We started a parking garage last night that has an epoxy coating on the floor. Our main issue is we are getting streaking from the overlap with the surface sprayer. Even if we go really slow, lay down heavy ebc first and use hot water, the overlap is still visible. All those things help make it cleaner and the stripes less visible, but don’t eliminate the issue. It’s like the floor gets cleaned with every pass, but never perfect. I’ve never seen this with standard concrete before.
Equipment we are using is 8gpm/3500. 28” ground force from whisper wash with 4x2502 nozzles that are not clogged.
Also, you can see these really random clean spots on the flooring. That too is a mystery to us. They look like something dripped off of vehicles and ate away the dirt… not sure
It’s impossible to get evenness with a wand unless we just hit the oil spots, rinse and go. I was looking for a middle of the line process, but couldn’t find it so we opted for the SS. The surface sprayer does take a little off the epoxy… we can see the white residue in the rinse… but with the coating being at least a 1/4 inch thick, I reasoned we would be ok. It’s taking 2x as long with the SS.
I have no experience cleaning commercial floor. As far as I know your doing the correct thing. It just seems like a bad idea to use heat and high pressure on a treated surfaces. Even more now that your aware the coating is coming off in the process
If it’s that thick it might be one of the 100% solids self leveling epoxy. If it is most manufacturers recommend a scrubbing with degreaser and flushing rather than pressure. But without knowing for sure what it is I cant be to much help.
That’s actually exactly what a lot of factory’s do. They have riding floor scrubbers with degreaser and surfactants sprayed ahead then vacuumed up behind.
If you zoom in on the top picture you will see that the concrete has a decorative swirl finish and not your normal broom finish that’s on most parking decks. This swirl finish is done by swirling the cream up with a hand tool while the concrete is still wet. This process leaves the cream soft and sandy and will stripe very easily when using a surface cleaner.
