SparkleWash Construction Services Newsroom
Yankton, SD — 10/3/2008 — Electrical crews go to (relatively) great heights to install a light atop one of the spires on the new Discovery Bridge on the south edge of Yankton. This photo was taken from the south side of the bridge on the road that will go through South Yankton, Neb. The dedication ceremony for the bridge is Oct. 11. For more information on the project, look for the special commemorative section in Saturday’s Press & Dakotan (Source: http://yankton.net).
Bayliss Fountain is Ready to Shine
By Tom Shaw - World-Herald Staff Writer - Friday, April 27th, 2007
COUNCIL BLUFFS -- After three years and a $4.8 million renovation, Bayliss Park again will be alive with cascading water and visitors.
For months, passers-by have seen the new modern-looking fountain. Come Saturday night, the water will start flowing.
A rededication ceremony is planned for 7 p.m. Saturday at the park, which is downtown between Pearl and South Sixth Streets.
Near the fountain is a new performance pavilian with a similar modern look. The fountain and the pavilion were designed by Brower Hatcher, an artist and sculptor from Providence, R.I.
About $2.1 million for the project came from the Iowa West Foundation and fundraising efforts netted $1.15 million. The rest of the money came from the city and the state. The Iowa West Foundation is supported by casino and investment income.
The park also has new features, including a kids play area with water-spraying jets. Near the fountain are new benches and several black squirrel sculptures. The black squirrel, a common sight in Council Bluffs, is the official mascot of the city.
After 34 years, the former park fountain had several major problems. The bricks were coming off, and the water pipes were deteriorating.
The new fountain is made of metal and has concentric flute shapes. It stands about 20 feet high. Lights will illuminate the fountain at night. The design was inspired by the park's original 1880s fountain, which now is at West Broadway and Pearl Street.
A concert will be held at 6 p.m. before the rededication event, and the Bluffs Big Band will perform.
R.H. Fanders, former drama teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School, will portray Samuel S. Bayliss, who donated the land for the park in 1853.
Profile - Shadow Lake Town Center
Papillion, Neb., (pop.18,000) is a small town, but there’s nothing small about the heavy hitters who’ve moved into the town’s brand new open-air mall.
Shadow Lake Town Center’s list of 45 nationally known retailers and restaurants includes JCPenney, Best Buy, PetSmart, Victoria’s Secret, Old Chicago and more.
The stores, shops and eateries sport masonry and concrete cladding nearly as varied as the mall tenants themselves. Building fabrics include multiple colors of clay brick, architectural block, cast stone, precast concrete and colored mortars—many in the same wall!
Craig Christensen’s challenge was to clean the excess mortar and job site soiling from each of the storefronts as the masons built them. It was a challenge because clay brick, concrete block, precast and cast stone all have different tolerances for the low-pH cleaners needed to remove the excess mortar.
Mr. Christensen is president of the Masonry Division of Sparklewash International, Omaha, Neb.He and his technicians met the challenge in two ways.
First, they chose a cleaner safe enough to use on the most sensitive substrates on the building—Sure Klean® Vana Trol®, diluted 1 part product to 8 parts clean water.
The same mild blend of surfactants, wetting agents and small amounts of purified food-grade acids that enable Vana Trol® to clean light-colored brick, while controlling vanadium staining, also made Vana Trol® appropriate for the other substrates at Shadow Lake Town Center.
Second, they cleaned before the excess mortar had a chance to get too hard. Waiting 14 to 21 days to clean gave the new mortar joints time to cure. It didn’t give the mortar smears and splotches time enough to get hard as the substrate.
Even though it’s relatively mild, Vana Trol was still strong enough to easily remove the young excess mortar.
Starting in Fall 2006, the crew cleaned about 1,800 square feet per day through early Spring ‘07—except for one six-week stretch in January and February when it was too cold for effective cleaning.
Their procedure never varied: drench the masonry; apply the cleaner; let it chew up the excess mortar for 6 or 7 minutes; then rinse the spent cleaner and dissolved contaminants off the wall—again with massive amounts of water.
“The more water you use in pre-wetting and rinsing, the greater your margin of safety as far as possible etching of the most sensitive surfaces,” Mr. Christensen said.
It also helped that the masons did a good, clean job of laying the masonry, he said. That meant Mr. Christensen and crew could use less cleaner and milder dilutions.
