AC Lockyer: 0:16

Hey guys, this is AC Lockyer here and this is Ask a Soft Wash Systems Pro. Now, this is a podcast where we go over the surface, the stain, the tools, chemicals and techniques you need to clean your home or property. And this week, hailing from the beautiful state of North Carolina, specifically from Wilmington, north Carolina, we have John Buchholz. Hey, John, how's it going?

AC Lockyer: 0:43

Hey, now, when we're talking about Hardie board siding, you are especially in a part of the country that has a lot of traditional homes and so traditional homes back in the day they used to use cedar siding or pine siding on, and especially homes around the turn of the century they got away from that for a while and went to concrete block homes and they were not beautiful, and in about the last 30 years it has absolutely exploded that people want that beautiful turn of the century, going into the 1900s, 20th century home that's got the beautiful board siding on it and the wraparound porches And's just a, you know, either a country home or a victorian home or a coastal type of home, and they require this siding.

AC Lockyer: 1:29

But termites love siding, yeah, and so when you're, when you're, looking at this, they're like well, how do we come up with something that termites aren't going to eat, and the company James Hardie, which is one of the manufacturers that make this concrete board, this genre of siding James Hardie board. They started making this product. Now some other companies have started making it too, and it can be difficult to clean, but they did this to make it a longer lasting product that's not going to be attacked by WDOs, wood destroying organisms, things like carpenter, ants, termites and, of course, our favorite WDO mold, mildew, algae, lichens, bacteria, mosses, things like that.

AC Lockyer: 2:21

So why don't you just tell us a little bit about what you have experienced when you come up to these homes that have Hardie board. What are some of the conditions that you're seeing?

John Buchholz: 2:31

Well, here in our area we're a coastal community, so we see a lot of sun damage to the Hardie board and then it's always wet pretty much, so there's tons of mold and algae growing on the sides of the house and then lots of UV damage from you know, just the brightness of the sun just close to the coast.

AC Lockyer: 2:57

Yeah, we're all very, very aware of the mold, mildew, algae, dirt, grime getting on homes. But one of the conditions that generally consumers don't acknowledge or recognize right away is, once you clean all of that off, then you'll find, primarily on the southern and western sides of the homes that get the most sunlight. You'll find that these color through building substrates like the Hardie board board, that they actually come in a color and they think I'm never going to have to paint this home ever again. They realize, wow, all of my Hardie board or this particular genre of material has gotten UV damage on, it, has gotten sun bleached and it even has an oxidation on it that if you rub your hand on it it gets chalky. And we sometimes, when we clean those, the customer's like, oh my goodness, your chemicals ruined my Hardie board. And it's not that at all, it's, we've exposed a problem, so let's address that.

AC Lockyer: 3:56

Secondly, let's talk about in the step or the order that somebody would want to take care of this, because, after all this, is a podcast where the homeowner or property owner can get information and try to attack this problem themselves, and so we want to give them some really, really good guidance on that.

AC Lockyer: 4:18

However, if they do get to the point where they are in over their heads or they prefer not to attack it themselves, we're letting them know what a real professional company would do to solve this problem, and then, if they can't find that professional company in their area, they could certainly step out or reach out to SoftWash Systems, and we'd be happy to send one of our SoftWash Systems pros out to take a look at their problem and give them a proposal to take care of that. So when you pull up to these homes now and you're getting ready to give an estimate, you walk around the home and you're seeing these conditions. What are some of the organic stains that you're seeing on there? Go ahead and give me the listing of the most common to least common and the least evasive to the most evasive the least evasive to the most evasive.

John Buchholz: 5:09

So it's going to be deep down, it's going to be the your green mold and algae, and that's primary, primarily what we're seeing. And when this goes to the, if it goes black, it's going to be really tough to get off and there's normally a lot of paint damage underneath that just because it's eating away at it. um, and then also in our area we have dirt gobblers that get in there also have havoc on those, because once they're in Florida, we call them mud daubers, yeah, and those dad gum wasps that get up there and make those nasty mud nests that just literally eat through paint, eat through stucco, it's just eat through building surfaces.

