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No! That was the beauty of the cleanup.  Vinegar & Salt would take the green off the gutters if you used enough elbow grease.  At the end of the day you were tired.  If you remember this was a very tall 2 story 9,000 sq ft house.  You could not really clean the downspouts as the brown patina would come off very easily unlike the gutters.  The cleaning process left the gutters with a white film that was chalky looking.

We decided to try some furniture polish that I keep stocked on my roof cleaning trailer.  It contains a light oil.  We just rubbed it on with no scrubbing.  Our white cleaning towels turned green and the green oxidized stripes on the gutter turned dark brown.  Almost the same as the dark color of the patina of the copper gutter.  The light oil finish made the gutters really shine.  We finished the lower area of the house yesterday. 

Today we needed to clean the upstairs copper gutters to get rid of the green stripes.  The lower gutters still looked great.  I was concerned with how long that they would stay that way.  Would it disappear after the first rain? Therefore I decided to experiment on a little heavier oil that was still light.  I decided to use power steering fluid as it is colorless, odorless, & the viscosity that I was looking for.  We just kept the towel well oiled and just had to swipe the oily towel across the oxidized copper gutter once.  In hard to reach places we  took several white shop towels and Velcro taped them to the end of a telescoping window washing pole.  Then we poured power steering fluid over the towels till they were drenched.  Next we would adjust the length of the pole to what it took to clean the gutters and we would wipe the gutters with the wad of oily towels where you could not place a ladder.  That included vertical and horizontal directions.  Some times we would be at the top of our 32' ladders and have areas 20' horizontally away that needed to be cleaned.  Normally we hand wiped the gutters.  But due to the many gardens in the back yard, we had many areas where we could not hand wipe the cutters.  The telescoping wand sure was a life saver.  So were AC's ladder stabilizers and Werner leg length adjusters that we had mounter on either leg of our 32' ladder.

The customer is leaving town again tomorrow and will be back till next Thursday.  We could have finished cleaning the gutters today.  But went home early and left a little of the front to clean next Thursday.  I decided to go home early so that I could go to the Black Sabbath concert early.  They rocked Houston tonight as they begin their tour.  One of the best drum solos that I have ever heard.