In all, the crew cleaned about 144,000 square feet of newly laid mixed masonry, Christensen said, just in time for the summer shopping season.
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Water is key at fire station #3
No blaze would’ve stood a chance against the flood of water the Sparklewash International crew unleashed on the building. But it wasn’t fire they drenched—it was a fire station.
“Water is the key,” said Bob Walters, of Sparklewash International of central Minnesota. Mr. Walters and his crew u sed it, along with Sure Klean® Vana Trol®, to remove excess mortar and job site soiling from the newly constructed SBM Fire Station #3 in 2006.
Though located in the southeastern Minnesota town of Blaine, the station also serves the nearby communities of Spring Lake Park and Mounds View.
Clad in a maroon brick and trimmed with limestone by Northland Concrete and Masonry Company, Burnsville, Minn., the $7 million station boasts 35,000 square feet of administrative offices, apparatus bays and some of the most advanced training facilities in the state.
“We chose masonry for the exterior because of its longevity and durability,” said project architect Dan Pellinen, Tushie Montgomery Architects, Minneapolis. “Our clients wanted masonry too, because it portrays the standards they expect from private developers. They wanted to set an example of construction that was above the bar.”
Sparklewash’s Spring ‘06 new-construction clean down of the masonry exterior was one of the final steps before the station’s September ‘06 grand opening. Mr. Walters chose Vana Trol® for the job for two reasons. One was that the stone supplier specified Vana Trol® for new construction clean-down.
The other reason—“In my experience, it’s just better for cleaning limestone than anything else,” Mr. Walters said.
Vana Trol® takes its name from the words “vanadium” and “control.” It refers to the fact the cleaner’s blend of detergents, wetting agents and tiny amounts of purified, food-grade acid is mild enough to not affect the naturally occurring vanadium salts found in some light-colored masonry.
Improperly cleaned with muriatic acid, for example, the vanadium salts can dissolve, creating ugly green stains on the masonry.
Though neither the red brick nor the limestone on Fire Station #3 carried vanadium salts, Vana Trol®’s mild, yet effective nature made it highly appropriate to take the excess mortar off both red brick and limestone trim. As the most sensitive substrate on the building, the limestone dictated the cleaner, Mr. Walters said. The Vana Trol® was supplied by Construction Midwest Inc. (CMI), in New Hope, Minn.
Cleaning began with pre-wetting the masonry. Mr. Walters’ technicians opened the floodgates of their patented Sparklewash pressure washers, putting 10 gallons per minute on the wall, with an “at the wall” pressure of about 200-300 psi. They applied Vana Trol®, diluted one part product with eight parts water using Sparklewash low-pressure spray e quipment. While the cleaner “dwelled” on the wall, between 3 and 8 minutes, the crew scraped off the occasional heavy smears and splotches of mortar.
Then, they rinsed away the dissolved contaminants and spent cleaner, again using massive amounts of water, but extremely low pressure.
The water is key to successful cleaning, Mr. Walters explained. Pre-wetting ensures the cleaner doesn’t soak into the masonry, but instead stays on the surface where it attacks the excess mortar.
A weak rinse afterward can leave some of the dissolved mortar and spent cleaner on the wall, where it may dry into an ugly gray residue. “You can see from the photo that didn’t happen here,” Mr. Walters said. “That’s why we use lots of water.”
In a perfect world, the masonry clean down happens before doors and windows are installed, and sidewalks, driveways and other exterior concrete are poured.
The reason is that run off and wind drift from the cleaning can affect those surfaces.
Construction schedules don’t always allow for “perfect world” scenarios, unfortunately, and that was the case at Fire Station #3. By the time the Sparklewash crew got up to bat, doors, windows and sidewalks were already installed.
And had to be protected. Doors and windows were easy, Mr. Walters said. Tried-and-true tape and plastic sheeting shielded the exterior fittings from stray drops of water and cleaner.
That, however, was impractical protection for the relatively large expanses of walkway and driveway fronting parts of the building.
“We protected those areas with a spray of Sparklewash’s high-alkaline truck detergent,” Mr. Walters said. “Any of the low pH cleaner or runoff that happened to contact the concrete was instantly neutralized by the high pH truck detergent.