John Buchholz: 5:53

They're ridiculous yeah, we always tell them to go ahead and knock it down as soon as you see it forming. It doesn't cause as much damage to the surface. Those are pretty much the main things for us that we run into.

AC Lockyer: 6:12

Yeah, because you're on an East Coast coastal, so you're going to see the gliocapsa magma, which is the black streaking. You're going to see some mustard algae. Especially in the winter, it seems, seems to flash, bloom out and that's kind of a greenish color. Uh, people actually get it in pools too. It gets in your pool, gets in the surface of your home, and that's a winter phenomenon and those things are a little easier to clean. When do you know a homeowner or property owner is really in trouble with their Hardie board siding?

John Buchholz: 6:46

When they start having the moss growing on the side of their house, we do run into that and again, if the algae and mold is turning colors, that's really when the house is really in desperate need of a cleaning. And then around here we also have salt in the air and that's also eating away at the paint and surface as well. So you just we try to get in there and tell them they need to really have them clean every 12 to 18 months to help protect the longevity of their investment, their home.

AC Lockyer: 7:23

Yeah, and that's and that's when we really talk about cause, just like a boat, I used to fish tournaments professionally in the saltwater, in shore saltwater fishing, and every time you took your boat out of the water you would need to make sure that you rinse it out, hooked a hose up to the engine, rinse out the engine, make sure you wash the boat. And one of the products that we developed at SoftWash Systems Final Wash back when I used to fish tournaments literally our Final Wash, because it is a good stewards product. It's biodegradable, water-based, low VOC. I would literally, while my boat was in the water, if I was keeping it in a slip the week I was fishing the tournaments, I would literally wash down the boat with the Final Wash and it breaks up the salts and also neutralize them so they can't corrode the boat with the final wash and it breaks up the salts and also neutralize them so they can't corrode the boat. And we do that too with the homes and when you're dealing with coastal properties, whether the home has mold and mildew on it or not, you really got to make sure that at least yearly if you're on the beach, if you're actually right on the water and you're getting wind and salt spray in your home quarterly, you need to make sure that you wash it down with our final wash product and that's a whole nother discussion but what I've also seen around the country because you're there in Wilmington.

AC Lockyer: 8:39

What I've also seen around the country is really thick mold and mildew and we were talking about earlier. On the southern and western sides. You get UV damage on the north and eastern sides because in the morning you get sunlight, but it's moist sunlight. So you've always heard the Boy Scouts saying how do you know which way you're going through the woods? How do you find north in the woods? You look on the sides of the trees and the sides of the trees that have moss on them is the north facing side, and the north facing side of a home can really get obliterated by mold, mildew, algae. If we're going into mosses and lichens, that's the side that's likely going to have it, and I'm sure you found in your area that on the north sides of the homes. You know some of the homes are strategically placed and they get a lot of sun.

John Buchholz: 9:36

Some of them are facing north and they just get whacked with the organics that they do. Yeah, yeah, it takes a whole lot more effort to get them clean at that point in time.

AC Lockyer: 9:42

So when you say more effort, what are we talking about?

John Buchholz: 9:46

Um a lot of time, like we're having to do multiple applications to get it to come clean, so that we're not using pressure to try to remove it because we wanted to sanitize the surface and kill it off or it's not gonna just come back, it's gonna have to be new growth that gets it to um that would start growing the side of the house. So in our method of doing that, with our soaps that we use um, it helps everything stay cleaner longer. Um, which we always tell people like you know it works so good that you you know you don't you're not calling everybody as often because it just stays clean longer and um, which is good for them. It's better value for the customer and everything.

AC Lockyer: 10:32

But so you made two really, really strong points. There is sometimes it's going to take multiple applications one thing you didn't mention, which I I know you do, but we see it a lot in the extreme northeast, the stream northwest of. We have licensed affiliates in the UK, so the further North you go in England, I remember cleaning a building in Scotland and it literally had 200 years of moss on it. It was moss almost as old as our country, you know. And so, yeah, just really really extreme conditions there. But sometimes you have to take out a scrub brush and so we don't go to a pressure washer like most companies.

