Paul Watts - Let’s Clean Metal Without Voiding Your Customers’ Warranty - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Paul Watts of Watts Removal Products. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Intro: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Metal Cast from Metal Coffee Shop. I'm your host, Karen Edwards. Today we're going to be talking with Paul Watts from Watts Removal Products to talk about how you can clean metal without voiding your customer's warranty. Paul, welcome.

Paul Watts: Great, and thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.

Karen Edwards: This is going to be a great conversation. I would just like you to introduce yourselves to our listeners and tell us a little bit about you.

Paul Watts: My name is Paul Watts. I own and operate Watts Removal Products. We manufacture basically a cleaning product that can help from anything from overspray on a metal roof to chalking, oxidation, bio-growth. And these specialty products have been approved by Sherwin through their laboratory testing of 2,500 hours and put on a global specification to clean anything off a metal roof. If it's a boot mark, if it's a stuff mark, if it's adhesive like the strippable that contractors are trying to get off, we can help with that.

Karen Edwards: Wow. You and I have talked before and I think you have a really unique history and background. Tell us that story and how Watts Removal Products came to be.

Paul Watts: Probably about in 2008, I started my own graffiti removal company in 2008. I was working for the City of Sacramento as a painter at the time and just felt like I didn't fit the city mold. I took everything, rolled the dice, started my own graffiti removal company and after a couple of years, started actually contracting with cities and agencies down there. We grew over the course of 2008, which a lot of businesses did not. We grew pretty good. We had a fortunate opportunity to be on Shark Tank on ABC the first year when Shark Tank was out. I was on Shark Tank the first year there. Can't believe it's still going. That's been quite a while.

And then just kept building the business. I grew up in Oregon, Talent, Oregon, close by Ashland. I came back up to Portland Oregon to run one of my satellite offices up here for graffiti removal.

I actually run two businesses. One is Graffiti Removal Services, we're the city contractor, the largest graffiti removal contractor west of the Mississippi. And then we manufacture and make our own graffiti removal products, cleaners, degreasers. We now have a pigment enhancer that just came on board. We have a rust remover that came on board, stain remover. Some pretty amazing things. I knew Mark McDonald from CrossFit, him and I CrossFit together and met him one day at the box and we were talking. I knew he worked for Sherwin, and I said, "Hey, I got this great product. I think it'd be really fun to introduce you to some of your people." And I didn't really understand the inner workings of Sherwin. I knew there's different divisions, but talking about somebody blowing somebody off, boy, let me tell you, even though we were friends in there, whatever, he got this small little company I work for Sherwin, don't worry about it.

I'm like, "Okay, that's cool. We'll go out to lunch sometime." About six months later, he went to a big trade show and I guess one of his largest customers came up to him and said, "Look, you're going to lose my account. You're going to lose all my metal if you don't figure out an anti-graffiti system." Because a lot of cities like LA, you build a new building, you got to have an anti-graffiti coating or system up 10 feet around the building everywhere. On the show floor, I still remember the day, Mark McDonald calls me in a panic going, "Hey Paul, you're now my new best friend. Let's go out to lunch."

Came into the shop one day, we went out to lunch, drove his company car like everybody does, pulled this company car in and I took red oil-based spray can and rattle can and tagged the whole front of his car. He was freaking out. Let me tell you, at that point, he was going to try to figure out how to get it off. Said, "Don't worry about it. Let's go out." It was during the summer, let's just go out, just do some removals, let that sit for three or four hours and half a day and let it cure up and get really nice and hard. And he was really freaking out. Came back, I took it off. Sherwin-Williams had been in an R&D program for probably two years now and hadn't figured out an anti-graffiti coating post paint.

I said, "All you're missing is a good cleaner. Your coatings, the way you manufacture them, the way you make them, the incredible amount of chemistry that's gone into them, your panel's already graffiti resistant. You just don't have the right product." Stopped them dead in their tracks. Cancel the R&D program, shut that down. I sent them product, they tested it, wrote it off, tested it, a bunch of 20 other products, just not mine and said, "Okay, we're writing this into a specification. It's a global specification." If you use anything besides water, usually on a roof, if you use QFOP or acetone or thinner, it'll avoid that panel or that whole roof.

Karen Edwards: Wow.

Paul Watts: You have to be really, really careful what you do.

Karen Edwards: And how did you figure it out?

