Products for House Washing
To continue with our exterior maintenance product discussion, today we will discuss house wash soap.
We have quite a few products that can be used for this job as well as those we recommend for this use.
Our most economical product is our “Citrus X-terior” house wash. This product was specifically designed for those who were used to doing house washing with a bleach-only solution. With “Citrus X-teior” you can add bleach to it, to get the mold-killing and color-removing properties that bleach provides, while having the added benefits of a product that contains the actual cleaning ability of surfactants and the added benefit of a clean citrus scent to help cover or reduce the smell of bleach, if you are using it with the product. “Citrus X-terior” is great all on its own for cleaning vinyl siding, hardiplank, wood, or brick facades.
For surfaces that need a stronger approach or that have known greasy dirt concerns, you can use our “Mighty Max”, the 6% butyl, the non-caustic product we discussed earlier. We found it made no sense to add other names to or re-label the same product for every type of job it can do. Therefore many of our products can multi-task even if the job description is not in the product name like “house wash”. “Mighty Max” is great to use in a pump-up sprayer to pre-treat problem areas as well as being used as a general house wash. “Mighty Max Plus” since it has a higher amount of butyl 10% plus an added amount of sodium hydroxide is great for removing those stubborn black streaks from gutters without brushing. But care must be made to not let the product sit too long or be allowed to dry on painted surfaces or glass that it can etch since it does contain sodium hydroxide.
Just about any of our other general all-purpose cleaners like “Mighty-Green”, “Natures Green”, and “Rite Stuff” can also be used as a house wash and are recommended when customers or regulatory agencies require that a “Greener” product or method be used to clean.
There is a final product some of our customers do use for house washing but we do not have label directions nor can recommend proper dilution rates and that is “Brown Derby”. Even when greatly diluted the amount of sodium hydroxide can be a deterrent for use on painted wood surfaces and around glass. If you use it we can not offer advice or make any recommendation in regards to house washing. For this reason “Brown Derby” is not listed in our catalog section of house washing products.
With that said, sodium hydroxide is still a widely used method for roof cleaning, and “Brown Derby” has and can be used for that. Care still must be made in keeping the rest of the house rinsed well with water including any glass during the roof cleaning process so as not to cause damage to other surfaces. But the Asphalt Shingle Manufactures of America recommends in their own technical bulletin that only professional bleach solutions should be used on their shingle products in which our “Citrus X-terior” can be used as recommended with bleach to clean roof shingles of black mold streaks caused by the algae Gloeocapsa Magma.
Lastly, the product “Bio Barrier” that we have discussed at length in the past, was designed to be used after house and roof washing to retard the re-growth of mold. This product will add months if not years of continued good looks after a cleaning has been done. However, it does require repeated treatments to extend the life of its benefits.
We hope these monthly posts are helpful and we look forward to next month and our next product group.
