I'm Mike Sadowski, with Chet's Cleaning,
and we are out of Madison Heights, Michigan,
and we clean just about everything
except for walls and windows.
Today we're going to be cleaning a dirty boat cover.
The simple reason for the boat cover
is just to keep the inside of the boat
not looking like the cover did.
So that way, the cover takes the brunt of the elements
rather than the boat.
The material of the boat cover is a Sunbrella material.
It's a solution-dyed acrylic,
so it has great stain-resist properties
and it's pretty friendly for the sun,
which is how it can survive out there.
This one was primarily animal issues flying overhead
and some mold that was built up from use.
I would guess it was probably about five years
out in the elements.
The chemicals that we use, it's called DOT.
There's dichlor granules in there, which is a chlorine,
and then there is a surfactant,
so a detergent in there, which allows us
to get the soil off along with the mold and mildew.
DOT is very chemical-friendly, in terms of
it's not going to burn my skin at all.
It's virtually odorless.
We use dwell time to allow the solution
to break down any of the soils, mold,
mildew that's in there.
Needs at least a half an hour,
but I can let it sit overnight at times.
Once that's had time to do what it needs to do,
we go ahead and use agitation.
So a scrub brush, either by hand or mechanical.
The yellow machine, it's called a Cimex.
It's an orbital scrubber,
so the scrub pads at the bottom
are just going in a circular motion
while the head turns in a different direction.
What it's doing is pulling apart the fibers slightly,
the way they're woven, and it allows
the soil and embedded mold and mildew
to release a little bit easier
rather than still being tightly woven with the fibers.
The high-pressure water is what really breaks apart
everything that's down in there.
It's a mild detergent that we use in rug washing
that is going through the power-washing gun.
So, it's not just water, it's soap and water
coming out at the same time.
I'm using the broom to push water off of the boat cover.
A lot of times, whether it's the boat cover or rugs,
it's very hard to see staining that's remaining
when the water's puddled on there,
so I'm just pushing it off,
so that way I'm able to see what's going on
and make sure that I didn't miss any areas
while I was power washing.
The bath that it goes into,
I was just using it to help rinse out
all of the detergent and the products
that I had put onto the boat cover,
because whatever I use I want to make sure I get off.
I put it through our rinse wringer.
So that was just squeegeeing out some of the water
and hitting it with another high-pressure system
to get another power-washing job going through,
and making sure I was getting it as clean as possible.
From there, we went ahead and hung it and dried it.
With boat covers, I typically don't get them
when they look clean, where rugs and upholstery,
I would tell you it should be cleaned regularly
no matter what the appearance.
Boat covers I go a little bit different.
They are cleaned as needed.
If it gets real bad and you want it clean,
that would be the time. If it's a generic cover,
it might not even be worth cleaning.
You just let it live its life and replace it.
Other times they might outweigh the benefit
of trying to find material and get a new one made,
and just have it cleaned up, buy them a few more years.
The biggest thing that I've ran into,
whether it's from sun damage or aggressive cleaning,
you actually cause that Sunbrella
to not become as repellent.
And Sunbrella does sell a product to reapply
that repellency, or the protectant, to it.
So, depending on the scenario,
people want to look to get that done also
to make sure it stays in good shape.