Old cinderblock building with about 19 layers of paint. Heavy smoke damage and whatever burnt was in there and on the cinder block walls. I tried degreaser, degreaser pumped up with hydroxide, added some butyl to the mix, tried different soap, long dwell, agitation, acids, etc. Wound up hitting it with a DIRTYBOY (copyright, trademark, special guy stuff) specialty degreaser blend, turboing it, then hit it with some SH and final rinse. Long job. Plus a lot of water cleanup. Full gear on, covered in crud. Pretty much ruined that turbo nozzle.
Just curious if anyone has any magic formula. Turboing did the best job. Plus the fire and whatever the fire guys used to put the fire out, left strange marks on the walls. There were metal panels in there that the degreaser combo worked great on until the top where the heat hit it. That stuff wouldn’t budge even with a turbo. I think the heat did it. The mixture of the fireguys stuff and the burning items left some real weird marks on the wall.
Owner was happy with the outcome, they were going to blast it with paint when I was done (after the block dries out). The unpainted sections of block came out the best. I think, but don’t know, that either the heat or the chemicals used to put the fire out reacted to the paint. The white painted sections turned brown and nothing would touch it unless it was removed.
