Housecleaning for men - Air compressor!

[Bill]

Men dust no more! Don't vacuum, rather use the air compressor with the air blow tool...

Open a door and then a window. Then stick a box fan so it blows air out the window. Then use the compressor / air blow tool to blow all the dust off everything, then most of the dust goes out the window!

This works great for around a stereo / TV where it gets all that dust back behind the components. Also cleans off the remote controls and things like a phone.

(I just did some dry-walling and had dust everywhere and the compressor in the living room... which gave me the idea.)

[Steve B]

I have used either compressed air or an electric blower many times in my house after renovations. I have a large family room with a stamped concrete floor. It's time to move everything out, blow it out, blow it out again, mop very wetly, wet vac, mop very wetly, wet vac, mop last time with clear water, let air dry for two days, blow it out again, apply final sealer coat. Good for 3-5 years. About 275 sf.

Those silk plants, and complex fake plastic things clean very well with compressed air, also. Lots of things. Just have vent fans going, or you are only moving it around.

SteveB

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10

[Bob F]

I have an outside air hose by the back steps. A quick "scan" with the blaster nozzle gets all the crud out of the tread of my shoes before I go inside after gardening. I probably use more air on that than anything else. The 10 foot copper pipe, adjustable end nozzle gutter cleaner runs a close second.

[Robert Green]

What great ideas. I was looking for an excuse to buy an auto-retracting air hose to mount below the porch and now I have it. Tell me more about the air powered gutter cleaning wand. Home brew or COTS?

-- Bobby G.

[Tom Horne]

From the nurses lounge at the hospital that we transport most of our ambulance cases to. Read after the style of a Jeff Foxworthy "You might be a redneck if..." comedy routine. You might work in a hospital emergency department if you've ever had someone look you right in the eye and deny any knowledge of how some foreign object got into some orifice of their body.

-- Tom Horne

[Jim Elbrecht]

Thanks for the inspiration. That sounds a lot less wieldy than the cob job of leaf-blower, vac hose, and 2" PVC that I use to get up to my 20foot high gutters.

And it might even work a tad better on my maple & oak droppings.

Jim

[Steve B]

Why do women insist on using those mops and brushes that are about 8" wide? I like the Navy swabbie type mops, and the 24" wide soft bristle brooms to cover large areas of hard flooring. Gets it done quick, and does a good job. But women tend to like those toothbrush sized utensils.

She WAS impressed at the way compressed air cleans off the silk plants, and some of the statuary that has a lot of nooks and crannies. And I think she actually uses it when I'm not around, but she denies doing so. But I can tell by the way she coils the hose............. ;-)

Go figger.

Steve

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare.

[HeyBub]

Wait 'til she starts using your razor blades to sharpen her eyebrow pencils.

You'll know.

[Robert Green]

Thanks for the info! How do you keep from getting a face full of gutter muck? That's been the issue with the water driven method I occasionally use. Every once in a while, I get a backscatter of muck which is much better fertilizer than it is face cream.

I was almost going to get a IRobot gutter sweeper but it looked like more trouble than it was worth.

Is there any truly "no maintenance" gutter system out there? A long motorized auger running the length of the gutter might work. I know the screens don't work. Stuff catches on them and the water runs right over them.

-- Bobby G. (an On Topic thread! We're running almost 50% off topic these days. Where's our statistician? We need to know what the OT signal to noise ratio is)

[Robert Green]

Yes, I recall making a wand for the hose that was about 16' long and getting my first face full of muck. That puppy sure did kick. The problem seems to be that to make it rigid enough not to flex, you would have to make it too heavy to use. I was going to try finned tubing to see if that added enough rigidity to make it useful, but I never was able to find any. (This was in the dark, pre-Internet days of the early 80's.) Besides, the backslash ended my enthusiasm for power flushing the gutter.

-- Bobby G.

[Robert Green]

That's a pretty big "secret weapon" against muck kickbacks. I always get into trouble in the area around the gutter supports. Still, it's worth a try . . .

Sounds like it's worth a shot. I'll post if I decide to build my own air pressure wand. I wonder if there's some way to build a gutter "pig" like the ones they use in pipelines. Something that sits up there with a pull rope on each side that I can use to drag the assembly from side to side. It's hard to believe so little progress has been made in gutter cleaning since gutters were first implemented.

-- Bobby G.

[aemeijers]

When I hit the lotto and build my dream house- No Gutters! Big overhangs, yard sloped away from house, and something that won't form ruts at the drip lines. In the neighborhoods around my other house down in Lake Charles, no more than 1/3 of the houses even have gutters at all. And it rains a lot down there. The trees also drop leaves pretty much year around, in spurts. (Kinda like a shedding dog.) The gutterless houses generally have a skinny gravel-filled trench at drip line, or a row of thirsty-species bushes, sometimes in 1950s style long skinny planter boxes.

[krw]

This house doesn't have gutters (exposed, fake, rafter ends) and the trench at the drip line is a PITA (as is the mud sprayed back on the brick). I'm adding pavers around the front and one side to deflect the rain. I'll eventually replace the mulch in the beds with rock and bury the pavers.