Paul Watts: Well, I'm not a chemist by trade. I'm a journeyman painter by trade, but I knew a gentleman that had the product overseas and I was able to work with him and come up with an understanding of how we're going to make the product. And every year we come out with new products and new lines of cleaning and things like that. And we just hit the road running and started developing new products and working with the lab there. It's been really good, so we've had a really good success rate with contractors calling in, giving them advice. Sherwin-Williams is an expert in some things, but they're not an expert in removals, so they just push them to me. I service their customers, take care of their customers. I had a job in Salt Lake City for Carlisle. Went out there and they had 700 panels that they couldn't take the strippable film off of. It's crazy.

Karen Edwards: Wow.

Paul Watts: It was a lot. Went out there, showed them how to do it. It turned out really well for taking the strippable off. They have some other things on the back end that they were working out, but wherever I needed to go, whoever I needed to talk to support the Sherwin-Williams customer I do.

Karen Edwards: What are some of the reasons that someone might need to keep your cleaner in their arsenal when they're installing a metal roof? You mentioned a scuff mark, or what are some common things?

Paul Watts: It's really for every contractor that's putting on a roof. I know we're talking about metal here, but when a contractor gets up on the roof and he's wearing the wrong shoes or there's some not really, really thick, but some thin, maybe silicone caulking that shouldn't be in a spot where it needs to be or there's overspray, the roofer comes in, sprays the gutters and catches a gust of wind and it lands up on the roof and then you can see the whole overspray on the roof.

If you go to either my website or Sherwin's website, there is a video that we just made in collaboration with Sherwin-Williams for all our collateral. And it's a contractor kit, it's a contractor mitigation kit and that mitigation kit has the product in it you need to mitigate any problem that's on site, fix it, remove it, as long as it's small enough before the homeowner or the property owner or the GC, the project even ever sees it, so if he didn't see it didn't happen. If we can clean it, it's good to go. As long as it's a mark, which if it's a mark on a surface, we can remove it. If it's a scratch or a dent or something, obviously we can't. But if it's a mark, we can remove it.

Karen Edwards: Wow. That's cool that you put everything together in a kit. Tell me about that. What's included in that kit?

Paul Watts: The kit has two products that are specified for Sherwin-Williams. One is Clean Sweep. Clean Sweep is for your overspray, your paint, your adhesives, your really, really stubborn marks, something that you need to get off. Even we've had transfers of the strippable have ink on them, and then they stack them together and that ink will transfer to one panel, to one panel to one all the way through. Whatever issue that is, that Clean Sweep will take care of that. It's only designed to go in after a thin layer of paint or adhesive or sticky residue or boot mark and remove it. It's not meant to penetrate into the paint and remove the paint. It won't even damage the sheen on the paint, and I can put it out in a hundred degree weather and just pour it on the panels and nothing would happen.

It would just dry. Crossover is our cleaning and maintenance product. Bio growth, oxidation, restoring the life of the panels a little bit. I think a lot of times panels are put up, roofing is put up and the general maintenance behind them is maybe lost a little bit after the panels are up because they look so good, but we still have to remember, we still have to wash those panels. We still have to rinse them off. We should put something on there to keep the life of those panels going. Even though there's maybe a 30 year or 50 year on those, the pollution, the bio-growth, the acid rain, whatever's on that, you want to wash those off usually every year and Crossover will do that for you.

Karen Edwards: I am imagining coming back to clean that roof after a couple of years and get rid of some of that stuff. What size is that? Is it sprayed on? Is it wiped on? What does that look like for a contractor?

Paul Watts: If we're cleaning it, whether it be a roofing contractor and a roofing contractor, a lot of the times they'll actually come back for a maintenance, see if there's any screws loose, get up on the roof, see if the caulking is good and the joints are good, whether it's a roofer or a soft wash company, soft washing out there has become a big industry now, they can do what's called a chemical injection with the Crossover. Crossover is water-soluble, so is Clean Sweep, but we don't mix water with Clean Sweep. We use it straight. Crossover, we dilute that a little bit because we can put that on the roof and spread a larger area. Some contractors use an X-Jet, so then it mixes the chemical in the water and can spray it 40 feet if you wanted to.

Karen Edwards: You don't have to get up on the roof.