The inevitable job site competition for space with other trades could also have hampered the cleaning operation—but it didn’t.
“We just did what we could where we were,” Mr. Walters said. “When the other workers went home at 3:30, we moved into their areas and got our job done. We ate our lunches on the run,” he said, “and worked 12-hour days, but only two of them. It could’ve taken us five days if we’d waited our turn during normal working hours.”
In all, the men cleaned about 22,000 square feet of brick and stone.
How did the masonry look by job’s end?
“It sparkled, of course,” Mr. Walters said. “That’s why they call us Sparklewash.”
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When SparkleWash International contractor Craig Christensen, Omaha, Neb., cleaned the simulated river stone exterior of Cabela’s, Omaha, he got on the job site right away to examine the rounded, multi-colored concrete stones.
He got samples and took them to his shop. The stones came in eight colors. Christensen tested cleaners on each one. He found six of the stones were integrally colored. They could be vigorously cleaned. The other two sported a cementitious surface coating to give them their color. The procedure that worked on the other stones washed color out of these two.
After his shop tests, Christensen field-tested his new cleaning methods on a hidden spot of the Cabela’s wall. The knowledge from testing guided Christensen to a successful job. It was a project that could’ve easily tripped up someone less thorough.
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The New Rules: Always test before overall cleaning
Cleaning today’s relatively new concrete masonries like simulated stone and concrete brick differs from cleaning clay masonry. Clay masonry can usually withstand the more aggressive cleaners needed to dissolve hardened mortar smears. But even clay masonries now vary enough to require specialized cleaning procedures.
It gets even more complicated when you consider that many of today’s buildings increasingly are mixtures of different types of masonry. A typical example is the Municipal Building, Edgewood, Ky., completed in 2006.
It has red and gray clay brick, cream-colored architectural block, cast stone and precast concrete. You’ve likely seen and worked on such buildings.
Long gone are the days when masonry meant red clay brick and gray mortar only. Long gone are the days of “one size fits all” postconstruction cleaning of new masonry. Cleaning that way now can mean disaster.
The good news: following a few simple guidelines can get you great results on even the most complicated walls of concrete, clay and stone, natural and manufactured.
1. Know your surface.
A reputable contractor cleaned a two-story brick office building in Indiana, in 2003. He used a proprietary product from a reputable manufacturer, and followed responsible procedures.
Too late, the contractor found he’d cleaned concrete brick, not clay. The powerful cleaner, safe for clay, pitted and bleached the concrete. He landed in court.
Concrete brick and manufactured stone often look like clay brick and natural stone—that’s the idea. But concrete and clay, and manufactured and natural stone differ in tolerances for cleaner-strength, type, and pressure-washer psi.
Cleaners for concrete products often have non-etching ingredients not used in their counterparts for clay masonry. The small amounts of acid(s) in cleaners for clay and concrete are usually different types, too—specialized for particular substrates. Even individual types of clay brick and natural stone have important differences. Some clay bricks have additives for color effects. An inappropriate cleaner can react with those additives causing hard-to-remove stains.
Cleaning limestone like it was granite or sandstone can etch or bleach. As soon as you get the job, get on site. Positively identify every substrate you’ll clean.
2. Always test before overall cleaning.
When SparkleWash International contractor Craig Christensen, Omaha, Neb., cleaned the simulated river stone exterior of Cabela’s, Omaha, he got on the job site right away to examine the rounded, multi-colored concrete stones.
He got samples and took them to his shop. The stones came in eight colors. Christensen tested cleaners on each one. He found six of the stones were integrally colored. They could be vigorously cleaned. The other two sported a cementitious surface coating to give them their color. The procedure that worked on the other stones washed color out of these two.
After his shop tests, Christensen field-tested his new cleaning methods on a hidden spot of the Cabela’s wall. The knowledge from testing guided Christensen to a successful job. It was a project that could’ve easily tripped up someone less thorough.
3. Use the mildest effective cleaner and dilution.
Cleaners for concrete masonry are gentler than their counterparts for clay. That’s because concrete masonry has some of the same components as the mortar films and smears that have to be removed.
The best concrete and manufactured stone cleaners are precisely balanced—strong enough to dissolve films and mortar smears that aren’t fully hardened, but safe enough not to harm the masonry. On a building that combines clay and concrete masonry, the cleaner made for clay might harm the concrete. But if you get to the job before the excess mortar has fully hardened, the gentle cleaner and dilution that’s safe for concrete will also clean the clay brick.
