Teaching Painters to Pressure Wash. Tips from The Idaho Painter.

so we're stopping my paint life supply co to get some of the necessary prepping supplies we're gonna be using on the job site today how you doing today maddie what can i help you with today chris i'm just gonna grab a few uh prepping supplies so today we're gonna be pressure washing i'm gonna grab a few pressure washing supplies [Music] all right luke we're gonna um just walk around this house we got done power washing it just gonna go over some tips and tricks you know power washing you know because we're moving on to the next house so um you can see we got this muddy area here um i kind of gave you a little pointer it was kicking up mud like all over the place because of the pressure of the power washer just remove that nozzle when you're done power washing you know all the high areas and then you can rinse that thing down you know um it's not going to kick up mud now you got to be careful you know always with uh windows screens you know one thing we're always using a rotating nozzle the reason why i like to do that i don't use any chemicals i just use water you know on the house i don't like chemicals for a lot of environmental reasons you know plant reasons um customers might be uncomfortable with us using chemicals but if you're using a rotating nozzle it agitates really well it cleans really well but it can do damage if you get too close to a surface this is wood right here if you get too close to it um then you know you'll start to damage the wood a screen right here you're going to stay way back we want to clean the screens we want to clean the windows so we kind of like flood them with water until you see you know it clean so don't get too close to any screens we're always going to be you know washing the front doors because we're going to be painting them if there's any type of storm door we're going to open this thing up we want to clean that flood that you know with this house this is a 1950s house one thing you do want to remember both of these front doors don't have good weather stripping um these are all brand new windows so there won't be any anybody leaks in the windows but we definitely want to check the floors you know and dry off any floors you know right away you know if we have access to the house um so and so that's pretty typical with all the windows and doors when you're done pressure washing any house so with taking the head off the pressure washer is there anything that i should worry about um so that's a good point and let me grab we'll come over here we'll grab the pressure washer so we typically have about um two two thousand or three thousand psi you know coming out of this we're going to pull off our head where now we're going to use it just to kind of flood the bottom of the house but there's an o-ring inside there sometimes that o-ring i don't know if you can see it down in there that o-ring with the all that pressure could kick it out and it's gonna get lost we keep a whole set of o-rings um i got like 50 of these in my vehicle and you just pop another one back in when you go to put this back on if there's no o-ring water is going to shoot everywhere out the side so occasionally the o-ring pops out but um it's okay we just stick a new one back in there and then continue pressure so are the o-rings pretty low cost yeah they're only probably like we're talking 25 cents for an o-ring so i got um i got a kit of 50 of them so it's a little tiny o-ring in there so um we got rock here we're gonna be power washing the rock uh we did caulk a lot of there's uh some big cracks and stuff in the rocks we're typically going to be power washing vents i'm cleaning vents you don't want to shoot tons of water into that vent because that's going to go underneath the house i'm saying with soft events if you shoot a lot of water into a soft vent it goes into the attic so just clean them real quickly don't keep a lot of water you know shooting you know on a vent like that um once again you got mailboxes and stuff like this it's a good thing to check make sure the customer doesn't have any mail in there we always want to pull away customer mats we had a mat here this right here um we cleaned this i gave you some pointers on cleaning that something this small right here we're just going to do that just as a customer service we're not gonna charge them but i mean it's nice to walk up and have your steps you know looking nice and clean you know and um we just did that for free so um lights right here uh these are brand new lights but we want to a lot of times these lights are very brittle from uv damage and stuff like that if you get too close to a light you're going to damage it this right here this is very brittle right here if you get like this close with a pressure washer you could break this right here and then we're gonna have to buy the customer a new light a lot of times these things are exposed to the sun and they're dried out and cracked and it not very much pressure will damage that so be really careful around lights we'll come around here the fence right here we're pressure washing around here if you get too close to this fence and you mark the fence up you know if you um to stripe the fence and we're gonna have to restain their fence so stay stay away from the fence till we and or at least a farther enough distance away that you're not gonna mark it so this side this is all stucco um you can get pretty dang close to this you're not going to damage the stucco we're not worried about it um screens once again um you're not going to you want to stay back far enough from the screen comfortably you know about this far is you know where i'd want to stay with the screen once you get vents right here you don't want to shoot a ton of water up into the vent because it's going to go into the attic so just you'll be careful that gutters downspouts they're metal you're not going to damage them um you want to get really close clean the gutters off you know really well you'll hear this pressure washer pretty loud when it's hitting it you're not going to do any damage to it so we're going to clean clean