AC Lockyer: 11:15

And hey, listen, if you're a homeowner or a property owner and you're listening to this podcast, you're watching this YouTube video and you're trying to figure out how to clean your property yourself. Don't go to a pressure washer. Don't use a pressure washer, because pressure washers are extremely treacherous and eroding on Hardie board siding. Have you ever seen homes that have been pressure washed before when you go out to your jobs, that they maybe chose the wrong contractor before you and you've seen damage on the Hardie board? Have you seen that?

John Buchholz: 11:48

We see that a lot, and a lot of times it's a homeowner that doesn't realize they're going to the damage until it starts to dry and then they kind of it's like you can see, it's pretty much to the level that their wand would reach yes, the step ladder, because they're out there on that doing it or on extension ladder being, you know this, far from the house.

AC Lockyer: 12:07

And they're just causing.

John Buchholz: 12:09

It's like a little, uh, kind of like a zigzag type thing. We call it the mark of zaro, yeah, and sometimes they actually take chunks out of the Hardie board. I mean it, it can be pretty, pretty bad when they do that

AC Lockyer: 12:25

and Hardie board is not a cheap surface, so you don't want to do that and have to replace it. If you have done that and you just have wand strokes in it, sometimes it's on the southern and western side, because they've merely just stripped away a little bit of the oxidation, which we'll talk about that. That's a solvable problem and we can. We're going to teach you guys a little bit on that. We're going to run through some of these things pretty quick.

AC Lockyer: 12:50

But, you definitely don't want to pressure wash them, so you're going to treat them, sometimes multiple times, and you're going to hit them with a scrub brush. What are we treating them with? These are products that we use here at Soft Wash Systems, but you can also purchase them out there with many of our distributors around the country. What products are we using?

John Buchholz: 13:16

So this is our Trinity mix and it's sodium hypochlorite, which is a tongue twister, and especially this early in the morning. But, then greenwash, which impacts all the organic matter, and then our TerraWash, which goes after all the dirt and grime, and then sometimes we add in a rain fresh. That helps it cover scent, because when you're killing all that nastiness off your house it really can start to stink a little bit. So we're with that.

AC Lockyer: 13:42

Yeah, and that's the other point too that you made a few moments ago is you said when we treat a surface we're sanitizing it. We actually have lab proven 99.8 kill ratio against the algae, mold, mildew, lichens, bacterias, viruses, mosses, lichens, all of those things. Okay, fungus is growing on the home. We get that 99.8 kill ratio whether you're using a soft wash systems licensed affiliate or you've gone to one of our stores, like the Wash Life store, to purchase those products yourself, which you can do. It's kind of like do-it-yourself pest control At the Wash Life store we do have where homeowners can come in there and purchase these professional level chemicals. They're all labeled correctly and they're available to you. Level chemicals they're all labeled correctly and they're available to you and you can try to tackle the job yourself, and many, many times you can, especially if you catch it in its early stages.

AC Lockyer: 14:38

But we actually do sanitize the surface and that's why it stays clean so long for sure. All right, good. So we know that the trendy mix at that one to 2% sodium hypochlorite, the green wash at one ounce per gallon, the Tara wash at one ounce per gallon and the rain fresh at one ounce per gallon, we know that we can spray that on a home, we can agitate a little bit, we can rinse it, we can do multiple steps of that to remove safely and without pressure, without degrading the surface, those different organic stains off of the home. But now we've rolled around to usually the southern or western side. We clean the home and the home dries after we clean it. What have we discovered? The condition that exists now on the Hardie board siding.

John Buchholz: 15:31

All the oxidation uv damage the white. If you rub your finger across it, the the white um haze.

