Going in the opposite direction where moisture is more prevalent, and
especially on sandy soils, cleaning walls, wood, skeletal materials and
other not particularly delicate materials, the use of a hand-held
sprayer at the fine end or a garden hose and pump at the other does a
wonderful job of removing dirt, etc. from these surfaces. Totally off
the scale, fire hose nozzles work in very particular circumstances.

Lefty Gregory pioneered the use of the fine spray hand-held garden
sprayer type on skeleton excavation on sandy soils. The detail
available for visual examination and photographic recordation was
extraordinary.

In wet environments, particularly on canal boats, a garden hose with
spray nozzle on a small pump cleans the viscous mud off the wood and
also provides wonderful detail for visual examination and photographic
recordation in situ.

On walls, cleaning the tops and side surfaces with the garden hose
spray nozzle works wonderfully. The drawbacks are that the site soils
have to be freshly scraped for photography after the water has either
percolated or been manually removed. A Wet-Vac works well for that too.

Obviously, too enthusiastic spraying displaces items and delicate items
are going to have to have judgments made as to whether they are
amenable.

Lyle Browning