that footings down here previous painters painted the footings so we're going to want to power wash make sure we get all the way down you know to the ground and if we got a shovel or weed eater we can pull away the grass we're going to have to pull away a lot of this grass right here so we can get that we've got stuff on top the roof um today we um cleaned the gutters out typically we charged an extra fee to clean gutters if um the customer didn't pay for it we're not going to clean them these gutters had about this much mud in them so you know we clean those gutters out we got a nice flat roof to be able to walk on to clean them or we got a tool we can clean them from the ground too make sure the gutters are clean and flowing down the downspouts all the water's coming out here this patio we cleaned off this patio is extremely dirty so you know we kind of swept that off make sure if you're not paid to clean the patio all this dirt and debris coming down here at least we want to just take the pressure washer and just sweep it back and forth using it kind of like a broom this door right here doesn't have very good weather stripping this is a great example there's going to be a lot of water going inside you know the house right here because there's no weather stripping on the bottom we're going to make sure that we get inside there dry off the floor you know when we're all done um up here we're going to be painting we're probably going to paint the underneath side of all this right here to match the house so the house is going to be white so it'll be nice just to have this nice and white so it makes it bright down here so we definitely want to pressure wash underneath here and make sure that's all nice and clean kind of something you want to ask the customer to um back here downspouts just make sure we got stucco we got siding right here one thing these electrical boxes typically have a lot of dirt on top have a lot of dirt on the sides we're going to want to get and flood a lot of a lot of water you know on the back sides of these electrical boxes and that's pretty much that's pretty much it so that's what it looks like you know to pressure wash up here unusual situation the roof had a lot of dirt and debris on it on a flat roof um customer service um you know just to help the customer we just flooded it all off came down you can see we after we've already pressure washed this there's a lot of debris on the gutters from cleaning the gutters we'll have to go back and clean those before we paint them but that's um any questions before we go to the next house luke i think that's good good so um i think uh one of the tips um flooding it with without a tip in it uh we've got multiple tips we got a rotating nozzle high areas you can actually a straight nozzle reach all the way on the roof with a straight nozzle um you know obviously your strong starting your pressure washer when you start it a tip is to pull the trigger on the gun because there'll be a lot of pressure behind it and it's really hard to pull on the power washer when there's pressure behind it so squeeze your trigger pull start it and then it's gonna start a lot easier um another thing is um this has happened to me multiple times if you're using a straight tip um i put a straight tip on and then i pulled the trigger and it actually wasn't on and um that straight tip probably went a mile so um if it was pointed at somebody it probably could kill him so if you put a tip on um any type of tip you should always pull the trigger at the ground first so it happened to me twice and the tip was long gone and i actually shot it in the air so um if that was shoot pointing at a house it would go right through the window um when you got my our big pressure washer has you know 4 000 psi behind it so it's 4 000 psi launching a piece of metal that big so so gun safety rule supply gun safety rules up high pull the trigger with on the gun facing the ground you know otherwise something serious could happen uh i we talked about it um these are all brand new windows but a lot of the houses we go to on these older style homes um they get a lot of wind or a lot of water inside the windows because this had old 1950s windows on it if those were still there there would probably be a lot of water on the windowsill if you don't go immediately wipe it up it's going to swell up damage the paint and we'll be painting inside um their house form for free so that's happened to me before so a lot of things i say is because i learned the hard way so there you go the thing um the rotating nozzle a lot of people you know say that you know all you're going to do is tear things up damage things you know there's only a couple times in my career but how to repla to fix some siding because of a new guy you know getting too close but you learn really fast it's always best to start away and work your way closer till you get comfortable to where it's cleaning and not damaging so just start far work your way close and you'll be fine so it's it's a matter of just paying attention looking at it the um this is where if you get screens these are brand new screens so they typically clean really nice if you get screens that really oxidize if you've got about this close it'll actually leave swirl marks in the screen it may not tear it but it'll leave permanent swirl marks because it kind of tears up the the um the fibers in it if it's not metal and then we'll be rescreening screens and that's happened to me i had to replace screens on multiple multiple people's houses but it's a small expense so um just be careful when you're you know power washing around screens up here we got a flat roof i cleaned that flat roof you don't ever for your information you don't ever walk on these roofs because on the the peaks right here you can dent them really easily if we ever have to get on a roof like this we set plywood sheets up there um i stood on the end pressure washed out without getting on that roof so there we have it there's some tips tricks pressure washing we'll move on to the next house and um you'll start doing more and more pressure washing as we got to say [Music] you