How To Pressure Wash A Concrete Driveway

how's it going you guys Scott with everyday home repairs and today I want to show you a better way to clean your concrete driveway now if you're just driving down the street there's about an 8 and 10 chance that you'll see somebody just out there with a pressure washer and a wand and just just blowing off the dirt and debris and kind of moving that across their driveway now that was me in the past and it wasted a ton of time so let's jump in and show you the better way to clean the driveway it will save you time and give you a better end result so let's cover three things so you can get ready for your job first up get a plan of attack you want to start where you have the highest level of concrete and it slopes away from that point why we want to do that because you don't want to start at a low Point get that clean and then work your way up to a high point where the mud dirt and debris will then just come and settle on the surface you just cleaned so start at the high point and let the dirt and debris go over the still dirty concrete and then work your way across so I'm gonna start by my garage and work across and then work towards the street now moving on to the the second item that is equipment I'm using a Simpson 3100 psi 2.3 gallons per minute pressure washer this one cost me about 350 I got a year ago from Lowe's basically I use it for decks siding and then concrete driveways and sidewalks that's my main use case at my property and then a few of the rental properties I have now I would love to go to an electric just from a Simplicity of use I use this infrequently right so sometimes it's a little hard to get started or you didn't do the maintenance on it I get it but electric really isn't at the point where you can get a good pressure like a 3100 psi and a good flow rate like a 2.3 gallons per minute sometimes you can get up to 300 PSI but then your flow rate is going to be down in the ones so you're not going to get that volume of water that's going to make the project easy or the pressure that's going to give you that Force to really break up the dirt and debris off the surface so for me I'm still sticking with a gas and the Simpson's a pretty good value at 350. it's not quite in the professional grade but it's definitely not at the complete low end and then the final is the attachments we'll talk more about that while I actually start to do this job because that can be a key to a job taking three times longer with marginal results or you being efficient at the job with great results so this is your first attachment it's the standard wand this is what you're going to see eight out of 10 people using and it's not the best approach specifically I'm using the 40 degree tip but you can also try with the 15 it'll just take forever to get through your whole driveway even though you have a lot of pressure and force to get all the dirt debris and stains off your concrete so you're hunched over here it is going to wear you out and you're gonna get some wave patterns in an inconsistently clean driveway so what's a better option the better option is what's called a Surface Cleaner now this one you don't have to be too fancy this one I got off Amazon for a hundred dollars it's 15 inches wide it has three wheels which really help keep a consistent distance to the surface and easily Glides across the driveway as you clean I usually do One initial pass and then a quick pass to kind of get the dirt and Brie off then I will keep that 40 degree tip in my pocket to do a one over making sure we're getting all the dirt and mud off of that freshly clean surface so what's actually going on with the Surface Cleaner is it has actually two different tips here that are slightly angled to the surface and it's on a bar that will rotate and then the water can pass through this rotation joint so since the nozzles are angled they will act actually spin themselves and it's really effective in cleaning whether it's a deck or perfect for concrete driveways and sidewalks taking this perspective you can quickly see this is the 40 degree tip you're going to vary the speed that it's striking the surface and the distance that's striking the surface that's why you get kind of a wave pattern finish and also inconsistently clean concrete if you compare that to the Surface Cleaner those tips are staying the constant distance away from the ground and the speed is going to be consistent as well resulting in a cleaner surface in less time we'll just use water there's no chemicals used no pre-treating or post-treating just the Surface Cleaner we'll do a section like this get it cleaned off and then we'll use the 40 degree tip and then just blow off all that loose mud dirt and debris to clean everything up and let it dry and then I'll go on to the next session and then keep progressing across my driveway remember I have about 1800 square feet here overall time to do this I'll tell you at the end and then also like how much gas I went through just so you can plan accordingly now this is the dirtiest section of my driveway you can see a little bit left behind even after spraying that but it's an easy fix because I always keep that tip in the my pocket so I can swap out to the wand and do spots like this where I really need to spend a little bit more time and get that mold and mildew off the concrete and get it completely clean so the wine is still super handy and the 40 and 15 degree will probably come in handy sometime throughout your cleaning but the Surface Cleaner is going to be doing the heavy lifting of this job and it's well worth the money now if you rent a pressure washer like this and a Surface Cleaner you're probably looking at 130 to 150 dollars per day remember my Simpson 3100 psi 2.3 gallon per minute was 350 from Lowe's and I bought this stainless steel Surface Cleaner 15 inches across with two extensions which really help make the cleaning very comfortable so you're not hunching over and kind of fatiguing yourself that was right at a hundred dollars off Amazon and you can look down in the description you'll see a link to our Amazon store where you'll be able to go over jump into the category and you'll see this exact model that I used here and do recommend for diy-ers at home so depending on your situation renting or buying if you already have that pressure washer buying a 15 inch surface clean like this probably makes a whole lot of sense you'll see a few different types of surface cleaners there's the professional grade that's more like 350 dollars and then there's ones like this in the middle but the key is having those three wheels I think really does help out for just very smooth operation it's it goes across the surface very easily there are a number of models that do not have the wheels and I just think for literally 10 or 20 more dollars you can get something like this made out of stainless steel and it should last years and years across your projects this will be the last section for my driveway and overall in time it took me an hour and 40 minutes to complete the 1800 square feet of concrete and I burned about a gallon and a half of gasoline in the pressure washer overall the results were awesome I was super satisfied and is extremely easy usually these jobs kind of get taxing they're boring and you get burned out halfway through not the case this progressed very fast and I was very pleased with the overall results now I was lucky I didn't have any oil stains on the driveway if you do have those you might want to use a Degreaser scrub that in and see if that can remove the oil stains from your concrete and now as you're packing up your project let me show you a mistake I've made in the past and hopefully it'll save you from a pump failure like I had so what you want to do is make sure you use some pump saver before storing your pressure washer specially SDI wires our pressure washer can sit for six months nine months or even 12 months between uses so the pump seals and internals can corrode and cause an issue so all you need to do is just tighten the pump saver onto the hose end and then I'm just going to press the pump saver now it's going to come out the high pressure ends and you'll want to press until it comes out but I'll kind of cover this up because it can come out there pretty fast okay start starting to come out there so now we know our internals are covered with the pump saver and then that's going to extend out the life of our pump and extend out the life of our pressure washer now if your driveway is anything like mine after cleaning it you might be noticing the gaps a little bit more if you're wondering how to seal those up check out this video right here I'll walk you through the complete process with my favorite product that is bulletproof and will last for years and years so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on that next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 2,328,671

Keywords: surface cleaner pressure washer, cleaning a sidewalk, everyday home repairs

Id: DqiktAd_hFg

Length: 8min 57sec (537 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 21 2022