AC Lockyer: 15:36

That ends up coming off like dust on your fingers yes, and dealing with that reminds me of the karate kid. Do you remember the movie the karate kid? I know you're a little younger than me, but you certainly watch Cobra Kai, right that I have. Yeah, okay, cool. So the old Mr Miyagi wax on wax off, wax on wax off. If you had this condition on a car, this is the same oxidation you would get on a car with a paint job. Okay, you have to use a rubbing compound and rub it off and then come back and wax the car, remove the oxidation and wax the car. And so how we achieve that? Using our soft wash systems, chemicals that are available out there to property owners. How do we achieve that? Describe that process a little bit.

John Buchholz: 16:27

So that process I am going to say before you go applying any product to the side of the house, make sure you do a test spot first.

AC Lockyer: 16:37

Yes, so that's step one. After we tell you what to do, do a little test spot and make sure it's going to work and make sure it's the result that you want.

John Buchholz: 16:47

Then you would be pre-wetting the side when you're going to clean, especially in the sun, so it cools the surface down, so that it will actually do it, not just evaporate as soon as the product is inside the house.

AC Lockyer: 17:03

Yes, you want to make sure you pre-moisten it so that it gets all the oxidation and all that surface wet and ready to receive the chemical but cools it down so you don't flash burn it with the chemical and create a blotchy effect on the side of the home.

John Buchholz: 17:17

so, getting back to the uv damage, oxidation, um, we would use a product called oxy wash, where, again, we pre-wet the surface, we spray it on there with a pump up sprayer.

John Buchholz: 17:30

We got a little nice little battery, one that gets to some nice distance. You have to brush every inch of the side of the house.

AC Lockyer: 17:39

Hold on, hold on. There's not a miracle chemical out there that you can just spray on and it just removes all this oxidation.

John Buchholz: 17:45

I mean, that would be nice.

AC Lockyer: 17:46

Let me know. I'm sure there's a Mr Miyagi in here laughing somewhere. it's like remove the oxidation.

John Buchholz: 17:58

So you brush it, you know, from the top down and um, and you make sure you're keeping it wet as you're doing it, and then you really thoroughly rinse and then it's good to go. Yeah, some of the paint might have had issues before that you exposed even more. But it's just just make sure that you're setting those giving the homeowner or the homeowner himself realizing, hey, I might expose something, right.

AC Lockyer: 18:27

You have to set their expectations. You know the older the Hardie board is, the longer the organic materials have been allowed to fester on it, the lesser desirable results you're going to get. The more oxidation there is, the less desirable results you're going to get. Or you bought a home where the previous owner put off taking care of these stains, and that's when normally Hardie board is color through, it comes in a color. You shouldn't have to paint a home with Hardie board, especially if you take care of it correctly In your lifetime. As long as you're here on this earth, you should not have to paint Hardie board unless it has been neglected or abused or shot with a pressure washer or something like that, or gotten holes or chips in it. You got to come back in and bondo it and there's kits that they make for that that james already sells and then you have to paint it. So now you're dealing with painted Hardie board, which probably makes your tummy go. Yeah, because painted Hardie board can be tough to clean. Yeah, it's usually because the people who painted it didn't prep it right. And now you're coming in to clean that Hardie board that's had paint on it, and even with a soft washing technique, which is only about aboutI. Just enough pressure to apply the chemicals. The chemicals do all the cleaning and we just rinse it away. With about 140 pounds per square inch about double the strength of a garden hose. We rinse it off of the building, sometimes because poor prep was done and they didn't kill the organics underneath. The organics started growing and the paint has started bubbling or separating. You get paint removal and blistering and peeling and stuff like that. And that's not our fault, correct,

John Buchholz: 20:23

Correct, not our fault.

AC Lockyer: 20:25

Yeah, so you know, when you, when you look at this James Hardie board and you look at the conditions as we wrap up here, this is a project that a home or property owner could take on themselves. An apartment community that has a maintenance crew, a facility that has a chief engineer. This is something that they could definitely take on themselves, but it can be exhaustive themselves. But it can be exhaustive when you go out and clean, like a very typical for these types of homes, because they're generally custom homes. These homes are usually in the 3,000 square foot plus range. They're four bedroom, three bath, living room, tv room, loft type of thing, big, nice kitchen. These are pretty big homes With our trucks, with our trucks and our equipment, our technicians and as well-equipped as we are doing these. How long does it take for you to clean the Hardie board on a home like that?

