been researching a lot lately and have seen to only use it on concrete. This is a watered down version to the concrete cleaning I suppose? All the other wood cleaning I have seen is just done with down-streaming or x-jetting a house wash.

Caustic is probably the number one cleaner for wood since it is used to strip old stains. Weak caustic can also work well on gray wood or even mixed with bleach. I don't think too many people are x jetting wood, most use a pump setup to apply directly

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