Best Cleaning Products

[Husker135]

The two car washes that I work at were not properly cleaned and maintained before the current owners bought the washes. I'm looking for a couple different cleaning products.

The first one would be a good brick cleaning and renewal product. The bricks in the self serve bays have built up years of soap scum that doesn't completely come off even using the in bay high pressure wands. The exterior bricks also have some minor soap scum, but the biggest issue with these is that they have become discolored over the years, is there a product out there that can renew the color in bricks?

The next product is one for cleaning our roll up doors in our automatic bays. We use XRS Extreme Roll-Up doors made by Airlift. These doors have four separate sections, 2 clear sections in the middle and a blue one on the top and bottom. These doors have built up a lot of scum over the years, and we haven't been able to get them completely clean. We bought a cleaning product from Airlift that was supposed to clean this scum off, but it didn't do that well.

I'm also looking for a good concrete cleaner, the bay floors in all our bays have some stains that don't come off with a high pressure rinse. There might be a couple stains that have some oil in them and others that are just heavy dirt and soap scum.

And finally, a good metal cleaner for our vacuums. The vacuums have lost a lot of their shine and look dirty, I've tried CLR stainless steel cleaner, but that didn't work the best.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[JamboWash]

For brick cleaning and the airlift doors I have used Nu wall from Acadian services it works like a charm ,

 

[rph9168]

You will need a strong acidic cleaner to do the job. If you use anything that contains hydrofluoric acid or ammonium biflouride or any other product that uses the hydrogen ion make you use protection gear. If your chemical supplier doesn't have one chem with a janitorial supply company. Strong bowl or tile cleaners and some descalers contain strong acids.

 

[DiamondWash]

Try AP Formulators Cleaners, I will never use NU Wall from Arcadian ever again I sent a 55 gal drum back because of reasons I cannot discuss on this forum.

http://www.apchemical.com/wallcleaner.html

 

[Husker135]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I do have one more thing to say about the bricks. I know that the previous owners had used some sort of acid to try to clean the bricks, but that they burnt the bricks quite a bit. Is there any way to repair acid burns on brick?

 

[Earl Weiss]

FWIW I though bricks were "Dirty". seems years of solutions and water had leached out the color so it was returning to a natural gray cement color. Bought a concrete stain product at home depot. Works great. Gets absorbed into the brink. Doesn't just coat the surface.

For inside the bays FRP is the way to go.

 

[Husker135]

FWIW I though bricks were "Dirty". seems years of solutions and water had leached out the color so it was returning to a natural gray cement color. Bought a concrete stain product at home depot. Works great. Gets absorbed into the brink. Doesn't just coat the surface.

For inside the bays FRP is the way to go.

That's sounds very similar to the issue we are having. I know that there is soap scum on the bricks that needs to come off. I found an acid that we have in storage and used a diluted solution of it, and that cleaned the soap scum off well.

The problem I'm having now is that when the previous owners cleaned the brick, the brick was burnt and has lost its color. We don't have a home depot in our town but we have a Menards, So I will check there. Thanks for the response!

 

[getnbusy]

It depends if the brick is slick finish or sand finish. The sand finish is more absorbent and stains worse. I have no experience with cleaning the slick finish.

The following method is like magic on a sand finish wall...

********Wear gloves, eye protection, and skin protection. Like all acids, this shistuff will burn you. *******

For the brick I use aluminum brightener made by purple power. You can get it at any NAPA or Oreilys auto parts. $11 a gallon. Use it full strength. The technique is critical. It should be applied with a pump sprayer from bottom to top. let soak for about 2 mins but don't let it dry. Then wash off from bottom to top using at least a 3500psi pressure washer with a turbo nozzle. Pressure and turbo nozzle very important. Do a small section at a time. Each wall 3 or 4 sections.

Also Works on concrete.

Also Will also clean the vacs and meter boxes. Or any stainless. Will clean aluminum but it tends to burn it.

This will also cleaned the burned wall if it isn't real real bad.

If this doesn't clean it, I recommend a wet sandblast. It's a messy pain in the butt, but will look like new when you're done. I used 2600 pounds of sand on a 5 bay one time.

As far as the doors, I have never tried to clean them. However, I used to maintain several in-bay automatics for a c-store chain. All of them had 2 glass windows on the driver side. The aluminum brightener would clean them if maintained from new. If they ever get bad from " years of scum", I've never found anything to clean them.

Good luck

 

[MEP001]

The problem I'm having now is that when the previous owners cleaned the brick, the brick was burnt and has lost its color. We don't have a home depot in our town but we have a Menards, So I will check there. Thanks for the response!

What most likely happened is that they attempted to clean the brick but didn't get it completely clean, so the remainder of the buildup looks light gray because it's been etched. Once it's clean it should look fine.