Concrete surface cleaning

What gets into concrete in Arizona

Concrete looks solid, but it is full of tiny pores, and whatever lands on it gets pulled into them. That is why a slab stains rather than only getting dirty, and why the same stain looks different a year later. What comes out, and how much of it, depends on what the stain is and how long it has been there.

Oil and other car fluids are the stains most people call about. A fresh drip sits near the surface. An old one has had summers of heat to thin it and draw it deeper into the slab, and it spreads into a dark patch wider than the drip that made it. Tire marks are rubber left on the surface, and on a driveway that bakes all afternoon, hot tires leave more of it.

Water leaves its own marks. Sprinklers that hit the same strip of driveway every morning leave rust colored stains and a hard water film, and planters leave rings where water sat under them for years. Monsoon storms carry dust into the grain of the slab and leave it there when the water dries. Mineral bloom, the white powder or crust on a patio edge or a garage floor, is salt from inside the concrete, carried up by water and left behind when it evaporates.

What cleaning takes off

• Oil, transmission fluid and other drips under where cars park, which soak in and spread wider than the drip that made them.
• Tire marks on driveways and garage floors, which build up where the car turns in and stops.
• Dirt and dust worked into the grain of the slab, which is what makes a light slab look gray.
• Rust stains from sprinklers, patio furniture and planters, which set into the surface and do not wash off with water.
• Mineral bloom, the white crust that comes up out of the concrete itself.

Cleaning takes off what is on and in the surface. It does not change a slab that is worn, pitted or cracked, and a stain that has gone deep into the concrete can come out lighter rather than gone. Jayson will tell you at the quote visit which of your stains are which.

Cleaning on its own, and before a coating

Cleaning is its own job, sold without a coating. It is also different from what happens at the start of a coating job. When we coat a floor, we blow the slab off and grind the top of the concrete away with a diamond grinder, and the grind takes what is sitting on the surface with it. So a slab getting a coating does not need a cleaning first. That work is part of the first day of the two day install, the same prep every garage floor coating starts with.

If you are not sure whether your slab needs a clean or a coating, ask at the quote visit. A clean slab is still bare concrete, and it takes on oil and dust again from the day the job is done. A coating seals the top, so spills sit on it instead of soaking in. What we put in writing about a coated floor is the written warranty. A driveway cleaned now and coated later, or a garage floor coated and the driveway cleaned, can go on the same quote, like everything else we do.

Commercial concrete cleaning

We clean concrete at commercial properties too: parking lots and the floors inside buildings. The stains are the ones a home gets, with more of them. A lot collects oil drips in every stall and tire marks at every turn, and the concrete by a loading door or a dumpster pad takes grease and rust that a driveway never sees. A floor inside a building carries whatever the work there puts on it.

A commercial job is quoted the same way as a home. Jayson comes out, looks at the lot or the floor and what is on it, and gives you the price in person. Tell him when the lot or the floor can be closed, since nobody can park or walk on concrete while it is being cleaned.

Our coating work is residential only, so at a commercial property we clean the concrete and do not coat it.