John Buchholz: 21:26

Normally it's anywhere from two to four hours and it's normally it could depend on how many levels you know if it's one story, two story, the amount of dormers that they could have, the accent pieces that they put above the roof line, type things. Sometimes you're having to get on a ladder or our saving glory is to get old water fed poles to be able to get the, but you can still be both feet on the ground, um, um. So yeah, if you don't have those things and the safety stuff you know, if you are using ladders, make sure you get the stabilizers on there so it's not going to be moving, shifting on you, um, but yeah, it's normally about two to four hours from. You know, setting up, taking, know all the property protection stuff we do.

AC Lockyer: 22:17

Because you tape off all the outlets. You watch for nice little intercom and speaker systems, for all these new security cameras on the homes. I mean sometimes it takes an hour just to get the home ready for this exterior soft washing.

John Buchholz: 22:29

And having to watch for some of those, uh, painted and wood stained doors.

AC Lockyer: 22:34

Very, make sure you're being careful with those yeah, it can be difficult, so it's not uncommon. I mean you say two to four hours, but it's not uncommon when you pull up to some of these nice custom homes with Hardie board on them that it's an all-day just for you and you do these all the time you are, you are loaded ready, prepared with all of the cool little tools and techniques and you know our systems. We have on the trucks and everything. You're ready to do these and it might take an entire day. Very true, yeah, what could you imagine it would take a homeowner to tackle this project themselves?

John Buchholz: 23:14

I mean, we've talked to people before where they said they worked on it every Saturday for a month and still didn't get it the way they wanted.

AC Lockyer: 23:21

Wow, that's incredible. And so you know, if you guys do come to the Wash Life store and you purchase some of the chemicals and all, we're going to help you. We even have some rental equipment and stuff like that. Um, but you need to block out some time on this and really know what your time is worth. We're certainly willing to help you, and even John you know John, I'll say this, but I know you if the homeowner called you and said, hey, I just bought some stuff and everything else, could you, could you come over and tell me if I'm doing this right or not? You would come over and help them, wouldn't you? We'd go over and give them some advice. Yeah, give them some advice. And why would we do that?

John Buchholz: 24:03

Because we believe in helping everyone learn the correct methods and the safe way of doing things, because you have enough people comes back to help you as well.

AC Lockyer: 24:15

That's right, Zig Ziglar, if you help enough people get what they want, they'll help you get what you want, and so that property owner, that that engineer on the facility, that homeowner may just go. Oh, that was for the birds. Next year I'm going to call who?

John Buchholz: 24:34

Well, hopefully, Pelican Pro Wash was you but soft wash systems

AC Lockyer: 24:38

We're gonna call John or a local soft wash systems Pro, yeah, and so yeah, so it's very, very cool.

AC Lockyer: 24:43

So, guys, yeah if you're interested in purchasing the products, and all you can certainly in here will be a link for you guys to go visit the Wash Life store or any of our distributors that do carry our products.

AC Lockyer: 24:54

But if you want to engage the muscle of soft wash systems guys like John, our different soft wash systems pros around the country you can go ahead and go ahead and click on the link. It'll take you to our dealer locator map. We showed that at the beginning of the show when we flew into John's area and you could see where John was. You'll see we have about 150 soft wash systems license affiliates in eight countries around the globe and we are growing, and so pretty much anybody that's watching this video. We're perfectly willing to help you and coach you on how to take care of these substrates, stains, with the techniques, chemicals and procedures that you need to be able to clean these areas. But if you do get to the point where you're like I don't think I want to do this anymore you can go ahead and click on that location tab and we'll take you to a map and you can pick your local SoftWatch Systems Pro. Hey, john, this is great. I'm so glad you're on here. Thank you so much for joining us today.

John Buchholz: 25:57

Thanks for having me.

AC Lockyer: 25:58

All right, great. All right guys. This is AC Lockyer with Ask a SoftWatch Systems Pro. See you later. Thank you.