Both patios and garage floors can get worn out over the years. A lot of people make a habit of keeping the floors of their home clean and spotless but tend to neglect the patio and garage. As a result, their conditions can worsen as time passes.
Concrete is a very durable material but it’s not indestructible. Drop a heavy enough load on a concrete floor and you can still chip it. In the same way, dirt and grime can get attached to the surface if you don’t clean it every so often.
Determine How Big Of a Task It Is
There’s isn’t a blanket solution when it comes to cleaning concrete. Instead your cleaning approach should be dependent on how big of a mess you’re dealing with. There are three tiers of concrete cleaning:
Light cleaning – this involves giving the concrete surface a good scrub with an appropriate brush and some mild detergent soap. This approach is most suitable for mildly dirty surfaces that don’t contain any stubborn grime or stains. If you are dealing with the latter, we recommend switching to a soap with greater strength or mixing in some ammonia to your detergent solution.
Power Wash – If a light clean doesn’t seem like it could get rid of the dirt, then you may have to invest in a power washer. In order to get the job done properly and quickly, we recommend purchasing one that’s capable of outputting 3000psi of pressure.
Chemical cleaning – if you’re dealing with the most stubborn stains, then chemical cleaning is the way to go. The appropriate chemicals can be purchased from home improvement stores but make sure you specify that it’s for cleaning concrete and not for stripping it. Whenever applying chemicals, you want to make sure that you cover the entire dirty area. This way you can achieve a nice, uniform look.
Cleaning Before Sealing
Sealing is a great way to reduce the amount of maintenance needed with concrete surfaces. Once you seal a concrete floor, you’ll only ever need to perform light to medium-intensity cleaning on it, depending on the amount of traffic it sees every day.
If you’re thinking of having a particular concrete surface sealed, it’s best to give it a thorough cleaning prior. In addition to the aforementioned method, you might think of degreasing the surface as well. Degreasers remove oil-bases stains that are otherwise hard to remove. If you’ve never used one before, we recommend you read the instructions on the package beforehand.
Furthermore, acid etching is quite effective against deeper stains. However, it may be too dangerous for an amateur to work with and therefore you could be better off hiring a professional cleaner for the task.
Cleaning Coloured Concrete
Tons of people find coloured concrete to be visually striking but it can sometimes pose some difficulties when it comes to maintenance. Hence if you’re dealing with coloured concrete, it’s always best to adhere to the manufacturer’s instructions on cleaning.
As you can see, concrete cleaning isn’t always quite straightforward. However with the above three tips, you should be able to take care of your surfaces just fine.