Paul Watts: No. You don't even have to get up on the roof a lot of the times. And that's one of the things we want to stress is it's a product. It's a chemical. Wear your PPEs, wear your proper gloves and glasses and everything and also tie off to the damn roof when you're up there, please. There's a lot of times roofers just want to get up. I understand they want to get the job done, but the product's a little slippery, so get up there and tie off. The soft wash industry now had some interesting equipment out there now. One is they call it AR-Forty-Five, which is fun and there's another called the Moflo, they'll probably shoot product and water at about a hundred PSI, but at a 10 to 13 gallon a minute rate, probably 70 feet.

Karen Edwards: Oh, my.

Paul Watts: Getting up on the roof nowadays, it's a liability. It's a lot more insurance. If you're just cleaning it, there's really no reason to get up on the roof as long as it's a general cleaning. I can have my guys from the ground shoot it from the ground, shoot the product up there, let it sit for a couple minutes and then just rinse it off.

Karen Edwards: Even on a two-story roof?

Paul Watts: Absolutely. You don't need to get up there and you don't need to worry with the crossover. You don't need to worry about overspray on the windows or the mullions or the wood on the windows or maybe some decking. There's some steps you have to go through. Water down the plants, even though all the products are biodegradable, nontoxic, DOC compliant.

Karen Edwards: I was going to ask you about the landscaping and the flowers and just to wet them first.

Paul Watts: Just wet them first. If you're in Texas, you're in Florida, you get some pretty hot days out there. So you want to make sure because it's chemical, just wet the plants down and then wet them down afterwards. But even with the roofs, when it's running down on the roof into the gutter and that maybe the downspout is running into the landscape or it's just let it run into the landscape. It biodegrades right there. There's not a lot of chemicals you can actually do that with.

You'd have to recapture it or recover it or make a big old brown spot in your yard, and that's not what we want. The overspray with the Crossover, don't worry about. With the Clean Sweep, do it sections that you need, because if you're removing paint like overspray, you have to remember it's somewhat of a paint remover, so don't overspray it on your deck because it's a little bit... Just be careful what you do. Don't X-Jet that, put it on with a pump sprayer or a bug sprayer and take it off. Crossover is going to be your best friend because it's really going to keep the life of your panels and your roof extended for a long period of time.

Karen Edwards: How often does a metal roof require a cleaning? It probably varies based on location, wouldn't it?

Paul Watts: Oh my gosh. If you were up here in Portland, Oregon, where I am right now and I know Heidi's in Bend, at least once a year. With the pine needles and the sap and the birds up there and the squirrels and everything up on that roof, do it once a year, at least. If you're in LA, if you're in Chicago, bigger cities, you're going to have a lot of pollution. The pollution, the smog, the dirt, the grime. Maybe in Nevada or Phoenix, you have a lot of dust out there. We don't call them mud rings out here, but in the Midwest they call them mud rings. It's a bore water that when the sprinklers go off, it creates a ring around the house with the water stain, we can address that too, very, very easily. That can go right into the landscape.

It always depends, but I would say maybe once a year, maybe in the drier climates, maybe once every two or something like that, but make sure you're using the right product and you're doing your research. It doesn't take very long to open Google and say, "How do you clean a metal roof?" And we pop right up, especially with Sherwin-Williams has done a great job and I just looked it up this morning. How do you clean a metal roof with moss removal? It's a big old long paragraph, and it leads you right to the product.

Karen Edwards: Metal siding is a thing now. It's growing in popularity, so I imagine it can be used on that, but can it be used on other types of roofs?

Paul Watts: Oh, absolutely.

Karen Edwards: Asphalt? Concrete? Clay?

Paul Watts: Yeah. We have amazing concrete cleaner that, let's say, gets overspray or paint spill on concrete. If you go to our website, we have maybe 10 videos that we've produced in collaboration with Sherwin-Williams on specific removals of strippable, overspray, graffiti and we've just gone right down the line. We have a metal maintenance kit that you can get from us and just try it, what it'll work on and what it won't work on. The last thing we want to do is damage anything. Damage control is really important. That's why we have PDS sheets. That's why we have videos. That's why we have QR codes on the product. Everybody knows how to use a QR code now, right? Just go to it. Video pops up. You don't even have to read. You don't even have to read it. It's really easy nowadays to learn how to use the product.

Karen Edwards: We were talking about what's in the kit, and we talked about the Clean Sweep and we talked about the Crossover. What else?

Paul Watts: And that kit has wipes in those kits. We have individual handy wipes that are in those kits. Those kits are really great for throwing them in your glove box or keeping them in your trucks. They're hermetically sealed. If you just have a small little spot again on our video, maybe a painter is inside and he walks through paint and he tracks it all the way across the hardwood floors.

