Surface Cleaner leaving circles/streaks

Hey guys, I was doing my driveway today and noticed these streaks left behind by my surface cleaner. Any idea on how to fix these? I did pre treat with an SH solution but did not post. I have a 4000 psi 4gpm washer with a North Star surface cleaner. Any ideas would be amazing.

Hold old is the concrete and what tips are on your surface cleaner?

Concrete is a couple of years old and just the standard I think they’re universal tips.

No universal tips. They are all different degrees and sizes. Tip size allows you to control the pressure. Larger the hole the less pressure they have size charts you can Google them. As for the lines if you’ve knocked the cream off then you may be out of luck. You could do a post treat with a little hotter mix than DS and see if it lifts the marks.

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Did the water look cloudy or milky while cleaning? You either took the cream off or moved way too fast. You can try going over it again moving much slower. You want to go side to side instead of road to garage. Any striping will be less noticeable if you go perpendicular to the road. If the striping is still there after cleaning again I would also post treat with like 3%-4%. If you haven’t done so look up the surface cleaning video @Racer posted on here. It has some great tips.

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That looks like concrete etching to me. There’s a way to fix it but it requires some chemicals and some skills to get it right without damaging it more.

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Craig in the Front9 professionals group on facebook has a swirl method with one of his products that has been know to help. Front 9 Restoration Professionals | Facebook

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If you etched it, you need to use a surface prep(muriatic acid or one of the premixed from a name brand). After that you have to MicroTop it to get that smooth cream finish. Microtopping is basically putting down a grouting substrate over it and retroweling it to get that cream smooth finish. Its labor intensive and can be expensive.
Cheap option is use a surface prep to remove cream. Let dry for 24-48 then just apply a concrete sealer. It won’t look like it originally did, but its way cheaper and the sealant will protect the concrete from more damage.

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That looks like one of those little 14” surface cleaners…

It’s a 20 inch surface cleaner not a 14. How would I avoid this in the future? Was it the psi I was using (around 3000), or the SH pretreatment that took off the cream? Or was the concrete still too fresh?

If you did take cream off, it wasn’t the SH. Too much pressure - you avoid it by changing nozzles on SC to lower down the pressure. If concrete was over 2 years old its ok to clean it as long as you don’t use too much pressure.

Those consumer grade 4/4 machines they sale can be a little dangerous because most homeowners don’t know about changing nozzles to use correct pressure. Specially when they pair it with a consumer SC that probably came with 1502’s… I’ve read on here that one of the guys once bought a Northern Tool SC that came with 0002 nozzles or something crazy like that…

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Watch racers video follow instructions

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