hi my name is travis michaelson i'm the owner of integrity cleaning systems here in the phoenix arizona market and what i want to do today is talk to you about how to get oil out of your driveway and this is kind of personal to me because i just i have a van obviously and my van just had a pretty major transmission leak one of the seals started leaking i leaked out almost two quarts of transmission oil all over my driveway and i started getting fined by my hoa so i got into the concrete cleaning to get it taken care of but then i i thought you know what would my customers do if they ran into this problem and i know a lot of you the first thing you're going to do is you're going to go to youtube and see what the youtube experts have to say about fixing any problem and that's what i did i wanted to see what you would be seeing and what i found was there was basically three different ideas or three different recommendations that you can find on youtube the first one was to use some type of degreaser a lot of people talked about dawn dawn's very good to dish soap for degreasing they would say apply it to the oil scrub it with a stiff brush pressure wash it and you're done and it's fixed i saw some other people this one might sound a little bit strange but i'll tell you why they recommended using coca-cola they say the same thing shake up the bottle of coca-cola get it real fizzy put it down on the spot scrub it with the brush pressure wash it off and then some people talked about they and they actually talked about some different products but they all fit into this category called a poultice which i'll explain more what that is in just a second so what i found was i looked at this advice is they're all pretty much right but they're also very incomplete see each one of these handles one problem with oil in the driveway but i pretty much can almost guarantee that if you've got oil on your driveway you've got at least two problems and maybe three and if you only apply one of these you're not going to be addressing all the problems that you have so i want to do is help you understand the problems that actually exist and a system to get you the best possible results using one two or all three of these of how to get that stain out of your driveway especially if you're being fined by your hoa like i was because that is a major pain all right so what i want to do is i'm going to draw you a side view of a piece of concrete i'm not an artist i'm a cleaner so forgive me for this but what we're going to do is this is a piece of concrete looking at it from the side and in this concrete it's got all these little pores and veins and things at the very porous absorbent product now if your concrete happens to be polished or if it's sealed or if you got an epoxy coating over it the pores aren't open but you're also probably not watching this video because you're not going to have a problem with oil stains so if you're here you've probably got a standard driveway that has pores in it when that's part of what's creating the problem so what will happen is your car will leak oil and it's going to get right here on the surface you're going to get this oil stain right here on the surface but if that sits there long enough it's going to start to absorb into the concrete and depending on how much oil spilled and how long it's there it can absorb pretty deep into the pores of the concrete okay now let me break down what these actually did dawn a degreaser what that will do is it's going to come in and when you apply it to the oil and you scrub it and you pressure wash it it's going to take care of that oil on the surface of the driveway now if you got to pretty quick and that's all it wasn't had a chance to absorb into the concrete yet and you're probably going to be done easy day congratulations but if it sat there for a while and it started to absorb into this concrete itself this is only going to the dawn's only going to remove the surface oils it's not going to do anything for the oils that absorb into the concrete so that's the first step and you always want to do that one first and find out if it fixes the problem once you get that surface oil gone if it's still there you go to one of these next two steps now the coca-cola has nothing to do with it being coca-cola and has nothing to do with it being carbonated what it's all about is coca-cola is a pretty strong acid and what the acid is going to do is it's going to etch off a thin layer of the concrete it's going to open up the pores which will help the concrete release more oil that's why they recommend using coca-cola there is a problem and a disclaimer that i want to give you even though a lot of the other videos don't talk about this but whenever you use an acid on a natural stone which concrete is it etches the stone it changes the appearance of the stone you'll get an at what's called an acid staining i mean some people actually have acid spray on stone to make it more colorful and to give it different colors than the standard gray so it is going to change the surface of the stone and especially when it rains it's going to become obvious that that part of the concrete is different than the rest of the concrete now in my opinion it looks a lot better than a big oil stain but don't utilize the coca-cola or an acid step if you're not willing to have that part of the concrete look a little bit different than the rest of the concrete after you're done removing the oil okay so when it opens up those pores it then enables the concrete to release more soil more oil and then the poultice and here's what a poultice is a poultice is basically a mud mask for your natural stone or concrete and just like when ladies or men apply a mud mask to their face and as that mask dries it starts to pull impurities out of our pores into the mud mask and then you wash the mud off your face and it cleaned out your pores well poultice does the same thing it's this product that you put across the surface of the concrete and it's kind of in a gel or almost a paint consistency and you let it sit there and depending on what climate you're in it can sit there for a day or so but you want to let it sit there until it completely dries now within each poultice there's a product that's going to break down the oil and there's a product that dries and as it goes in and breaks down the oil and then as it dries it lifts the oil up to the surface bringing some directly into the poultice and then some just closer to the surface so what you may do is you may use a poultice and pull some oil up you sweep the poultice away or pressure wash it away and you come back to the alkaline cleaning step and you clean it again because now it brought more oil to the surface and then if it's not all gone don't do another acid step only do this once if you do it at all come back to the poultice apply another coating on it let it sit there for another day or 12 hours or however long it takes to dry pull more oil up to the surface pressure wash it away if there's still a stain go back to the dawn clean it make sure you got as much of the oil at the surface off as you can and then go back to the poultice and you can keep repeating this cycle until either it gets to the point where you can deal with the visual appearance of it or until it stops responding or until it's all gone now the bad news is if it gets all the way down into the base of the concrete you're probably not going to be able to pull it all out with the poultice it's not going to you're just not going to get to it so you may see some staining no matter what but it will be much lighter however that's in extreme situations a lot of times you will get all of it out through a repeated application of going to the poultice to the dawn to the poultice to the dawn or degreaser so underneath this video in my blog i'll describe how i make my own poultice because it's cheaper than you can purchase and it'll also give all of these in an area where you can like print it out so you'll have all the steps down but this is the basic way to apply all of the recommended steps you can find on youtube in a system that makes sense to give you the best possible results at getting this out of your concrete now if you just simply don't want to deal with this yourself or if you have other things or it's a big area and you'd rather hire a professional if you live in the greater phoenix arizona market feel free to give me a call my number is going to appear on the video right now i'll be happy to come out and help you out with it if you're not in my market find a cleaner in your area that specializes in natural stone and concrete and they'll probably know the same thing that i know and they'll be able to help you get the best possible results have a great day and all the