The prospect of cleaning Z 150 purlins with Scotch Brites and Jiff seemed overwhelming.
Then, during the week, I had the inspiration to hire a high pressure washer.
I chose a petrol powered 2000 psi model from Coates Midland.
I was able to pick it up on Friday afternoon and return it on Monday for a single day hire.
The people at Coates were very friendly and helpful.
Out on site I found the machine worked well.
It did not perform any outstanding magical tricks such as removing all stains but it was much less work than hand scrubbing and did a better job than I could by hand.
At around 4.30 pm I ran out of petrol.
I was heading out my driveway, to El Cabelo petrol station to refill my jerry can, when I ran in to my next door neighbour Ian.
While we were talking I heard a crashing, crunching sound and I realised that I had overloaded the cheap wooden horses with too many cleaned purlins.
After a bit of a chat I decided it was too late in the day now to do any further cleaning and that I needed to store away the pile of purlins that had collapsed on to the ground.
At this point Jim and Sandy dropped in for a visit as well.
I ended up packing up in the dark.
I took about 10 x 2 m pieces with me and will spend about an hour on Sunday afternoon giving these a cleanup.
Overall I am pretty happy about the condition of the purlins retrieved from storage.
There is some staining (which is neither here nor there) and some white surface oxide.
Next week I will apply some paint treatment - if any surface looks compromised in any way then I will paint it with zinc primer and finish it with a metalic top coat.
Sunday
It was a good thing that I did not attempt to obtain more petrol on Saturday and finish off the cleaning.
After seeing a movie in the morning, I picked up petrol, rolled the machine on to our home patio area and started cleaning.
This lot took me about 3 hours - more than I could have dealt with on Saturday.
Monday thru Friday
In the evenings I took the 30 blank right angle cleats I cut out several weeks ago and drilled, primed and painted them.
Also, during the day, during breaks from work, I primed and enamelled any white powdered or heavily stained sections of the 2 m purlins.
Some of these are only 1.2 mm thick so, if I have any time on Friday, I might cut them to exactly 1995 mm and tek screw them back to back in pairs. These ones I can use over the hallway.
