Cleaning Vinyl Sidings

You may feel that cleaning vinyl siding is an easy task, but it is much more difficult, especially if you do not have the right equipment to do the cleaning. The equipment itself costs a lot of money and purchasing them is not everybody’s cup of tea. Even then, trying to do this job yourself is fraught with a lot of risk and can cost you a lot of money in terms of repairs if anything goes wrong.

You would do well to avoid making the following mistakes when attempting to clean your vinyl sidings:

a) Do not try to remove the coating that has been put on the vinyl siding. This powdery coating is to prevent oxidation and removing them will cause discoloration and give a pretty bad appearance.

b) Do not try to clean it top down as that can lead to ungainly streaking of the siding

c) If you can manage it, try using a tool like the X-Jet, which can do the job in quick time.

d) If you are using a power washer, make sure that at least 4 to 5 gallons of water is used per minute at a pressure that is less than 1000 PSI. Using less water will mean that you will have to spend more time to do the cleaning.

e) Do not use chemicals that are not meant to clean vinyl sidings as they can damage the siding.

f) Do not attempt to push in more water from behind the vinyl siding, as you will not be able to dry them fully and that can lead to the accumulation of mildew.

g) Do not manually attempt to inject the cleaning chemical. You must use chemical injectors to do this so that the right amount of soap and water make their way into the siding. Make sure that you use low pressure to rinse excess soap from the vinyl sidings.

Wood Sidings – Ever Popular

Many materials have been tried as far as home sidings go such as vinyl, aluminum, brick but one material that has stood the test of time in terms of looks and durability is the exterior siding made out of wood.
Wood sidings are popular due to their availability is many designs and irrespective of whether it is bevel, groove, channel, tongue or even wavy edge, this material has tremendous lasting ability and can be customized to suit any requirement.
Some of the popular wood sidings are:

1. The Wavy Edge Bevel

Though the trend is to go for geometric patterns and twisted structures, the unique elegance of natural curves and straight lines cannot be beaten and you can get all those in your exterior wood siding in the wavy edge bevel type.

2. The Board & Batten sidings

Board and Batten sidings are manufactured by making use of different sized wood sidings to create a unique design that is aesthetic and durable. They are made out of either three inch or ten inch side boards and lend them selves to a lot of customization. The dimensions are not a restriction and the battens ensure that they do an effective job of keeping the joints sealed and protected from rain water.

3. Bevel sidings

These kind of sidings are very attractive to look at due to the three dimensional effect that they are lent by making a cut at a specific angle and stacking up two or more such material on top of each other. The bevel siding is generally placed in a vertical manner to give it a very different look.

Usually it is red cedar that is used when making this kind of a siding and that is due to the many knots that this type of wood contains and is supposed to lend a very rustic feel and appearance to the external wood siding.