Difference between bleach, degreasers, acid, and surfactants

[0:01] in this video we're gonna talk about the difference between bleach degreasers soaps and acids bleach is something that we use every single day bleach is use for mold algae mildew those types of things it's kills organic stains when we're using bleach when it's coming through the pressure washer the strength of that bleach by the time it goes through 200 feet of hose and it's being

[0:34] pumped through 8 gallons a minute it's usually a percentage of about 1 to 2 percent what makes bleach so effective is not actually the bleach itself it's what's contained in that bleach called sodium hypochlorite in the pressure washing world they just simply abbreviate that as Sh when we go to SCP to fill up with our bleach the percentage of Sh that's contained within that chlorine is 10.5% to give you a comparison when you go to

[1:05] the store and you buy store-bought bleach the sodium hypochloride is the percentage will be on the bottle labeled somewhere it's typically somewhere between 0.5% up to about 3% so you can see that what makes that pool chlorine so effective versus just regular store-bought bleach is you get a much higher concentrate of the sodium hypochlorite in that chlorine typically in Florida it's somewhere between 10 to

[1:36] 13 percent again it's used for any mold mildew algae everywhere in Florida has it that's why we use it every day it's very effective if you have to use a stronger percentage than what's coming out of the pressure washer hose again after it's going through the downstream injector and those kind of things 50/50 mix 50/50 just simply means that it's half water and half bleach and what

[2:08] we typically do is we put that in a pop-up sprayer it can take two or three or four applications sometimes it's rare but it can't happen and then sometimes you may even have to educate that area with a brush and then rinse it thoroughly but most of the time bleach will get the area clean without having to scrub with the brush or anything but the very few rare occasions you may have to agitate it with the brush every now and then

[2:38] probably less than once a month will have to even use a stronger percentage because for whatever reason it's turned to what we call gold mustard bleach it's like a yellow looking bleach or a dark dark black it's just not coming up with even a 50/50 it will come up with a 50/50 but it's gonna take a lot of applications and a lot of scrubbing sometimes so we'll go stronger than a 50-50 mix that's one of those things you

[3:09] want to ask the crew leader before you are approve of using something stronger than a 50-50 mix because bleach can be corrosive it can do a lot of damage it can it can take the paint off the doors off the walls that can change the color so you got to always do a test spot and anytime you're using something stronger than 50/50 you get approval from your career leader first when it comes to the greasers just like the word says it's

[3:39] used for grease and oil and hydraulic stains those type of stains for us we'll get a few occasions where we get asked to remove some oil oil is never a guaranteed success at best we tell customers that we can get most oil stains up about 50 to 70 percent but a hundred percent oil removal is never guaranteed 100% grease removal is never

[4:11] guaranteed so keep that in mind when you're trying to set that expectation for the customer I like to use around 70% removal so if we do get anything higher than that they're ecstatic but they're not you never want to say a hundred percent because even if you get 90% you're gonna disappoint the customer so I always start low and hope for the best with the products that we use we have typically good results but again it's one of those things you can't promise them 100% so we

[4:44] do a lot of paper selling as you know decrease things that we typically see are around a pool deck a lot of times the customer has a barbecue pit out there and they get asked to move it or they've already moved it in the past and you'll see a little drip stains typically going right out the door that's from the drip pan of that barbecue pit it spilled on to the pavers again a strong degreaser works most of

[5:14] the time with some heat added to it it doesn't always require heat but when we use heat for the tough stubborn stains we like to use it around a hundred and sixty degrees now there's also caustic degreasers those are for your really really really bad areas if we're using a caustic degreaser you're going to have to pre wet any walls or paint and you're going to definitely want to make sure that you're trying to keep that off of

[5:45] any painted surfaces or any unnecessary surfaces many times when I'm putting a caustic degreaser down our caustic degreasers are our stampede plus or our ground force I unless it's a large large area I put it down with a pump up sprayer so that can control the spray and I can make sure it's only going on the areas that are needed and not going on any unnecessary areas such again as

