the people who book in a "restoration" clean have usually let the PVC really get manky and dis-coloured and WFP will NEVER clean the insides of the finials and inside the grooves. Even the long roof bars which have gone pretty dark do not come up very "white" with just WFP.
The first one I did, I turned up with my trusty WFP and expected miracles. 5 minutes into the job, starting at the top, I knew there was no way I could do this without getting up there with PVC restorer/cleaning cream and some serious elbow grease.
With some stupidly dangerous footwork and a lot of cursing under my breath, I managed to get the job done and it looked great but took me 5 hours.
I invested in conservatory cleaning advertising cards, an access ladder, a pump up sprayer, traffic film remover and always took my cheap electric pressure washer with me on all subsequent jobs.
Access ladder up, kneeling safely on a padded board right up there at the finials, a good spray of TFR all over the finials and glass/plastic panels - get down, leave TFR to eat up the mould and dirt etc while setting up the pressure washer - always told customer I would need access to electricity and never a problem.
Back up ladder onto kneeling pad, spray all PVC and watch it turn WHITE in front of my eyes like a knife through butter...if roof panels were covered in green mould/algae, I would get down leaving the TFR another couple of minutes while I quickly removed the kneeling pad off the top of the conservatory.
The rest of the ladder was like a big stand off then allowing me free cleaning access to the panels and PVC bars. I would pressure wash the panels and bars. Then I would apply cleaning cream to all roof bars and rub with cloths while wet. This would involve several ladder moves around conservatory to reach all areas.
Once all sprayed and cleaned down with PVC cream, I would set up WFP and pure water was and rinse all panels and bars and swill over the finials.
Roof done, I would hand clear/clean inside and outside of guttering as the first thing the customer will do once you have gone is look out a bedroom window to see the results. No matter how clean the roof, if the gutter is black and untouched, I felt I had wasted my time so I ensured this was cleaned as back to white as I could. This was actually pretty easy as I used a scouring sponge and cleaning cream on the inside of gutters and then rinsed out with customers garden hose...very quick and effective.
Same process on underside of gutters and all other areas of PVC...NO scourers on visible areas of PVC/Sills...just cream, cloth and elbow grease.
Once satisfied with clean, the whole lot was rinsed down and washed with pure water.
Then all dried with microfibre.
I worked on £40 an hour and the 5 hour job first done would have taken 3 hours using correct access and tools.
All good stuff in the early days but do it every day and it soon got a bit tedious for me!
Trying to do this with JUST WFP would be as ineffective as doing a builders clean with just WFP.
Lots and lots of conservatories out there in need of a full restorative clean and ONLY a correct conservatory access ladder will get you up there SAFELY in order to hand wash some of the roof UPVC.
For access, they are great once set up but I found them very ungainly in setting up and moving about.
If you have a medium sized van with roof rack, there is also problems with transporting the bits and pieces of the ladder.
There are 5 parts to the ladder...some of which can be left on the ladder to transport but securing it to the roof is a pain.
It used to be a pain for me to get ladder and parts in van, move to cleaning site and set up etc etc.
Then taking it down, restowing in van and restowing in shed at end of day...yawn!!
BUT...it was a good earner and the results you can achieve are superb. However, although I initially enjoyed the first few and the fact that I was in one place for 4-5 hours - I soon got bored and sold my ladder on Ebay a couple of months ago and am back to pruning my round and replacing lower paying customers with better paying ones.
It`s worth a try in Spring/summer and if it doesn`t work out, the resale value of the ladder is good - any loss is easily factored into the extra work you will get.