Best Way To Clean Aluminum Siding For Painting

There are many ways to make homemade aluminum siding cleaner from scrubbing with cream of tartar to lemons.

Best way to clean aluminum siding for painting.

Scrubbing with a sponge using a pressure washer or a random orbit sander. Use the directions on the tsp package to mix the cleaner correctly. For any of these cleaning solutions fill a bucket with water from your garden hose. There s still more preparation to address before painting aluminum siding.

It s best to use a power washer angling the spray in the direction rain would hit the house as washing from the bottom up can cause unnecessary damage to the siding. Or you could wash it by hand with tsp or a similar product available at home centers and paint stores and rinse it thoroughly. If you choose to use any chemicals complete a final rinse to remove remaining materials because residual chemicals can be damaging to your painting process. Wear gloves then mix in a bucket a cleaning solution of one cup chlorine bleach one cup tsp and one gallon of water.

As long as the siding is clean you won t need to use a primer unless raw metal is exposed. Scrub with a sponge soak abrasive sponge in cleaning solution and scrub siding clean. There are three ways to clean the siding. You can add a cup of chlorine bleach to the mixture if your siding also has mildew on it.

You need to scrape off peeling and flaking paint and then chisel out any old caulk lines and apply new ones. You can use a cleaner specially designed for aluminum siding but a mixture of trisodium phosphate tsp and water works just as well.