I know it happens. It totally happens. Or adhesive on some decking or something. But the hardwood floors, take one of those wipes, pop it open. It'll stay wet forever in that pouch once it's not unsealed, and just take that little wipe, take off those little boot marks and throw the wipe away and it's really, really easy. That kit also has gloves and glasses and everything else you need in there too. I know the contractors probably won't wear them, but they should. And then they'll have that little kit and they can just keep it in the truck. The contractor kit has the brick cleaner in it. The metal maintenance kit does not, because that's not specified for Sherwin-Williams, but the contractor kit has all the products you would need to fix running over a paint can in the driveway. In one of our videos, we put a spray can underneath my truck tire in the video and we just ran it over in a friend of mine's brand new house, brand new driveway. Big old paint can just splattered everywhere.

Karen Edwards: Oh my gosh. I'd be scared to death.

Paul Watts: That's real life. Something's going to happen. You're going to back up. You're going to knock over a paint can. It's going to be a big old spill. You can mop most of it up, but a lot of times it gets into the little nooks and crannies, but you have to be able to get it out. And that's what this contractor kit's for. Contractor kits really good.

Karen Edwards: I see. In different social media groups, sometimes contractors will be like, "I spilled this," or, "I stepped into this. What do I do to clean it up?" It sounds like this is what you do, right?

Paul Watts: We're always the problem solver. Yes. Everybody comes to us for problems, which is great. We want to be known for... It's more reactive, our business with products, unfortunately. But being proactive is stabbing the kit in your truck.

The contractor kit is in a five gallon bucket. Just put a lid on it and keep it in your truck. I don't care if it rains. It's fine. The metal maintenance kit is in a cardboard kit because it's meant as a sample, but the contractor kit's great. Keep your dirty towels in there, rags or things like that. And that has a Crossover in it too. Let's say they're cleaning bio growth or algae on a roof and they want to clean it, the Crossover has SH, which is bleached in it because it's a cleaning element. They can put that on that roof and remove the moss, remove the algae.

I think it's really sticky when soft washers go out and they talk about killing moss, killing algae, all these things. But we have to remember that the bleach that's in Crossover will do that. We just don't say it does that because it's not specified by the EPA to do that. It has bleach in it. You'll have a little bleachy smell. It's funny, I'm working with a lab right now on a masking agent for that bleach. Bubble gum or hot butter popcorn or something like that so it doesn't smell like a swimming pool when you're doing it. We're working on that right now.

Karen Edwards: Awesome. Looking forward to seeing that when it comes out. For everybody listening that now is like, "Man, I need this in my life," how do they get it?

Paul Watts: They just go directly to our website, or the best thing that's happened within a couple months is Sherwin-Williams now can order it for you directly from their stores. Don't have to order from us. In fact, don't order it from us. Go to the stores. It's just easier. You're in your hometown.

You probably have a relationship with Sherwin in your hometown, especially the industrial, commercial, industrial stores for Sherwin-Williams that specialize in the epoxy floor coatings. And we just did a trade show here in Portland at their industrial location, showing them the product and how it works and everything. And they were amazed. But it's available through local Sherwin-Williams, neighborhood store commercial. We're getting a lot of calls for now for marine and automotive, because we can help some of those boat stains on some of those boats or a car runs over tar in a driveway or on a street and gets tar flipped up on the car. We can help with that.

Karen Edwards: Who hasn't had that, right?

Paul Watts: Yes, exactly right. Or who hasn't gone into a shopping center and hit one of those Ballards and you get a paint transfer, but it looks like a scratch on your car. The Clean Sweep wipe all day long will take that paint transfer out without damaging your car. Sherwin-Williams has skew numbers. You can get the kits. You can get Crossover, Clean Sweep, Clean Sweep wipes through your local Sherwin-Williams. If they can't find it in their system because it's fairly new, just give me a holler or give me a shout. I'm the only one that has technical advice in the cities for wash removals.

Karen Edwards: Paul, thank you as always for being here and for sharing with us about this incredible solution that does not void warranties.

Paul Watts: It does not void warranties. Remember people. Yes, exactly. Everything else will. Don't do it.

Karen Edwards: Don't do it.

Paul Watts: Don't do it.

Outro: Lots of removal products all the way. Thank you all out there for listening to this episode of Metal Cast. Be sure to follow us on social media. We don't want you to miss a thing, and we hope that we see you on a future episode of Metal Cast. Thanks for listening.