Motor oil and grease can leak from cars onto the ground below them causing noticeable and ugly stains.
Catch Oil From Dripping On Your Garage Floor With Cardboard
Soaking up fresh motor oil drips and spills from your garage floor, driveway or walk is easy to do with kitty litter.
Actually, the cheapest type of kitty litter is best for this purpose, and you just sprinkle it all over the oil which has dripped or spilled and let it sit in for a while.
You may also find it helpful to either rub the kitty litter in, with either a rough brush or stepping on it with your feet.
This helps break up all the big clumps of kitty litter and gets them in close contact with the spilled oil that you want soaked up and off your garage floor.
Once the litter has sat on the fresh spill for a while, for several hours to overnight, you can sweep it up with a broom and throw it away.
This will get rid of the viscous liquid part of the stain, but now you'll have to deal with the stains that are left behind in the concrete floor.
The video below gives tips for how to remove oil stains from concrete.
This is unfortunately a common occurrence if a car has parked on the driveway that leaks motor oil.
Once you notice this has occurred the quicker you act, the better, because concrete is a porous surface and the oil will get down in all the pores and cracks.
The more it seeps into the surface of the concrete the harder it will be to remove.
The ingredients you will need to remove the oil and grease stains from your concrete include:
by Dave
Below is a video from Lowes which gives additional tips for how to clean oil from concrete, and also goes on to provide more general tips about cleaning your driveway (or bricks) with a pressure washer.
The instructions for cleaning the oil stains off the driveway are similar to those listed above, except instead of sharing a home remedy Lowe's suggests using commercially available products.
To remove the stains the video suggests using a heavy duty cleaner and degreaser, along with a stiff utility brush. First, you spray the cleaner on as directed, let it sit for the directed amount of time, and then scrub it with the stiff brush.
Next, after cleaning the stains themselves the video shares how to clean the driveway in general, using a pressure washer. It gives good advice for how close the tip of the pressure washer should be to the surface you're cleaning. (Too close, and you'll harm the surface from the high pressure).
For pressure washers with PSI of 2200-3000, hold the want 8-18 inches from the surface.
For pressure washers over PSI of 3000 hold the wand 12-30 inches form the surface.
To pressure wash the driveway the video suggests adding the detergent to the pressure washer (must be a detergent designed for pressure washers), spray it on, let it sit for 5-10 minutes for concrete and 20 minutes for brick.
During this waiting period don't let the detergent dry onto the surface, and then rinse with the pressure washer.
Please note that brick is more fragile than concrete so for the entire pressure washing process you must be using less pressure than for concrete, or you'll harm the surface!
Here are the products suggested within the video to use for general cleaning, and for removing oil stains from concrete:
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Hi, I'm Taylor, a busy mom with 3 kids, so I have lots of hands on experience with house cleaning, laundry and my fair share of spots, spills and other messy catastrophes. Thanks for visiting my site.
I update the website all the time with tips, tutorials, cleaning recipes, reviews of products from readers like you, and tests I've done on various cleaners, removers and laundry supplies.
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CAUTION: This website is provided for informational purposes only. It is provided as is, without warranties or guarantees. Some stains and messes just won't come out, and are permanent. Further, some cleaning methods can harm your item, so if what you want to clean or launder is sentimental or expensive call a professional. See disclaimer of liability for more information.
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