Bob,

Though generally the school of thought surrounding when does pressure washing "pressure" start is 1,500 psi there is more to it than that. I have always determined that pressure washing is where water under pressure is used to clean a surface and the water being pressurized is what cleans the surface.

Soft washing on the other had is directly opposite to that in which chemicals are applied with an application pump onto a surface and the chemicals do all of the cleaning and no pressure is needed.

I try to explain to customers that pressure washing utilizes water under pressure to accomplish moving soil and microbes off of a surface by utilizing pressurized water to erode those stains off of the surface. I love how one of my old competitors use to advertise they didnt pressure wash but only "only" used 800 psi to rinse the roof. I would simply ask the customer if they would allow me to drop an 800 lb weight onto their foot. Generally they objected. lol

AC

I talked to Mosmatic, makers of the "shampoo company" "sprinkle disc." This device is listed under high pressure appliances on their website, and is essentially a surface cleaner, made for cleaning concrete, modified to put on a roof. The person at Mosmatic could not really give me a "lowest operating pressure" for the device, but said that they thought it would take at least 2500psi to make the thing work. If you divide that by the two rotating arms and subtract a little for elevation and friction loss in the system, you still have over 1000psi coming out of each tip on the disc.

In addition, I have found most building material manufacturers void warranties starting as low as 100psi or so.

I usually also mention that most guys who have a commercial pressure washer usually have a hot water unit. It' would be real tempting for a guy to fire up the burner, and now have high pressure, 200 degree water on your asphalt shingles.

Also, if anyone out there could get their hands on one of these things, it would make a great video for our collective files.

I would be willing to throw in a few bucks to help in this effort. I check ebay and craigslist every once in a while for them, but roof cleaning is not that big up here yet. If we could get one, and get it to an in network guy who has the appropriate pressure washers, we could do some videos highlighting the difference. I know plenty of us could do this, I would be willing. I also know of a guy (Ray) who is good at video and has a pressure washing division.

Chad,

Chris Gunther with Chesapeake Hydro Wash purchased one of these "Roof Sham" gentle sprinkle discs last year.

softwashsystems.activeboard.com/t58459514/roof-shampoo/

Chris also said the surface cleaner was equipped with 2 1504 tips for roof cleaning.

That would make a nice video...clean the gutters out, SoftWash one side of the roof and rinse the other half of the roof with the Roof Sham sprinkle disc, then look at the amount of roof granules in the gutters. Do it all in a 100% non-stop video including the state of the gutters before and after and how many granules are blasted off (aside from simply eroded), then rinse each side of the gutters down and measure the amount. Capture the noise and all. The PW running out of gas and getting refilled would be an added bonus for burning fossil fuels and have a noise decibel meter to record the noise level of each. Upload the video to Dropbox and share with every SW professional available. I'm not saying any of this out of anger or ill feelings towards Sandy or the Roof Sham people. I feel everybody has the right to earn money as they see fit and I honestly wish them the best success, however I'm not too keen on them damaging roof after roof after roof for home owners and not being held responsible for the damage they are doing to their roofs. I'm also not keen on the twisted partial truths about SoftWashing and Bleach.

I was actually talking to Sandy about starting a Roof Sham company myself very shortly before I found this forum (I'm so thankful I found this forum in time!!!) Sandy and I traded a few phone calls and e-mails, and since I never get rid of old e-mails, I have some nice info I can toss in as a once prospective customer including a 12 page PDF listing the equipment they use (just not listing the PSI or GPM). Sandy was all on board but when I asked her about any kind of "formal" training for the Roof Sham company, I did not get a reply. How can one become as they called it, a "skilled technician" without some kind of formal training? I'm guessing I was reading these forums as I was talking to Sandy because I told her I wanted to do a side by side roof cleaning test using SH on one side and their product on the other side and asked if I could purchase 1 gallon of their cleaning solution, or even a quote and do a side by side test. I was looking at purchasing the franchise for Gloucester, VA, Richmond, VA and surrounding territories, but after those two questions all the sudden she said:

"Hi Troy,

Yesterday afternoon, a large Roofing & Home Improvement company in Richmond that I have talked to several times over the past few months called me and officially signed up for that territory. They will begin offering Roof Shampoo® services in the Richmond and surrounding area in the Spring.

I wish you the very best with whatever roof cleaning method you decide on. There are certainly plenty of dirty roofs out there that need to be cleaned.

Best regards,

Sandy"

I congratulated Sandy saying:
"That’s great Sandy! Congratulations on the expansion! I still have Gloucester and possibly other areas if my business does well. I would still like to pursue this, and like the company that bought the Richmond area taking several months to take the leap, I’ll probably be doing the exact same thing. So I’d really appreciate it if you could take the time to address the other questions in my previous e-mail." Sandy never responded to me after this.


I found this really absurdly funny comment on the Roof Sham website. I guess they "hope" people read over it before they realize that the ARMA actually recommends using bleach?

- If they tell you that they follow the shingle manufacturers (ARMA) recommendations, they are using bleach. (my car manufacturer recommends for me to use 87 octane petroleum/gasoline in my car, so following their logic I guess I should use something else like maybe water? Water would work great, no actually it honestly would if you separate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atoms - the hydrogen burns great!)

- Here's another - "Sprinkle-Disc Rinser - Our ultra-light rinser was engineered specifically for use on shingles. It delivers a gentle water rinse similar to rain and is safe for all shingle roofs." Similar to rain??? I think they left out the part about the hurricane driving the rain?

Their "Ultra-light rinser/sprinkle-disc" connects to a Karcher 13 HP direct drive pressure washer. I don't know the PSI, but when I asked Sandy if I could use my personal pressure washer she said it had to put out a minimum of 4 GPM. You guys that do pressure washing could probably tell me more about what kind of PSI that type of PW would put out.

I had two 13hp Karchers. They were direct drive "compact" skids, and were 3200psi.