This photo is a portion of the streaks that I have not touched with anything yet, but the streaks I have tried to deal with look similar as I have had no luck removing or lightening them.
So far, I have tried a 2.5% SH mix with a bit of LA Awesome surfactant. This is the usual combo I have been using and have not had much issue in the past (other properties). After 3 applications with a 10 minute dwell time, nothing changed. From here, the SH was bumped to ~3.75% and another 2 applications were set with another 10 minutes dwell. Once again nothing changed. The entire time, the surface was wet and never was let to dry. The SH was bought less than a week ago, so the age should not be an issue. The Brown Stuff Cleaner was also tried without any luck. I also applied as much pressure as I was comfortable with and had zero success though this was more of a last ditch effort as i’m sure this is a chem job.
I am hesitant to keep upping the SH % to higher and higher levels unless this is the only choice I end up with. Thinking I am missing something and should be using a different approach.
Currently, I’m wondering wether or not the metal roofs are playing a role on this streaking.
Wondering this because the streaks are only present under sections that have these metal roofs. As seen in the first image on the left, the streaks are not present under the signs, and only exist where there is water runoff from the metal roof.
The work is also being done at night and it’s about 50f (10c) out. Have softwashed in worse before but that was on simpler stuff.
Tried to list as much info as I remember. I am asking if anyone has any advice on what to try whether that be different technique or chemicals to try on it. Thanks.
i mentioned simple green only because this is a food establishment, and they likely have kitchen vents, this may be aerosoled grease from vents. simple greem is real mild and a few wipes will tell you.
So, a little late on the update but I wanted to share in case anyone else runs into something like this. When I first posted, the property manager informed me that they were going to be repainting a large portion of the shopping center so they were not concerned with the inorganic streaking as long as the building was clean. I took this as a way out, and left without an answer to the streaking. I clean this shopping center every 6 months and they never repainted. I was recently asked again if I could do something about them as they never repainted.
During that year and some change, the streaks got worse, not by a large margin, but they were darker. I took the advice of the oxydized paint runoff as the main culprit and decided to get an oxidation remover as I didn’t have much luck with f9 barc or one restore. I instead went at it with some Cleansol BC and had to get heavy on the dilution (5:1). This was directly applied 3 times without rinsing inbetween.
The streaks came out beautifully. I don’t have any photo’s of the before besides my original post, but I do have this after picture of a clean white wall. Thanks for the tips guys.
Thanks for the update. This is good info. Turned out great.
I had a grocery store this summer that had similar and it took about 3-4 applications of F9 straight to get rid of them, including some light scrubbing.
