Practice doing driveway and the results are below. I have a few questions and need some help answering/confirming what happened and how to fix. I will post pictures below and list everything I did with my equipment.
What I did:
soaked everything with water including plants
SC with 16 inch 25020 nozzles, have a 4000 psi 4 gpm pressure washer
I then rinsed it all with ball valve
post treated with my x jet …. no proportioner … which is a 1.6:1 ratio ……. so I batch mixed 3 gallons (1.5 SH 10% + 1.5 Water + 3 oz of Arm and Hammer Oxiclean) and was putting out about 3% for my post treat
Did it streak bc I went too fast? I also feel like 3 gallons of my mix wasn’t enough to make the streaks go away . Should I have soaked the post-treat on the driveway aka use more than 3 gallons?
Why is it spotty in some areas? How come it Looks cleaner in some areas than others? What did I do wrong?
Can I fix these two things above? If so, how?
Any thing else I may have missed and need to do better?
Don’t use 4000psi on concrete like that. You need to be using 25025’s for a two nozzle WW, around 2500psi.
I had a 4gpm, it didn’t clean concrete very well. You’ll need to slow down. Hard to tell if those are dirt lines or etched concrete from using that much pressure.
Get a real surfactant when you can, A&H just isn’t up to the job.
The splotches are just where the magnesium in the concrete has ‘welled up’ over time, nothing you can do about that.
Do you have a before pic? Also, take some when completely dry. Some of those lines may go away. Brock is right though, change out tips. A 4gpm will clean great with right tips, but you need to go pretty slow. With a 4gpm you can usually just DS your HW mix or straight SH for your post treat.
I’ll get some pics when I get the chance, but lines aren’t as bad unless you look closely since it dried. I will just go back over them perpendicular, but waiting till I get my 25025s tips. Thanks Racer! I’ll keep in touch @Racer
My 4gpm 4000 psi only gets 3000ish at the gun after 100ft of hose and 25020 tips. I tired the 25s and was only getting about 2300 and it didn’t clean very well. I highly doubt he’s seeing 4000 at the tips. Sure, with a 4 gpm you need to go slow, but mine cleans very well to the point where I never post treat.
I’m getting a pressure gauge and going to check, but I mean 3000ish still may be a bit too high. I’m going to try and get around 2500 psi.
Do you pre treat at all? If so, what % do you put on? And Since you don’t have stripes when SC and don’t post treat, do you do circular motions? @Nickski
Thanks I ordered some! However, I don’t think I’m getting 4000 psi coming from the tips. With 100ft garden hose and 50ft pressure washer hose, prolly somewhere near 3000s which would still be too much.
I’m going to resolve issue with the new tips and by going slower & I will go vertical first than follow it up by going horizontal and then post treat with 3% which should help
Just about a 1% HW mix with 10 5-10 minute dwell time and go slow. Straight lines, no circular motion unless I have an area with bad lichen or something that’s being stubborn.
If I’m going along and start to see lines, I go over that area again, then slow down a bit more. Lines you see (ones that aren’t etched) are clean strips from where you overlap. If you have those, it means the areas that weren’t overlapped are still dirty. I don’t like having to post treat because that just means you didn’t get as clean as it could be and the bleach just blends it in.
I know a ton of guys like post treating and there is nothing wrong with that, I just don’t like the idea of having to do it. I rather take an extra 10-15 minutes and go slow.
3000 is not too much unless its new concrete. I found that 2500 just doesn’t cut it when you have bad mold/algae/lichen, which is every piece of concrete I clean. Just dirty, 2500 will probably work just fine
Yeah I don’t think I etched the concrete above, I just think I overlapped and didn’t go slow enough. If I have about 3000 psi showing on pressure gauge with the SC hooked up, then I may stick with it bc it should clean better. But if it’s higher than expected I will just use 25025 tips and just move much slower, go perpendicular and post treat with about 3% mix. And hopefully that works
