How to clean a gallon of spilled guardz from a concrete driveway:
1) use your favorite expletive, acknowledging your disbelief that there is gallon of high adhesion, fast drying primer in direct sun and on the concrete.
2) After the shock, which lasts a couple seconds, the fight or flight mechanism in your hypothalamus area of the brain should kick in, if not, you've used high voc paint too long and probably can't read an entire sentence anyway.
3) Assess what items you have available that will aid in the cleanup. If you have a brand new box of wiping rags, you'll just have to bite the bullet here. And, a couple bucks on rags is a lot cheaper than letting that stuff dry too long. Do you have access to water? A hose? A bucket to contain and carry water? Its no time to be picky, grab that old 5er and get some water in it.
4) Ok, get the excess primer soaked up with your rags, or a dirty shirt, towels, your socks, something. This is crucial. You can't have all that runoff going all over the place. Containment is the name of the game.
5) Once you're left with the primer slowly bonding to the concrete, get water on that stuff. This will help slow down the drying and bonding process, and will buy you some valuable time.
6) If you made it to this point, you're a survivor, and true paint warrior. But you're not done. Nope. This last step is what separates pros from wannabes. If you stopped now, your left with a big horrible spot on your customers beautiful driveway.
7) Here you must make a judgment call, based on the existing concrete and its condition. If its brand new or coated with a stain product you might be screwed, or at the least, you may be paying for a refinishing. If you are lucky and what is more typical is that the condition is decent, but has weathered a bit and probably has some rust, oil, or other stains that will help you out considerably.
8) You need something to rub that primer out of the grooves of the concrete. A deck cleaning brush might work, but I've found they don't perform too well. Some jerk told me to try a pressure washer, but then would have to take over an hour to get it and by that time the coating would be dried too much. I'd suggest a wire brush. Nothing will work as good to get in there and work that coating out of the concrete. And, if you keep the surface wet as you should, you won't create too many scratch marks. Scrubbing with the grain of the concrete will also help.H
9) Hopefully after all this, you will have the driveway fully cleaned up to where the customer will never know what horror occurred. If they are home at the time and they discover the situation while you are cleaning it up and feeling stupid, well, godspeed. Try to blame it on your helper if possible.
10) Never set a gallon of guardz or other coating on top of boxes high up in your extended cab so when you open the door it falls out.
Is this the voice of a recent experiance?
