Although a great shelter to house and protect your vehicles from inclement weather, your garage is a breeding ground for oil stains, mold, mildew and all over grime from the outdoors. Everything you’ve ever driven is basically all on your garage floor. With spring cleaning around the corner, it’s almost time to start deep cleaning the areas you don’t usually get to throughout the year! If the weather permits, it’s the best time to get this chore done!
The first thing we recommend is to wait for a nice day to complete this work. In order to make sure you can have proper ventilation or dry time, it’s best to do it on a sunny day with low humidity. If you don’t have either of those options in your climate, running a floor fan and dehumidifier after the process is completed to ensure any existing mold or mildew doesn’t return, and to make sure it doesn’t start to begin with!
Pre-treating oil stains could be the key to success in cleaning your garage floor. We recommend using an oil absorber, which can be found at any hardware store, or a poultice mixture to help draw out staining. Follow the instructions on your product and let it sit on the stains for as long as it tells you to. If you’re trying to use a more natural approach, making a poultice of walnut cat litter, dish soap and a wire scrub brush may also help. Keep in mind that oil stains are difficult to remove on a porous surface like concrete, especially if it doesn’t have a sealer on it. In that case, going with a traditional oil absorber may give you better results than the more natural approach.
While the treatment is sitting on the stains, you can begin tackling the mold and mildew if it’s present in the garage. Using bleach or vinegar diluted in warm water typically does the trick depending on how bad the mold is. You can use this mixture on the floors or walls that are contaminated, and it should wipe away. Using a product designed to fight off mold or mildew should do the trick too!
After that’s been treated and wiped away, use a mixture of a mild detergent or all-purpose cleaner and warm water, and wash the walls from top to bottom. You can use a microfiber towel to dry the wall after it’s been properly rinsed.
Now it’s time to clean the floor! We recommend purchasing a concrete cleaner, mix with warm water and applying one bay at a time to the floor of your garage. Using a stiff deck brush is useful to scrub at the remaining oil remover you put down and scrubbing at the rest of you flooring. After you have used the mixture and scrubbed at the entire floor, you can either rinse the product out with water or power wash it to rinse.
From there, take advantage of you warm weather and let the garage dry completely. Using a fan or dehumidifier will also help make it dry faster. You also had the choice of adding a concrete sealer and allowing that to cure after the garage floor is dried, if it isn’t already! Be sure to follow all the instructions carefully on your sealers instructions.
There you have it—a garage that looks and smells Clean, Fresh & Bright! This procedure definitely takes time and patience, but the end results in a garage that will get started on your home deep spring cleaning! This is only the beginning of our spring cleaning series, do you have a request on our next topic? Tell us in the comments below!
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