Driveways & concrete
The single most common call we get, and the one people are most surprised by.
What actually comes off
Almost every driveway job starts with somebody apologizing for the color of their concrete. They have looked at it for years and assumed the color is gone. It usually is not. What reads as a permanent gray stain is nearly always buildup sitting on top of the slab, and it lifts in a single pass.
The three things we take off most often are Georgia red clay, algae, and organic streaking from whatever is growing above the slab.
- Red clay washed down from beds and worked into the pores
- Green and black algae on shaded concrete
- Rust from irrigation, fertilizer and metal furniture
- Oil and transmission drips in the parking area
- Leaf and tannin staining under trees
- Black streaking along low edges where water stands
Why we use a surface cleaner instead of a wand
A pressure wand concentrates all the force into a narrow fan. Run that across concrete and you get clean stripes with ridges between them, which is the zebra striping you see on driveways done in a hurry. Worse, on older or softer concrete that same force erodes the cream layer on top and leaves the aggregate exposed. That damage does not come back.
A surface cleaner spreads the same pressure across a spinning bar inside a housing, so the slab cleans evenly and the water stays down instead of spraying across the siding and the cars. It is slower to set up and faster to finish, and it is the difference between concrete that looks cleaned and concrete that looks striped.
What we will tell you up front
Some things do not come off, and we would rather say so before we take your money. Deep oil that has soaked into old porous concrete can lighten substantially without disappearing. Rust from a fertilizer spill may need a separate treatment. Concrete that has already been etched by a previous contractor cannot be un-etched by us or by anyone else.
What we will not do is take the job, run the machine, and hand you a surprise at the end. If we think a surface is going to disappoint you, you hear it while you still have the choice.
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