Does diamond grinding remove oil and/or paint stains?

[rhoeting]

Hi Guys --

After going kicking around all the options for several years, I am taking a serious look at Ultimate Clear Sealing System over our 15-year old slab. I love some of the pictures I've been seeing, and the cost is reasonable.

We have the typical small oil stains and a patch of paint when a quart of red latex hit the floor a few years back. I've searched the forum, but I didn't find an answer to the simple question of whether or not a diamond grind goes deep enough to take out these stains or if I have to clean them up prior. I don't want to do anymore work than is necessary.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[NitroShark]

Use the water test..

Grind floor, sprinkle water on top as you go (small drinking water bottle) .

If it--- does Not bead you are good to go.


Shawn

 

[rhoeting]

I guess I am trying to decide if I should bother cleaning at all prior to the grind.

 

[chiplee]

I guess I am trying to decide if I should bother cleaning at all prior to the grind.

I'm no expert, but my thinking was that liquid can go places the grinder can't. I wanted the pores degreased and etched, and I didn't think any surface grinder could do that. Consensus here and online elsewhere seemed to be you could do one or the other.

 

[Shea]

One misnomer that I want to bring up.... A lot of people seem to think that acid etching cleans and degreases concrete. It doesn't. The acid reacts with the free lime (alkaline) in concrete in order to break it down. If the cement has a thin coating of grease or oil from a stain, the acid will just sit there like water and not do anything. It can soak through light dirt and soil to eventually start working, but that is an inefficient way to use it. It won't soak through grease and oil.

Unless the floor is fairly new or clean already, it's best to degrease first before acid etching.

For grinding, heavy oil stains should be degreased first. Many times the grinding will take care of the stain and areas where oil spilled and was wiped up soon enough. It just depends on how long the oil had a chance to soak in before being wiped up initially and how dense the concrete is.

I've seen bad stains that where removed by degreasing, grinding, and then degreasing again followed by grinding again afterwards. The grinding opened up the pores more for the degreaser to penetrate.

 

[rhoeting]

Thanks for the replies. I've started to remove the stains today. I am having pretty good luck with TSP so far.

 

[atifn79]

In one of my past lives, we had a company out of the Dallas/Forth Worth Metroplex come down to our facility and refinish the floors. They shot peen the concret and removed about 3/16" to get below the oil stained concret. Once this was done, they floated the peened area with the epoxy grout and let dry about three days to harden before moving machines on it. We did sections of the shop at a time, took about two months to do the entire shop. Seem like it was much higher than $7.50 sf. Of course we had about 20K s/f done. BTW the surface held up darn good, easy to clean up/ contain spills. The surface was easly damaged by heavy parts dropped on the surface, damaged area was easly fixed with repair kits provided.
Atif Naser

 

[jaye944]

hey there; last night I etched and 95% of the oil stains went !
Yes I was shocked, and I am in agreement with Shea...
I did a **** load of degreasing (did thsi help?)
TSP; yep its pretty good

see my links for my OIL PAINS

 

[Shea]

I did a **** load of degreasing (did thsi help?)

Yep!

 

[James-W]

Seem like it was much higher than $7.50 sf. Of course we had about 20K s/f done.

Wow! At $7.50 per square foot that job cost $150,000.