4. Clean early and quickly.
A masonry contractor in Indianapolis didn’t have enough water on site to clean his new concrete brick car dealership. He waited 60 days for a waterline and hydrant.
By then, the smears and films of the high-strength mortar were too hard for the relatively gentle cleaner to dissolve. The clean-down was ineffective. The general contractor’s idea: tear it down and rebuild, at a cost of $100,000—on the masonry contractor’s tab. Don’t give excess mortar a chance to become hard as the masonry. Get it off while it’s still relatively soft. Clean most concrete masonry within 7–21 days of installation. High-strength mortars and grouts are different. Clean those within 3–7 days.
Cleaners for clay brick are stronger than those for concrete products, so their cleaning window is 14 to 28 days. The principle is the same—the younger the excess mortar, the more easily it comes off. Don’t clean too early. You could damage the masonry joints.
5. Use the right cleaner for the right job.
How do you find right cleaner? Chances are the masonry manufacturer will be glad to tell you. Increasingly, manufacturers have their products tested by independent labs to see which cleaners and diutions work best.
That crucial info is often supplied by a pallet tag on every cube of masonry. If not, contact manufacturers for their recommendations on cleaning their products.
It’s in their interests to have projects come out looking as beautiful as you can make them.
6. Never clean with raw acid.
Once, raw acid was all there was. Since then, advances in the manufacture of masonry and other construction materials have made use of raw acids very dangerous. Muriatic acid in particular is impure, and highly aggressive. It can and has stained and etched nearly every type of masonry, landing many a contractor in trouble. Don’t use it!
7. The basics still apply—follow them.
A. Don’t spare the water. Lots of water is one of the secrets to a great masonry clean-down. Before applying the cleaner, drench the masonry (it’s called pre-wetting). That keeps the cleaner on the surface, where it does its job of dissolving excess mortar and job dirt. Use more water to rinse the spent cleaner and dissolved mortar and job dirt off the wall. No garden hose here. Weak rinsing leaves stains and residue. Ideally, rinse with 400–1,000 psi, 6-8 gallons per minute.
B. Clean bottom-to-top. Always keep lower areas wet to prevent streaking. A contractor in New Orleans began cleaning at the top of a building that featured red clay brick and red mortar above white cast stone. He paid no attention to keeping the areas beneath the cleaning wet.
The result? Reddish rundown from the cleaning soaked into the white cast stone, leaving nasty streaks. Remedial cleaning corrected it, but cost the contractor thousands of dollars and weeks of time and labor. Unlike other types of cleaning, masonry clean-down starts at the bottom and works up, keeping lower parts of walls wet. That stops rundown from penetrating. It’s important, if you plan to make money on the job.
C. Follow all product literature safety precautions. Many are common sense, like “wear eye protection.” Guidelines such as “don’t cut or alter these cleaners with other chemicals, or with bleaches” keep people and masonry safe. Use cleaners only as specified. Results may be unpredictable if you use the cleaner for anything else. Following safety guidelines helps keep your job site accident-free.
D. In cold-weather, remember the rule of 40 and Rising Best cleaning results come when air and surface temperatures are well above freezing. If construction schedules dictate otherwise, remember these tips. Water-saturated masonry is vulnerable to freeze/thaw damage. Don’t clean if masonry could freeze before drying. Cold slows the reactions chemical cleaners and rinse water need to work. Compensating with a stronger dilution can permanently damage the masonry—particularly today’s sensitive colored concrete and manufactured stone.
Instead, extend dwell time 10–20 percent. Scrub heavy soiling. Pre-wetting and rinsing with hot water also helps. Schedule wet cleaning when air and surface temperatures are 40°F and Rising. In cold weather this means you may have just a few hours around noon. Use the time before and after to scrape and brush off excess mortar and job dirt from the next day’s work area. Or, enclose the work area with polyethylene and warm it with space heaters. A final caution—warm weather test panels won’t work for cold weather cleaning. Test in cold to clean in cold.
E. Don’t go it alone. Never guess. Manufacturers, distributors, and sales reps are always happy to help. The right answer is often just a phone call away.
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