Welcome Keith,

One of my favorite roofs I cleaned was a 12/12 pitch roof with no gutters and lots of valleys, and I believe I used a 3.5% to 4% mix. The roof looked like a "Burr Puzzle". I shocked some moss here and there that was growing directly in the drip line, but just mentioning the word bleach to moss will scare it white. I had no plant damage besides a few spots of shocked moss. I used no tarps or plastic, although I did give a good coating of plant wash at the end of the job. It was my highest single bill to date and I got a great 5 star review to go with it for the icing on the cake. This was only the 3rd or 4th roof I'd cleaned too. It was all spraying techniques I learned from AC Lockyer (forum moderator) and riding and assisting with a few jobs with Mark Fermoyle with 'Let Us Spray' to get my feet wet.  (Thank you gentlemen!)

The best advice anybody on this forum can give you is to get into one of AC's training camps.  

http://www.softwashsystems.com/academy/ (contact info at the bottom).

You'll find you can do pretty much anything with SoftWashing better, faster and with a longer lasting clean than pressure washing. For the cost of cleaning a couple of roofs you can save yourself years on the learning curve that you're going through now, and learn little 'got ya's" that can cost you money replacing plants, negative reviews and customers down the road. The training will pay for itself in a few jobs and the knowledge you gain will give you a huge step up over your competition. I may not be the best salesman out there, but I still close a high percentage of my quotes at a higher bid than my competition based on the ability to explain what is going on every step of the way with any surface I clean. That knowledge is power and I talk circles around most of my competition.  You'll learn the proper chemicals to use, what percentage mix to use on each type of surface, which surfaces you can shoot straight and which need kid gloves and so on.

One thing you can do is thoroughly water the plants. If you are working on a project that concerns you, possibly have the home owner do this watering application the night before, morning of and the evening after you do the job if you are afraid you are getting much runoff. AC can teach you would to avoid a great deal of runoff with no need to flood the surface. Have your ground person keep any mix off of the plants. Water is cheap, don't be afraid to use plenty of it. :0) I'm not sure if you know this, but the bleach isn't the problem that kills the plants, it is the salt in the bleach that causes the most harm. To offset this obstacle until you have better spraying technique and training, calcium hypochlorite or CH is great, so long as you keep everything rinsed before, during and after the cleaning. If not, you will find little white calcium deposits and once they dry, they are not as easy to remove. If you don't have a good ground person this can be more detrimental than using SH. Once your spraying technique is better you'll be able to treat the majority of the roof without getting any runoff until the last several rows of shingles.

Regarding Plant Wash (PW), if you go to the main forum page there are sections grouped off. The second section has a list of the SoftWash Systems products. Look under the Plant Wash thread and there is an inline hose sprayer attachment you can buy to apply the PW. I wouldn't do this with a pump up sprayer - it would take too long. If your doing a single batch tank mix and your tank is empty at the end of the job, you can mix the PW in your tank at the normal 1 ounce per gallon and spray through your application wand. This also neutralized your pump, hose and wand.

Welcome to the Revolution!