Power washing vinyl siding WITHOUT srcubbing

[newbury]

In another thread I tried to ask which product or mix was best, meaning to allow one to spray on the chemicals and spray off the crud WITHOUT SCRUBBING. In my case the crud is almost exclusively algae, much of it out of reach for scrubbing even with extensions.
But the replies were:scrub, just use water, and blew an engine. So I'll try again.
What's the best solution (as in mix of chemicals)?
Opening of the other thread:

North side is green again . What is a good presoak before blasting ?

First proposed mix:

I have used Jomax siding wash with great satisfaction. Wish I had discovered it sooner, it saves a lot of time. It is a concentrate that gets mixed with bleach and water and can be applied with a garden sprayer.
Amazon.com: RUST-OLEUM 60104 Jomax house cleaner and mildew killer: Home Improvement

This gets good reviews on Amazon, but is expensive, $48/gallon and requires adding bleach. Note that JD855, quoted down below just uses bleach.

I just finished and used:
Home Armor
E-Z House Wash
Mold Stain Remover

Bought at Lowes.
Shop Mold Armor 56-fl oz Liquid Mold Remover at Lowes.com

Let it soak a few minutes and rinse. Reading the cleaning instruction online for my paticular vinyl it said no more than 1500 psi and shoot in a downward direction, that's why I just attached a hose to the nozzle on the bottle. The cap has a Clean/Rinse/Close nozzle.

Siding looks new.

Again, some good reviews, less expensive than Jomax ~$18/gallon but has it's own bleach.

I use a cup of powder laundry detergent, big squirt of dawn dish soap, and about 2 cups of pool shock (12% bleach) mixed in a 5 gal bucket with water, then feed into the pressure washer soap injector. Spray it on, let it sit for a minute, and hose off. Do not need high pressure to rinse, which is good. That is the worst thing for a house. Never use a high pressure nozzle directly on your house! I use the soap nozzle to spray the soap on, then use a "2nd story" nozzle to get water up for rinsing.

Reads like a good DIY mix, very inexpensive.

While trying to clean up my new to me motor home that had mildew and black mold all over it plus the canopies were all moldy from being stored wet. My neighbor turned me on to a product available at Walmart called SUPER CLEAN. It is a strong detergent with bleach and it isn't terribly expensive. I used a garden sprayer to wet the siding down first, let it set for a few minutes then hosed it off. All but the worst spots hosed off without scrubbing. Stubborn spots took some scrubbing with a car wash brush. The canvas was wet from both sides, allowed to set for several minutes, scrubbed with the brush and it came out looking like new. I used it full strength buy you can dilute per container directions for less funky areas.

This is advertised for removing grease, but only costs $9/gallon

I use 50% household bleach and water in a bleach safe sprayer. If it doesn't say bleach safe on the sprayer label you will be replacing it.

Spray it on, let sit, hose it off. Repeat as necessary.

Can't get cheaper. Poor man's JOMAX, which you have to add bleach to.

I use the following solution with a pump sprayer. I hose it off with a pressure washer from about 3 feet away. I don't want to blast the siding. The pressure washer uses less water than my low pressure high volume garden hose.

Solution:

3 quarts warm water
1 quart bleach (use the good bleach like Clorox. Generic bleaches are not as concentrated. look for a 5% solution)
2/3 cup TSP (The real stuff not the phosphate free)
1/3 cup household detergent. ( I use Tide liquid laundry detergent)

I usually scale up the recipe to make 4 gallons in a 5 gallon bucket. Work from the bottom up or you will get streaking.

Again, reads like a good DIY mix. But note even cheap bleach tells the concentration on the label.

And my question on the other thread.

Has anyone compared the different solutions offered here? Just got my HD $100 PW and looking for the best solution.

Has anyone tried more than one of these mixes and been able to compare them?

I would dislike buying a gallon of Jomax, adding a gallon of bleach and just after I finish someone posts great success with bleach and spit.

 

[sixdogs]

I did a thread on pressure washers, including the one I bought and found that 4000 psi, 4 gallons of water per minute, a Honda commercial engine and a 40 degree number four tip cleaned my algae clad, nasty shed siding in mere moments with no soap. No nothing but water and it's 100% clean. I also posted a photo of a plastic chair that had been in the barn 10 years and I showed it half cleaned. It was impressive. It also cleaned my concrete walk nearly 100% and that was also in mere moments.

Sorry I don't have a chemical or soap, although I started out that direction but I found none was needed, including blowing the grease off a tractor loader. Be careful of rubber seals and decals. Hope this helps and not viewed as deviating or disrespectful of your request of soap suggestions but I found that none was needed. Just pressure.


EDIT--Here's that chair. Just water and it was moldy, dirty and nasty.
I have no idea why photo is sideways.

 

[oosik]

I've used a high pressure hot water unit on a aluminum sided house with good results. No chemicals added to the heated water. Start from the very top and work your way down the siding - you do not want to force water in & under the siding by working in an upward direction. A hot water washer may not work with vinyl siding though.

 

[newbury]

I did a thread on pressure washers, including the one I bought and found that 4000 psi, 4 gallons of water per minute, a Honda commercial engine and a 40 degree number four tip cleaned my algae clad, nasty shed siding in mere moments with no soap. No nothing but water and it's 100% clean. I also posted a photo of a plastic chair that had been in the barn 10 years and I showed it half cleaned. It was impressive. It also cleaned my concrete walk nearly 100% and that was also in mere moments.

