Gum Shadows Removal Pressure washing

100% agreed Ron. The gum in our service area that has been exposed to even one season of extreme heat will leave a shadow that sometimes will now fade completely. I have tried everything, from caustics to citrus acid products.

Same with the spit stains. Now that smokers hang outside in the patio areas and out front of the storefronts, they seem to be polluted with gum, spit stains, etc., and some do not resolve 100%.

My objective with the above post and (old) video was to demonstrate to contractors that the use of low pressure steam will resolve gum and gum residue without doing the irreversible (in my opinion criminal) damage to customers property, which we have all witness.

I can't help myself anymore to inspect all the concrete I look at. The wife gets all upset when we are going out to dinner and I find outrageous damaged caused by irresponsible pressure washing.

I think it is important to inform your customers of the possibility that some shadowing may remain after trying to resolve gum and gum residue, and oil stains. Giving your customers the assumption that their concrete will look like brand new after your scope of work is not only misleading in many situations, but could very well damage your relationship with that PM or owner. I have all this included in my Business Policies and Procedures (liability release) form that all my customers are required to sign before we schedule a project.

Hope all that made sense, as I am still heavily medicated from my back surgery yesterday. Have nothing to do today besides play on the computer.
 
Jim, I'm in total agreement about heat being the only way to safely remove all gum residue (excluding the stains). I am not convinced of the value of 25 degree tips nor any heat over about 180 or so.

In the video above that gum was brand new and it took you about 30 seconds to get it up.

This gum below appears even older (as evidenced by the stain) only took 17 seconds with around 180 degrees and no tip at all!

Hot water is a must for removing gum. However, our home made gum scraper is now being used on a daily basis. Chris is reporting a 25-30% cut in time spent dealing with gum overall (this would be better, but he's had problems with the scraper shutting itself off and relighting takes time) After the scraping is done he is reporting at least a 50% decrease in time spent on the wand.

We have yet to determine if the heat from the scraper does anything towards lightening the stain. May guess is that if each spot was hit IMMEDIATELY after the scraper superheated the area, SOME of the stain may come up and lighten. But we haven't tested that yet.

Why is this important? If we are using 8 gpm and taking up each piece of gum takes 30 seconds we're putting out 160 gallons that we have to deal with on every 20 pieces of gum. Scraping first causes zero damage and reduces the water we have to deal with by half.

Also, in spite of how good it sounded, When Jim (Gamble) brought his unit to Las Vegas there were many witnesses there including a lot of Jim's close friends who noticed that our machine (at around 185 degrees) was popping gum faster than Jim's (at various temps between 220 and 300 degrees) There is a temperature where the fan blows out and there's not enough agitation to move the gum.

As you can see from the video below very little agitation is required (as evidenced by the gum coming up without any tip at all) bit SOME has to be present and at 250+ degrees the fan starts to blow out and lose agitation.

DON"T click the videos below, they don't work and I can't edit them out of the post. click on the youtube video in the next post to view.
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For some reason it didn't work on photobucket, here it is on youtube

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Thank tony, I never thought of not usiong a tip. What did you have on that, a hose barb?
I lookeds at the site this morning. It is about 75000 square feet of heavy traveled collage campus. Loades of old gum. The shadows are light so I will try a couple of things to see if it will work. There is thousands of more square feet to clean if I can get the stains removed
 
Ron Musgraves said:
Please do not even joke like that, someone may take you serious.
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Yep!! This is a center I take over starting tonight..Went out and took pictures of all the damage today...Didn't realize how much there was until I really started looking.. This one is supposed to be done Quarterly!!!:shocked2:

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That's criminal Travis. It baffles the mind why the property owners or PM's don't fill an insurance claim, let alone criminal damage charges for damage like that.

Unfortunately once you get that concrete properly cleaned, even more damage will be revealed, and will stand out like a sore thumb.

crfguy168 said:
Yep!! This is a center I take over starting tonight..Went out and took pictures of all the damage today...Didn't realize how much there was until I really started looking.. This one is supposed to be done Quarterly!!!:shocked2:

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Scott Stone said:
Looks like a Walmart.
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Nope it's a 400,000+ sq ft shopping center and every singe store has this kind of damage all over the entrances and walks!!:confused:
 
Can you please get a Signature
Gumking said:
Gum shadows can be a problem of not removing completely the gum spot. But when it is like a print and there is no gum product left, most of the time it is a chemical reaction with acids (mostly) from the chewing gum and the cement. Basically you cannot remove this; the cement is colored by the acid in the gum. In most cases surfaces won't give this problem but sometimes it is a real problem. We have divided a concrete tile where it was really bad. The mark went down 3 mm!
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So far, after 14 yrs in business and trying everything... even acid washing concrete 4x a gum shadow can still remain. Next time out I'll have to try some F9 rust remover and see if that works for the shadow. I honestly haven't thought about it.

Any guys out there with F9 samples that could try it on gum shadows?
 
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