Good day, Everyone!
Have a commercial customer that would like their beat up asphalt parking lot cleaned. I understand pressure will cause damage.
My question, has anyone used SH/degreasers & ball Valve with success? If not, what did you use?
Don’t use a degreaser. Ashalt is made out of oil (grease) and it will eat it away. The only thing you can really do is rinse it off with a low to slight pressure fan spray.
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Also known as “washing it down with an appropriate level of pressure for that surface”…tell a client you’re just rinsing it and they want a discount, even though it can take longer to get sandy particles out of the coarse texture…
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I read on this a while back and Simple Green says its safe for cleaning asphalt.
- Pre-wet surfaces.
- Pre-treat heavily soiled areas and oil spots with full strength Simple Green.
- Allow about 10 minutes soak time for the pre-treated areas.
- Mix about 1½ cups Simple Green per gallon of water.
- Apply Simple Green solution with a pump sprayer, broom or deck brush.
- Scrub well.
- Allow a few minutes of soak time.
- Rinse well with clean water.
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you lost me right there… 
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Got a pic? What kind of shape is asphalt in?
You can go up to about 2800 psi, but keep heat below 150 if in decent shape. Not sure what you mean by beat up. Dragon Juice made for cleaning asphalt.
If it’s crumbling everywhere, you may want to suggest they seal coat it.
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Not my words, copied from their website
Nate, In all honesty, the client would be better off seal coating it. It will probably be less than what you would need to charge to clean it. Asphalt takes at least twice, if not 3 times, longer to rinse than concrete. Often times on commercial cleaning, chasing the dirty water away from entrances, etc takes longer than the actual cleaning. Think a grocery store or like a Lowes or HD, where you need to chase the dirt from the cleaning, say 300 wide store concrete, but you need to chase dirt at least one lane out from edge. The rinsing asphalt will take longer than the cleaning, many times.
If you do decide to do it, make sure you blow it first with a good blower. That will save you some serious time. If you just soft washed and rinsed, still not going to look all that much better. Be honest with the customer.
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This was my thinking…especially seeing that pic, where would you have to chase all the dirty water out of that lot? 
Thank you for the detail and insight in this message, Racer. I’ll suggest resealing to this customer.
Alway appreciate your advice as well, Atkinson.
I remember around 2000-ish the guy I worked for as a window cleaner would wash asphalt drive-thru’s with a hot water unit. I couldn’t tell you anything more but he made a killing doing the Taco Bells and KFC’s.
I agree cleaning asphalt sucks. It chips away you get all these little chunks and worse if you have to reclaim it it’s an absolute nightmare. I second the really good blower, we had to clean an asphalt parking lot several months ago and I rented a 900 CFM blower from the rental place. I was regretting I didn’t know about the push blower I could’ve gotten, it had like 2500 CFM, that the rental guy told me about after I returned the other one.
I’ve used dragon juice with good success but definitely tell the client upfront that even though you can get the oil up and out, it’s still going to have a shadow. I told them they can confirm if it’s clean by pouring water on it not seeing the rainbows or wiping your finger on it and having it come off clean., I wouldn’t go over 150° or so
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