Keeping Up The Appearance Of Vinyl Siding
Cleaning vinyl siding can sometimes be the easiest way to improve the look of your home. I know this from experience. One thing that happens over time is that grime and dirt build up on the vinyl siding. It happens gradually and without you even knowing it. You'll be amazed when you start cleaning vinyl siding how much dirt is on it.
My home is in a neighborhood that has quite a few trees and quite a bit of shade. We live within five miles of a major metropolitan airport so we have a lot of air traffic overhead and the planes are low in the air as they're either taking off or landing. What this means is that we have two problems with our siding, mildew and grime from plane exhaust.
The mildew is however the most visible and concerning problem. We've cleaned it with a power washer only to have it come back. Since it's only on the back of the home on one section of the vinyl siding we now clean it by hand once a year. We use oxygenated bleach and a scrub brush. We use oxygenated bleach because it will not damage the bushes around the house.
After we finished cleaning the mold off of the vinyl siding with the oxygenated bleach we proceeded to use the power washer on the rest of the siding. We use a vinyl cleaning product that has wax in it, which gives the siding a beautiful shine. When we saw the difference between the siding that was cleaned and not, we were amazed at how dirty the siding was.
One word of advice on the vinyl siding cleaning products that contain wax, the wax will of course get on your windows and will cause streaking and cloudiness. Make sure that you thoroughly rinse the windows off as soon as possible to help prevent this.
One time when cleaning vinyl siding properly is imperative is if you're considering painting vinyl siding. Experts agree that if you're considering painting vinyl siding that you actually use a scrub brush to clean the siding. This is important if you have a siding that has an imprinted wood grain finish. Not only will you need to get the mildew and grime off of the siding you'll also need to get any wax build up off in order to assure good paint adherence.
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