This is halfway through the driveway, already did a long aggregate front walk. After rinsing I hit it with 5% and all those stripes and lichen spots cleared right up. I don’t think it had ever been done.
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Get the heat @dcbrock! 
kill those stripes, less chemicals.
Right? Would love to get a burner.
On a side note you can see me hunched over a drain that had been “plugged for years” and I just pushed the pressure hose down it and finally got it flowing. She was thrilled just about that.
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I would set aside a day and go through all your equipment brock, clean nozzles, check pump, compression test on motor, check for any leaks anywhere. We all get striping but every single job is a little unbelievable to me. Between your technique and equipment you have a piece missing to your puzzle somewhere.
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It’s done that from day one man, different surface cleaners, various nozzles, different machines, various pushing speeds. This one was a bit more obvious as the drive hadn’t ever been cleaned as you can see, house is 60 years old.
Would a wider nozzle fan help, maybe 40025’s?
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Are cleaning a lot of heavy growth driveways? Could be your region/area. I never have striping like you do until I cleaned this 50 year old driveway and it looked awful after using my 19” WWC on it. Post treated with 4% and it looked brand new.
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It honestly just looks like you’re moving too fast. Like @MuscleMyHustle said there has to be a problem with something. It’s definitely not just bad luck. It’ll be figured out eventually and become a problem of the past lol
Lol if I moved any slower…
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Yup, half the concrete I do looks like that.
Here in Kentucky they are real bad. That was a big reason to get the heat, figured I could make my money back on just the time I would save. So glad I did, plus I can do a lot of commercial too. Just works for me…
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I think that would explain it. Maybe
@Kentucky1234 do you find with heat that you have to pretreat or at least prewet? Im hoping to grow like a weed next year, and Im thinking saving time on pretreat would be very helpful on that.
I don’t have to Pre treat but for the customers sake I want to make sure to kill the organic matter on the concrete. I’ve SC at my house with no pre treat and looks the same to me if I did use chems, so…but like I said for the customer I want to make sure a kill organics, with Pre treat and hot water it does great. I absolutely love the heat, set 150-180 and go at it. Real bad oil I’ll bump up a little more. Well worth it to me, you move a lot faster with heat in my opinion. I charge a little more, usually .25 sqft. For flat surfaces.
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I get stripes 95% of the time as well @dcbrock. Not an equipment or technique issue as far as I can tell, just really dirty drives. Post treating always knocks them out though
Wouldn’t a post treat serve the same purpose? Im thinking it would be faster to lay down a post treat and leave instead of a pretreat and waiting for dwell time. Just something I’ve been tossing around for when I get heat.
And from the the standpoint of protecting/ridding the drive of organics, it makes a little more sense to post treat vs. pre-treat, to me anyway.
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Most post treat with 3-4% sh. I don’t like to apply that strong with runoff concerns. Most of the time not an issue though but I don’t need it, waste chemicals. I Pre treat with hw mix, then hot SC the area and rinse, done. I try to use chems as little as possible, that’s just me…I like to wet the concrete before SC anyways so my hw mix works great for that. This is what saves time for me and gets the job done effectively.! Pic below is how it turns out. It was still wet too, dried beautiful though.
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With sh and 160 plus temperatures the organics I think are dead, plus I wet the concrete prior to surface cleaning anyways…so hw mix for the wetting down works great.
How are you applying your post treat? If those stripes don’t disappear with the post treat your just not putting it down heavy enough which can be easy to do with a pump up. Just make sure you’re doing more than just misting the surface.
I pretreat with my HW mix and then typically post treat with the same to get the desired level of clean I am looking for. I prewet the area too as I’ve found it helps out for the way I do it. I’m also only running a 3.5gpm and a cheapo surface cleaner. I had one this weekend that I had to spray some 50/50 on to move some really stubborn spots, but usually not necessary for what I have come across.
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