How clean does the floor really need to be?

[animuL]

I just ordered the Rustoleum pro kit. My house was just built, garage floor has been there maybe 6 months and we moved in a little over a month ago. There are 2 things I noticed after scrubbing the floor good with soap and water:

1. There are still areas that are brown from dirt. No matter how much a scrub they don't seem to go away. Its nothing that you can feel, like clods of dirt, and most people probably wouldn't even notice it, but from a distance it just looks like the concrete has a brownish tint to it. Is that gonna hurt anything? Is there some way to get that up?

2. Even tho we've only been here a month, I already have a bunch of small oil spots (hence my reason for coating in the first place). I used acetone on those and scrubbed with a rag, I got a noticeable amount of oil back off the ground, but the concrete is still stained some. Is there something else I need to do?

I did buy the concrete etch stuff, maybe thats all I need. There are no areas that you can see standing oil or dirt, its just discoloration of the concrete at this point.

Thanks for any insight and please, wish me luck! lol

 

[mhoffm911]

I think the etching will take care of most of your problems. There are oil removers that you can pour on the floor and when they dry they pull the oil out (supposedly). You can try Tide or Cascade powder with a good scrub brush also. Brake cleaner sometimes works.

If it were me, I would power wash it and then do the etching. If it looks OK, I would then proceed with the epoxy coat.

 

[Vicegrip]

If water beads on the oil spots at all keep cleaning. Power wash, etch and power wash again to remove grains loosened during etching. Brake Kleen in the red cans seemed to work well for me.