Questions About Cleaning A Deck And Cedar Sided Boatshed

ecoclean87

New member
I'v acquired the job of cleaning a guy's house, gutters, and driveway. He also wants to have this deck behind his house cleaned but not stained (nor was it ever stained), and further back of his property , he would like all wood cleaned but not stained on this boat dock/boat shed. The shed is sided with cedar.

The best luck Iv had with decks has come from mixing sodium hydroxide with surfactant and applying that to wood that has been stained. The few times I have tried to clean wood with sodium hydroxide that had not been stained before, it didn't work as well, and in those same cases, bleach didn't do away very well with the stains either. I don't advertise for cleaning or restaining wood yet, and generally my customers tend to think that cleaning wood would be cheaper than cleaning their house, which rarely happens. Therefore I haven't sold or done alot of wood restoration work yet. Nevertheless, the propositions are coming in, I want to do the work, but need to get some pricing and systems down for just the cleaning of wood.

By several different accounts, 2.50 a sq. ft. can be used for a standard for stripping, neutralizing, and staining. By that standard, what should I charge for just the cleaning of the deck and 3 ft. tall lattice work underneath? How do you calculate footage of the stairs? I just rolled over them with my walking meter as if they were flat. Is 7$ a linear ft. still a good standard for railings? One guy I talked to told me that he measures sq. footage of one side of the railway from the bottom up and then doubles that amount to get the sq. ft. of the plane on either side of the railing and lumps that in with the rest of the footage at $2.50 a square for cleaning and staining.

Then once I know what I would charge to strip, clean, neutralize, stain, can I figure out from there how much I should charge just to clean with SH and brighten with oxalic mix? For cleaning I'm leaning towards charging 1 dollar per sq. ft. using my 10 gpm 3000 psi machine. Is there a rule to whether sodium percarbonate, sodium hydroxide, or sodium hypochlorite will work better for cleaning treated deck wood that has never been stained?

On to the boatshed. If I don't wind up selling to this guy the cleaning of his deck or the decking around his dock, the inside of his boatshed needs drastically to be cleaned for functionality's sake if nothing else. Dirt dobber nests and webs are everywhere. The light fixtures inside need to be cleaned as badly as the rest, so I would prefer to not cover them. He said he can cut the power off to the building from his house for several days to let any water in the fixtures evaporate if that would cut a little time out. So yea, for the inside of the boatshed, I just need to remove tons of dobber nests and cobwebs. For the cedar on the outside however, he wants that cleaned and brightened the best way I can without restaining it. I will have to be about knee high in water to wash the right side of it. The cedar sided walls are all about 25 ft. long each equaling about 100 linear ft. In length.

Should I just use a strong bleach mix to downstream over all of the inside of the boatshed before commencing to blast away all webs and dobber nests as softly as possible, or should a different chemical be dowstreamed to make it easier? Should I leave the cheap light fixtures uncovered since they need to be cleaned as well? How should I calculate how much just cleaning of the inside will cost?

For the cleaning and brightening of the 100 linear ft. of cedar exterior of this building, what chems should I try to downstream, and what should I charge? Any suggestions will be appreciated. Less than 1% of my work has been wood, but looking to change that. I know I just loaded in alot of questions, but they are all pretty well connected for this job.

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I'v acquired the job of cleaning a guy's house, gutters, and driveway. He also wants to have this deck behind his house cleaned but not stained (nor was it ever stained), and further back of his property , he would like all wood cleaned but not stained on this boat dock/boat shed. The shed is sided with cedar.

The best luck Iv had with decks has come from mixing sodium hydroxide with surfactant and applying that to wood that has been stained. The few times I have tried to clean wood with sodium hydroxide that had not been stained before, it didn't work as well, and in those same cases, bleach didn't do away very well with the stains either. I don't advertise for cleaning or restaining wood yet, and generally my customers tend to think that cleaning wood would be cheaper than cleaning their house, which rarely happens. Therefore I haven't sold or done alot of wood restoration work yet. Nevertheless, the propositions are coming in, I want to do the work, but need to get some pricing and systems down for just the cleaning of wood.

By several different accounts, 2.50 a sq. ft. can be used for a standard for stripping, neutralizing, and staining. By that standard, what should I charge for just the cleaning of the deck and 3 ft. tall lattice work underneath? How do you calculate footage of the stairs? I just rolled over them with my walking meter as if they were flat. Is 7$ a linear ft. still a good standard for railings? One guy I talked to told me that he measures sq. footage of one side of the railway from the bottom up and then doubles that amount to get the sq. ft. of the plane on either side of the railing and lumps that in with the rest of the footage at $2.50 a square for cleaning and staining.

Then once I know what I would charge to strip, clean, neutralize, stain, can I figure out from there how much I should charge just to clean with SH and brighten with oxalic mix? For cleaning I'm leaning towards charging 1 dollar per sq. ft. using my 10 gpm 3000 psi machine. Is there a rule to whether sodium percarbonate, sodium hydroxide, or sodium hypochlorite will work better for cleaning treated deck wood that has never been stained?

On to the boatshed. If I don't wind up selling to this guy the cleaning of his deck or the decking around his dock, the inside of his boatshed needs drastically to be cleaned for functionality's sake if nothing else. Dirt dobber nests and webs are everywhere. The light fixtures inside need to be cleaned as badly as the rest, so I would prefer to not cover them. He said he can cut the power off to the building from his house for several days to let any water in the fixtures evaporate if that would cut a little time out. So yea, for the inside of the boatshed, I just need to remove tons of dobber nests and cobwebs. For the cedar on the outside however, he wants that cleaned and brightened the best way I can without restaining it. I will have to be about knee high in water to wash the right side of it. The cedar sided walls are all about 25 ft. long each equaling about 100 linear ft. In length.

Should I just use a strong bleach mix to downstream over all of the inside of the boatshed before commencing to blast away all webs and dobber nests as softly as possible, or should a different chemical be dowstreamed to make it easier? Should I leave the cheap light fixtures uncovered since they need to be cleaned as well? How should I calculate how much just cleaning of the inside will cost?

For the cleaning and brightening of the 100 linear ft. of cedar exterior of this building, what chems should I try to downstream, and what should I charge? Any suggestions will be appreciated. Less than 1% of my work has been wood, but looking to change that. I know I just loaded in alot of questions, but they are all pretty well connected for this job.
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