The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest concrete cleaner

anyone got one that they think works well?

Thanks,

Keith

You need to be more specific. If you are trying to clean it to apply a coating you need muriatic acid. It will etch the surface and remove stains in the process. If you are trying to clean up oil spills, use something like Simple Green and a mop.

watch the acid 50 50 water acid then apply commercial sealer after it has dried

thanks-Just trying to tidy up my sloppiness..oil stains etc..

Keith

Simple Green, Tide, 717J, SC2000, etc.

I used dish soap,pressure washer,followed up with bleach,pressure washer again.turned out nice!

Castrol Super Clean, much better than Simple Green. The Purple Power that they have at 'Zone and TSC works very well, too. The trick is to soak the floor, preferrably using the cleaner straight on bad spots, then scrub with a stiff bristled broom, then either mop or rinse the floor.

Cat litter works well and doesn't cost much or need to be scrubbed. Just pour it on and wait a few days. Lifts old and new oil.

for regular use to get up motor oil and such I usually buy the 40lb bag of "oil dry". Sprinkle it on the oil and let it soak it up. Then I will pour out some and rub it in real good with my foot and the floor will come clean. Once I did that the spots were usually cleaner than the rest of the floor
So, depends on the job. Soak up oil, get up spots or as Charlie says muriatic acid if cleaning to paint. Take you choice:)

Now I have a painted floor and just wipe it up!

Oak ashes from a wood stove will remove stuburn oil stains from concrete. I think the lie in the ashes does the job.

Whatever you do DO NOT mix bleach and acid,the results will kill you.

For oil, use Dawn dish washing liquid with water... about an inch of Dawn in the bottom of a 1 litre pop bottle will be plenty... just shoot the soapy water solution directly onto the oily patch and leave it to sit... the oil lifts right out and floats to the surface...

I find that "blue" Dawn works best and am constantly amazed at how well it works on anything greasy or oily... one of the few products on the market that does what it says it does!

~Trev

after ya get it cleaned up ...rustoleums garage floor coating is nice stuff for the cost ..it is like no other paint ..it is a 2 part epoxy system ..it holds up darn well to most everything other than draggin stuff across it like a rear end it will scratch or peel with enough weight being drug across it...but it holds up well an the best part is you can just MOP the floor ..with some degreaser added an it looks new.

Sears sell the same floor coating branded as Weather Beater, usually about $15 cheaper, but with less color choices (2) and no clearcoat available. I used that on my floor, and am very happy with how it cleans up.

Since I'm so cheap I didn't use the two part expoxy but did use the Epoxy that is "one step". It has held up nice for the money and like radial says it will "scratch" up and it will also peel up from "hot tires" if you do not let it cure like its suppose to. I like being able to spray some purple power or simple green on the floor, take a broom and swisk it around some and then mop it up. Man it looks good and after that who needs a creeper!!! Just roll on the floor:)

I used the U-Coat-It system in my new shop. So far, so good. Just don't drop a vise on it.

Well, supose I arta throw in my fellings on painting a concrete floor after it's cleaned up. I worked at a Nuclear Accelerator for 27years, the worlds biggest in fact during it’s day and the DOE always approved lots of money to keep the laboratory’s looking squeaky clean, after all, this was their jewel to demonstrate to the rest of the world how far advanced our research programs were. Sorry to say that since the Red team has been in office our research programs in this country have been relegated to the scrap heap!
That said and back to the floors, most of our labs at one time or another had the floors ground to level them and then an Industrial Epoxy Floor covering applied. They looked like glass, at least at first they did. In the areas where we actually did the work it took about a year before metal casters, dropping or dragging heavy objects had the epoxy all cracked and lifting. It reminded me of how a map of the canals on Mars look through a telescope.

I painted the garage floor at my old house with a plain old floor enamel after cleaning with Muriatic acid and it held up pretty well till I started building and restoring stuff. Then when I moved to the new house and put up the 40’x 45’ barn out back I bit the bullet and again etched the concrete with Muriatic pressure washed it, let it dry all through July and put three coats of light gray Sherwin Williams 2part epoxy on it. It looked like glass, at least at first! Once the steel wheels on the cherry picker and engine stand and welding machines roll over it, and ya strip ‘n’ paint a bunch of stuff and, well, just generally do some work in the area I now feel that the money would have been better spent else where. A nice clear sealer would have looked a lot better and been just as easy to clean up.
Now if your gonna just use the garage to store your trailer queen and mama car then that nice shinny epoxy floor will look nice, just like the Model Auto Shop on TV.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

To back up munk's statement, Bleach and Acidic cleaners:
http://www.chemistryquestion.com/English/Questions/ChemistryInDailyLife/3c_bleach_cleaner.html

We use a product from Sherwin Williams called "Seal Crete" at work on the warehouse floors and it takes a beating with forklifts and machinery. It stays pretty clean and is easy to sweep but will scratch up dragging heavy items. Touch up is easy just clean and mop sealer on it
Dan

For Clean-up, Dawn dish soap or 409. For painting the floors, Sherwin Williams 2-part epoxy with a re-apply every 4 years or so to cover the areas where I burned thru with welding splatter, dropped a 5# fist maul or the wheel cam off the cherry picker because the axle nut came loose.

Word of caution, when carrying a transmission, dont step on the tranny fluid now on your nice glass smooth floor.

Scott

Scott is right about the 409. I keep a bottle of it on my work bench. It does a good job in many places.

Back in the day we used to mop the floors in our shops with a 50/50 mixture of linseed oil and kerosene. It gave them a nice sheen and kept dust down. Since it didn't sit on top of the floor like paint it never scratched, chipped or lifted. We just freshened it up about every 6 months.

Since we didn't do any mechanical work I can't say if it resisted grease or oil.

For the machinists in the crowd there is a "recipe" for this in your Machinery Handbook.

I'm a lookin' in my twentieth edition as we speak Woody. Never heard of that before but it sounds like the kind of finish that I might be interested in. The reputable finishers treat fresh concrete with a sealer similar to that, I was told it was Linseed oil based. I made sure that they sealed my basement floor when they poured it 25 years ago and it's still in nice shape. That keeps the concrete from continually shedding dust over the years.
Linseed oil usually takes quite a while to dry so the floor may be unusable for a week or so.

Page 2193 “Concrete shop floors,” Boiled linseed oil and Gasoline, apply several coats till the oil shows glossy on top.
Sounds like ya better have the number for the local fire department handy if your gonna use this formula!

Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Yea, it does say gasoline in mine too but (1) even WE weren't that stupid and (2) if you think I'm even going to hint that someone mop their floor with gasoline you got another think coming.

Hold the fire department and just call the coroner.

Oh, and hold the shine... just get a semi-gloss sheen on Friday and you'll be good to go on Monday.

I clean my concrete with plain cold water! Of course I spray it through my 3500# pressure washer. You even have to be careful not to clean off the cement from the aggregate with that powerful pressure washer.