Fountain Help

[sweetwater]

LOcal municipality wants me to clean the fountains ( 4 total). Fountains are cast iron/pot metal. Wants to get them back down to bare metal, or at least clean enough to repaint. The patina you see is 17 years of calcium, old paint and rust.
Couple of stipulations:
1) Must sump out the sludge in bowls.
2) Can't run it though the fountain pumping system.
3) Very public area and can't close down the area, but can work at night.

Any suggestion on the best way or easiest way to clean this?

Have even considered dry ice blasting.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Ray

 

[BlueBliss]

Dry ice blasting would be ideal...but expensive! I think soda/sand blasting would be fine if you're prepared to sweep/vacuum the media...
If it were just calcium, or just paint, I'd say use a chemical bath. But it sounds like a blasting job!

Is that Kleman Plaza? There is a lot of work to be done there!

If you need to borrow a vac, PM me!

 

[sweetwater]

Hi Kyle:

Yup, its Kleman

Thanks for the answer. Would love to meet one day, always looking for professionals to refer business to!

Blasting is out of the question for a few reasons. Time/cost/COT's bad experience with blasting from previous jobs. They have done the job about bass-ackwards too, the base of the fountain has already been painted...so caused a whole new host of problems. Also, talked to an ice blasting co. today, they don't think it will removeve all the old paint.

 

[BlueBliss]

Yeah, if the chem will work on the old paint, it will also devastate the new paint in the bowls...
What size machine are you using? Hot water?
I'd suggest hot water and high pressure with a turbo nozzle. BUT, you'll need to remove all tubing and light fixtures if possible, and steer clear of all openings! You will destroy all of that brittle PVC. If you're gutsy you can cap them off with a metal pipe end.
It seems chaney's hot wash was doing municipal work. How long have you been at pressure washing?

 

[sweetwater]

Kyle,
I've been doing a fair amount of Tally muni work since 2009, but theres a lot to go around...