How cold can you work?

Cold Weather and Cold Weather Work

I was planning on writing this later this week, but it is 29 degrees and spitting out freezing rain with some snow flurries here in the Ozarks today.  Temperatures this cold, house cleaning and general pressure washing comes to a halt with my company. Ice forming on concrete is unsafe for us and our clients and their customers. Cleaned by Pete's soaps and cleaners will not work as well in lower temperatures. The chance of our equipment freezing up is one of the biggest factors too. Let's have a look at these factors and to help explain why we can not work or choose not to work when temperatures are low. Hopefully we will be closing in one the last of the cold weather and we can get out there and help you with your cleaning and washing needs.

Flash back to your younger years..... Mom "did you wash your hands for dinner?". You "yaaa". Mom "did you use hot water and soap?". You "noooo". Mom knew best hot water and soap aid in cleaning, you would not want to take a bath in cold water only ... now would you? Most soap and cleaners are made to work best when ambient temperatures are around 50 degrees mid 40's at least. Using hot water increases the potential of cleaners helping them release their full cleaning power. Why did mom wash the babies clothing in hot water using soap and bleach. Soap for cleaning, bleach for killing germs. This is why we use these items too. Cleaned by Pete knows how much cleaner, soaps and bleach to use on your home safely and what is friendly to our environment. The soap and cleaners we use to clean your house and the bleach helps to kill what is growing on your home, if we can not kill it it will grow back. The "kill ratio" is what we call it. Colder temperatures will result in a lower "kill ratio". Hot water will help but good warm siding and the plant growing is warm it will bloom and we can kill it.  We have the capabilities to make hot water on 4 of our power washers, and we will use hot water to apply chemicals when the need arises. When we first started we used hot water to apply all our soap and cleaner. We were in the hood cleaning and washing part of the industry then, where heat was a good thing.  When we moved to concrete cleaning and house washing we found out it was not necessary to use hot water on all jobs. Depending what is on your home what cleaners we use to clean your home, washing with cold water is OK. Freezing water or really cold water though is not OK there is a point where the soap is not activated. Pour ice water over some dish soap, how much sudz is there? Repeat with hot water now there is a difference. We want to clean you home and kill what is growing on it, in-order to do so we need a certain temperature to achieve this goal. This is why we can not clean when it is cold.

Cleaned by Pete's equipment is another reason we can not clean when it is cold. When I first started we use the trailer. If you read our blog you will know how I feel about trailers. We did mostly hood cleaning then and working inside when it was cold was not bad. Our soap and cleaners could work and we used the hottest water we could make for this type of cleaning, refer to blog "gas washer why we use them". In cold temperatures we could work and get our job done with little to no problems. Job done headed home 30 degrees and pulling a trailer down the road 50 to 60 miles an hour lets think about wind chill and how cold moving air speeds up freezing. Water in tanks, in the pump, in hoses, in the coils of the burner and on the trailer will freeze solid when the ambient temperature is above freezing due to the wind and the chill factor. Freezing water kills more heating coils on pressure washers than any thing else. To help we started to fill the hoses, pump, lines and pressure washer with antifreeze after each job this took about an extra half hour and the cost of the antifreeze had to be passed on to the customers increased prices. To help eliminate this problem and other problems with the trailer. we then moved the pressure washer into a van. We could heat it with a small heater when not in use or transporting it, to keep it form freezing. While this was not the best it did work but we still had to purge water form all the lines and pump in antifreeze encase of a power outage. You could just drain the coil on lines and hoses but lines and coils are made of steel that had been heated on and off which I think changes it at a molecular level and when it is drained all water is not removed and promotes quick rusting  in the coil, second reason a coils fails. The power washer is what we relay on to make money and feed our families, while making extra money from doing a washing job is great the chances of damaging our livelihood comes into play. We will help you out with your jobs and your cleaning needs but will have to take into consideration all the aspects to see if we can do it, we try to help our customers and clients the best we can. Another problem is we "soft wash" or "safe wash" houses using a down stream method which has to draw our soaps and cleaners into the water stream when it is cold the soap and cleaners become thicker and will not draw. In order to make it draw we would have to water it down more water less cleaner. We are just working backwards at this point. We'll do you a better job in warmer temperatures.

The last point will be safety sheet ice can form with just a light coat of water on concrete, parking-lots, drive-thrus and any other surface. Our customers safety is our number one reason to not wash in cold temperatures if we feel it is unsafe in any way or if there is a chance for icing in any way we will not clean.  You all have heard they can make snow at resorts for skiing when snow fall is light ever wonder how they do it? Water plus pressure and nozzling by splitting water into small partials,  and let the ambient temperature take over then instant snow.  What have we learned about pressure washer at the beginning of the blog, what make the power washer work? Water, a pump to put the water under pressure, and a nozzle to change spray and pressure, all the same things in a snow making machine. The ambient temperatures take over. If the conditions are just right we can make snow and freezing rain at temperatures of 35 degrees. There is quite a science behind this with the speed of the water chilling is quicker, break up the stream of water (nozzling) breaks water in very small parts a mist, pressure helps to the more pressure enacts with the speed and how the water stream is broken up. In any case even if we are not at the freezing point we still can have ice and snow. Safety will not be overlooked or over-ridden for the sake of making money.

Cleaned by Pete call us for a free prompt quote for your cleaning needs we are serving the Southwest and greater Springfield MO area.

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