Cleaning Concrete 2013

This week I had the pleasure of meeting David & Lynne in Acampo, California. I received a telephone call from Lynne asking me for a quote on concrete cleaning. She went on to explain that the concrete was located in a garage and it was a rental property that they owned. When asked 'why' they wanted the garage floor to be cleaned she said the previous tenant owned (7) dogs and they had urinated all over the garage floor. As is my custom I suggested that we meet so that I could measure, test, and inspect the floor. She too thought this was a good idea and mentioned that out of all the professional cleaners she had called I was the only one who offered a FREE in home estimate.

After arriving at the rental I met with her husband David and he promptly escorted me to the garage. The garage was approximately 600 square feet and had definite smell of dog urine. It also had what appeared to be a large glue spill that was about 2 feet in diameter. There were obvious oil stains, and paint spills. Needless to say the garage floor needed some serious help. According to David when he first walked into the garage it wreaked of Clorox Bleach. The smell of bleach was gone but the smell of dog pee had returned. The bleach did not erase the smell because bleach can not kill odor causing bacteria. It merely bleaches the bacteria white making the difficult to see.

After a careful inspection of the floor and asking the client about the floor I was then prepared to properly diagnose how to best solve the client's problems with this garage floor. I gave them a step by step plan and told him it was going to take me about (4) hours to complete. Because of the severity of the pet urine no 'over the counter' process was going to work, and if he tried to use his power washer it would most likely damage the concrete. We were the best option even though we were the most expensive option. Most of DIY information that they had gleaned from google searches and I was able to explain to them why and it made sense to them.  This rental property needed a lot of work in order to make it rentable again and even though we were more expensive than the DIY advice we were the only game in town that could not only fix the urine smell but remove the glue, oil, paint, etc. restoring the garage floor to like new condition. As I have said many times before "Good things aren't cheap and cheap things aren't good." 

Michael Hull - Owner