[6:15] is paint and doors and things like that they can take the paint right off instantly so again you want to pre wet any unnecessary areas put it down and then if you accidentally got it on a wall or Payne or glass rinse it off immediately but you're strong caustic degreasers are used for like your dumpster pads restaurant areas where there's a lot of foot foot traffic or right by the kitchen door where those cooks are going in and out and they're

[6:46] you know they've got grease and they're following the grease in the oil to the dumpster pad and you'll see right there on the concrete so that's what why we would use a caustic degreaser when it comes to acids acids are used for rust mineral stains fertilizers things when you see that orange tent no pressure is going to get that off it's going to require an acid majority of the time when we're using acid when we're

[7:17] spraying acid you definitely want to make sure that you're using a mask some gloves at all times spraying spraying acid and you never want to mix acid with bleach because if you do that it's going to create a mustard gas so if you're using bleach sometimes you'll have an instance where it's really really black and it looks like an organic stain it looks like some old mold or mildew and you're hitting it and you're going 50/50 and it's still not coming up and you get

[7:49] approval and you go even straight bleach and that's not working either the next step would be to turn to acid and 99 percent of time that will get it up however if you've been spraying that area with bleach make sure I cannot foot stomp this enough that you thoroughly rinse that area before you put the acid on there because we don't want to be creating any mustard gas not only for ourselves but any customers or neighbors

[8:20] nearby so when we use our acid I like to mix the acid and and our degreasers 50/50 or stronger with the degreaser I like to start out at 50/50 and most of time that were go a little stronger with acid I go fifty-fifty start off half water half acid when you're mixing acid in water

[8:50] I cannot foot stomp this enough make sure you're always adding acid to water never water to acid never ever it's always acid to water but typically our acid strength is 50/50 you can go straight but always try 50/50 first and sometimes it's going to take three or four applications but that's what you use your acid for again your rust your mineral stains well water stains any of

[9:22] that orange tint when it comes to rust removal with an acid the big blotchy areas are a lot easier to clean than those real small circled areas that are really concentrated when it comes to grease and oil and rust we never promised a hundred percent removal ever with the big arrests but spots with acid we nine times out of ten can get ninety

[9:54] five percent to 100 percent removal but again you got to set those expectations surfactants it's just a fancy word for soap we use surfactants and everything just about except for our like an acid it can't be used with acid but surfactants are effective because surfactants are what help break down whatever it is we're cleaning lift it up the surface and then it just makes clean in that area and and rinsing too much much faster and efficient so

[10:26] there's all different types of surfactants soaps out there on the market we have a couple that we like you can set it to whatever settings you like I like to be able to see the soap when it comes out I don't like it too strong but again a surfactant is just a fancy word for soap and it helps lift those stains off of the substrate of whatever you're cleaning to make it easier to get it hopefully the first second time that you spray and then also rinse with that again this is a recap on

[11:01] bleach is used for organic stains such as mold mildew algae degreasers are used for the grease oil hydraulic saying something like that acid is used for your rust your Mentos stains your well water stains your fertilizers things what happens a lot of these customers they're having to your their yards treated and the guys that are treating their yards are putting down fertilizer and fertilizer leaks on to the concrete

[11:32] or those nearby areas and it stains it and the customers you know they've tried to pressure wash it it's not coming off it's not going to come off because you got to use an acid to neutralize the pigment into that area so that's why an acid is needed to neutralize that pigment the iron pigment actually and then again our surfactants just helped us clean and rinse much faster and that's a recap on the difference in use with bleach degreaser soaps and acids

[12:04] I'll leave you with two things when it comes to soaps when you're doing pull screens you want to use very little soap because it's really tough to rinse out pull screens if you either been hit heavy with soap and then when it comes to spiderwebs every now and then we do areas that got a lot of cobwebs or those eggs you want to use a heavy soap on those because that'll actually help rinse those off and clean those off much faster just a little treat for you thank you