Power Washing and Roof Cleaning Forum

Chris · Exterior Cleaner

Cedar Mansard Roof

Maverick Contracting · Approved Exterior Cleaner

I do oil as part of my trade and usually you get a good 7yrs or so out of it.
Usually recoat every 5yrs or as needed to keep the maintenance.
Reoccurring work will set you for long term.

Jeff Wible · Approved Exterior Cleaner

Hey Chris,..you can also use NAOH and DS it onto cedar,..does the same thing as Sodium Percarbonate and NAOH DS'ed applies really fast,..Sodium Percarbonate has to be applied direct,..no big deal really,..was just throwing the option of NAOH out there. I often do raw wood decks this way..And also neutralize with Ox.

Jeff

BlueRidge · Approved Exterior Cleaner

Whether we use SH or SP to clean, when it's all done I apply a strong pine oil cleaner and leave it. I can't remember the percentage but my supplier has one that is crazy strong, down stream it and go home. Why? It just make sense and the customers love the smell. Oil soap on wood? It sure won't hurt. Would the gurus agree? Probably not.

Chris · Exterior Cleaner

Jeff Wible wrote:
Hey Chris,..you can also use NAOH and DS it onto cedar,..does the same thing as Sodium Percarbonate and NAOH DS'ed applies really fast,..Sodium Percarbonate has to be applied direct,..no big deal really,..was just throwing the option of NAOH out there. I often do raw wood decks this way..And also neutralize with Ox.

Jeff

How much of the SP and NAOH would you put into a 5 gallon bucket of water to downstream Jeff? 1 cup of each? 2 cups of each?

Thanks.

Chris · Exterior Cleaner

Maverick Contracting wrote:
I do oil as part of my trade and usually you get a good 7yrs or so out of it.
Usually recoat every 5yrs or as needed to keep the maintenance.
Reoccurring work will set you for long term.

Do you clean then oil or just spray more oil onto the cedar?

Thank you.

Chris · Exterior Cleaner

BlueRidge wrote:
Whether we use SH or SP to clean, when it's all done I apply a strong pine oil cleaner and leave it. I can't remember the percentage but my supplier has one that is crazy strong, down stream it and go home. Why? It just make sense and the customers love the smell. Oil soap on wood? It sure won't hurt. Would the gurus agree? Probably not.

That sounds interesting Brett, Would that be almost the same as Pinesol or something different?

Thank you.

Chris · Exterior Cleaner

After the Hurricane Harvey 1.5 years ago and over 10,000 houses that had bad to severe damage to the roofs, even less roofs to clean now but not many want to get their roofs cleaned here, tried promoting it for many years and not much interest. Only a few calls every year for roof cleaning, it just never took off like how it is in other states.

When I was washing roofs I was charging $0.25 per sq.ft. and a lot of people complained that the price was too high.

I was thinking of this or higher for the Mansard Roof/siding on these houses if they were interested, does that sound inline to what you guys are charging for cedar or am I too low?

Thank you.

Jeff Wible · Approved Exterior Cleaner

Hey Chris,..when I DS NAOH I don't add the Sodium Percarbonate,..I just use NAOH and maybe a dash of soap for wetting and sticking. I use around 1 cup per gallon and then DS. But,..depending on GPM of machine severity of mold plays into it as well. The thing that makes cedar a PITA is if it has much physical green growth,..especially on the edges,..really hangs on. Adds so much more time to the rinsing/ removing. And is where sometimes SH is needed to help break down the growth,..sometimes just part of the job.

Jeff

Chris · Exterior Cleaner

Thanks for the information Jeff.

DirtyRoofcom · Approved Exterior Cleaner

FWIW. if you haven't cleaned cedar before I would not experiment on a customers house. Depending on your location (that is not in your signature) and the amount and type of vegetation typical of your area you may be surprised at the amount of work needed to get only decent results. You need to set customer expectations and that is hard to do W/O the experience.

Another factor to consider is that most homes that have cedar roofing tend to be very large and often times complex roof lines. It is almost impossible to clean a large cedar roof w/o gettin on it. You just cant do it from the gutters edge.

As for pricing, noone here knows your overhead costs and other expenses. With that said it should be a lot more than asphalt.

House in the pics is one of our customers. We only agreed to clean the 1200sf carriage house. The main house wasnt bad and frankly was to tall and complex to access wo a lift. That cost would have been too much for them. The carriage house rinsed properly took 2 days (one side had A LOT of lichen)

Chris · Exterior Cleaner

If you read the title, it is a mansard style roof but these roofs are more like siding, you cannot actually see what kind of roof they have.

When you see mansard style roofs, you mostly see the siding which in this case is cedar and that is what I would be approaching them about, I don't really do much roofs down here anymore as people just don't want to pay for it and after the hurricane Harvey almost 2 years ago, over 10,000 roofs were replaced or repaired so even less reason now for roof cleaning.

This is not a regular cedar shake roof, it is a mansard style roof but the actual roof on top of a couple of these houses you cannot even see from the street as some of them are 2 story and some are taller but they have the cedar on the sides from the top coming down, no dormers, just the cedar siding.

-- Edited by Chris on Sunday 17th of March 2019 04:38:05 AM

BlueRidge · Approved Exterior Cleaner

DirtyRoofcom wrote:
FWIW. if you haven't cleaned cedar before I would not experiment on a customers house. Depending on your location (that is not in your signature) and the amount and type of vegetation typical of your area you may be surprised at the amount of work needed to get only decent results. You need to set customer expectations and that is hard to do W/O the experience.

Another factor to consider is that most homes that have cedar roofing tend to be very large and often times complex roof lines. It is almost impossible to clean a large cedar roof w/o gettin on it. You just cant do it from the gutters edge.

As for pricing, noone here knows your overhead costs and other expenses. With that said it should be a lot more than asphalt.

House in the pics is one of our customers. We only agreed to clean the 1200sf carriage house. The main house wasnt bad and frankly was to tall and complex to access wo a lift. That cost would have been too much for them. The carriage house rinsed properly took 2 days (one side had A LOT of lichen)

Just curious Erik. We have never gotten on a cedar roof and we have never had one take more than a full day and some have been pretty big. Why would something relatively small take so long?

DirtyRoofcom · Approved Exterior Cleaner

THE RINSING. trying to remove (after treatment and dwell time) most of the moss lichen And algae film to leave a decently clean surface behind. I guess it could be left to fall off in it's own naturally but then there would be distinct differences in appearance down the road. Areas with lots of growth will look different then the areas that didnt have a lot of growth. maybe a second treatment later could help alleviate the issue.

My experience cleaning cedar has not been great. I dont know if it's my own very high expectations or how bad the roofs are that weve done, The roofs weve done just seemed to have the moss and lichen embedded in the shingle/shake. We just cant seem to leave a product behind that "WE" are happy with (customers are happy and satisfied)

I'm interested to hear what others have experienced. On both siding and roofs.

Here a photo of extreme lichen growth and a couple photos of a home that's massive and a lot of parts where very difficult to rinse even with a booster pump.