Sorry I don't have a chemical or soap, although I started out that direction but I found none was needed, including blowing the grease off a tractor loader. Be careful of rubber seals and decals. Hope this helps and not viewed as deviating or disrespectful of your request of soap suggestions but I found that none was needed. Just pressure.


EDIT--Here's that chair. Just water and it was moldy, dirty and nasty.
I have no idea why photo is sideways.

View attachment 480945

Thanks for the data point, but I've only got a 2,000+ psi washer in Virginia and some of the areas are third floor up plus attic piece. What I'd really like is spray on, rain off.

You photo is probably sideway because a lot of phones and some cameras put a character in the exif to show orientation and it doesn't deal well with the forum software.

 

[Gunny]

Have you tried Wet n Forget?

I had two walls on the house that used to get very moldy green about 1/2 up and down the entire length of the walls. It used to take 3 washes a year before, and I used several of the vinyl siding washes available at the big box stores.

This spring I tried Wet N Forget. It did take awhile for the stains to completely go away, but I haven't had to do anything to those walls the rest of the summer.

Easy to apply, you don't even need a pressure washer, a pump sprayer does it.

 

[TractorGuy]

For what it's worth the guy that installed my siding warned to NEVER use a pressure washer on it. That said, I tried it anyway after using the bleach method successfully for many years. Yep, as careful as I could be it still blew a couple of panels loose. The only safe way to power wash vinyl siding is to never direct the pressure upward on the bottoms of the panels. This is impossible without a man lift. I still had to use bleach on a couple of stubborn stains.

Going back to spray on, rinse off next cleaning.

 

[tcartwri]

We used to use Oxalic acid at the marina to clean hulls. It would make short work of algae or mold on your siding, and it is cheap if you make your own solution for a sprayer. Wait for a nice overcast day to apply it and stand up wind of it. I can't remember what concentration we used, but it was strong stuff. Doubt you would need anything stronger than 10% for house siding.

 

[Gary Fowler]

If you use the Super Clean Concentrate (available at Walmart and very reasonably priced by the gallon) you can use a garden sprayer to spray it on, allow it to set for a few minutes and then hose it off with a garden hose and it will work well. I used this to clean the cloth awning on my used motorhome when I bought it. The previous owner had obviously rolled them up while wet and they were all totally black with mold. I did have to use a carwash brush to scrub the cloth after applying the Super Clean full strength but they all came out looking new.
For the aluminum sides, just applying the Super clean and then hosing it off worked well.

 

[Midniteoyl]

In another thread I tried to ask which product or mix was best, meaning to allow one to spray on the chemicals and spray off the crud WITHOUT SCRUBBING. In my case the crud is almost exclusively algae, much of it out of reach for scrubbing even with extensions.
But the replies were:scrub, just use water, and blew an engine. So I'll try again.
What's the best solution (as in mix of chemicals)?
Opening of the other thread:


First proposed mix:

This gets good reviews on Amazon, but is expensive, $48/gallon and requires adding bleach. Note that JD855, quoted down below just uses bleach.


Again, some good reviews, less expensive than Jomax ~$18/gallon but has it's own bleach.


Reads like a good DIY mix, very inexpensive.


This is advertised for removing grease, but only costs $9/gallon


Can't get cheaper. Poor man's JOMAX, which you have to add bleach to.

Again, reads like a good DIY mix. But note even cheap bleach tells the concentration on the label.

And my question on the other thread.


Has anyone tried more than one of these mixes and been able to compare them?

I would dislike buying a gallon of Jomax, adding a gallon of bleach and just after I finish someone posts great success with bleach and spit.

newbury.. I usually just pressure wash w/o any added chemicals, but this last time I had much more mildew/green crap than usual as I couldnt get to it last year, along with stuff growing on the roof edge.. I took an old 'house wash' hose end bottle, filled it with cheap bleach and a quick squirt of Dawn (about 12-15), hooked it to the hose, sprayed it on and rinsed it off after about 10-15mins.. cleaned everything great, including the roof which I did 2x. One bottle was enough for about 25-30ft of house considering I had to keep it wet for 10+min.

 

[newbury]

I've used a high pressure hot water unit on a aluminum sided house with good results. No chemicals added to the heated water. Start from the very top and work your way down the siding - you do not want to force water in & under the siding by working in an upward direction. A hot water washer may not work with vinyl siding though.

Probably be cheaper to hire to get it done then buy a high pressure hot water unit.

Have you tried Wet n Forget?
<snip>

Looks like a contender, thanks

We used to use Oxalic acid <snip>

Another contender

If you use the Super Clean Concentrate (available at Walmart and very reasonably priced by the gallon) you can use a garden sprayer to spray it on, allow it to set for a few minutes and then hose it off with a garden hose and it will work well.<snip>

Most reports on Super clean sound good.

newbury.. I usually just pressure wash w/o any added chemicals, but this last time I had much more mildew/green crap than usual as I couldnt get to it last year, along with stuff growing on the roof edge.. I took an old 'house wash' hose end bottle, filled it with cheap bleach and a quick squirt of Dawn (about 12-15), hooked it to the hose, sprayed it on and rinsed it off after about 10-15mins.. cleaned everything great, including the roof which I did 2x. One bottle was enough for about 25-30ft of house considering I had to keep it wet for 10+min.

I've tried several detergents alone, a mix of Dawn and chlorine, chlorine alone and they all required a 15 to 20 minute "soak" and high pressure spray with the fine nozzle to get the thicker stuff off.

Thanks for all for the replies.