Heavy salts in parking garages

I have cleaned many garages and most ( up in the north) have salt deposits, sometimes heavy. I usually use a degreaser but was wondering if any have used something different to not only clean the dirt but emulsify salts more efficiently. Sometimes when the salts are really thick we can get them cleaned up but it seems that there is always a little bit of white film left at times. I imagine that is because the salts have dissolved and the concentrate of salt is so high that even the dampness that is left behind contains some of that dissolved solution and subsequently dries leaving some residue. We rinse and rinse but of course while we are cleaning the salt disappears when hit with water and not evident until everything dries. We always use hot water as well. Just curious?

Sounds like you need a specialized cleaner but that is safe for the concrete in parking garages. I would call Mike at EacoChem and email him some pictures so he can see what you are talking about.

Is the salt from them using it as an ice removal? If you are a member of NPA they actually put out a maintenance manual for garages and it states that garages should be "rinsed out" twice a year and powerwashed once a year. FWIW, down here they have stopped using salts or any chemicals on the garages we do except for the top "open" floor. The rest has sand put down to help with fall protection.

these have all been underground garages, smaller 30 60 stalls. I think the salts in this case are being brought in from vehicle traffic as the inside do not see any weather. Sometimes the deposits can have some depth as we use a lot of salt on the roads around here esp in MN. Maybe on the toughest ones I could treat first with an acid then follow up with alkaline as using them combined would neutralize the PH and both would be useless. Hopefully I can find something that can break it down better emulsifying the salt so it will all rinse away. Had one with so much salt that minute amounts stayed suspended even in the dampness after the fact and when it dried it left a white film even tho we rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. . Of course the problem is as the stare is applied the salt become invisible so its difficult to see how much is cleaning up. Even with all of that Flatwork is the greatest!! I just wish my competition would bid the work suing surface cleaner, hot water and rinsing. I do run into the lowballs that I'm sure just come in and do a quick rinsing with wands, Maybe I am just to concerned in giving the customer the best possible outcome. I would really like to see a self contained ride on machine that would recycle without all the operational issues. A guy could clean like crazy with one of those! Then I would concentrate on parking garages only. A few years back I had a vendor demo the cyclone and when it worked it was great but clogged up often with a lot of downtime.

With salt, the driveable surface cleaners would start having problems as they would not be able to get the salt out of the water without a huge process like Desalination which takes a lot of energy and space to work.

Once you start pressure washing the salt would be soluble and now in suspension in the water, hard to get it back out, the filters would not take the salt out otherwise everyone close to the beach or on islands could just use ocean water with some cheap filters and make drinking water.

It would be nice if there was an inexpensive process.

Maybe the best way would be with vacuum recovery and treat the water then with proper approval beforehand, send the treated water through the sanitary sewer system.