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Basement bare floor prep. Endless silt.

2K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  joecaption 
#1 ·
The floors in my basement furnace room and storage room are mostly bare, super smooth concrete. There is some black mastic left in spots, from tiling that was removed years ago and I'm looking to put a coat of paint down to make it look a little better before we sell the house.

Last summer there was a bit of a flood in the basement and a whole lot of silt covered the floor. It was shop vac'd and mopped until it looked clean enough to our eyes.
Now I'm trying to prep it for paint and am having issues with an endless amount of dirt I'm picking up. I've been using Krud Cutter (alkaline degreaser) diluted at about 2 cups/gal and mopping with a sponge mop. Mopping on, letting it sit, and mopping again before mopping with rinse water. I started in the furnace room which is maybe 6x10 and have gone through at least 5 buckets with KC in them and at least another 6 buckets of just hot water....I still end up with brownish mop water. It just....doesn't....stop.

Is there any hope of me getting it clean enough to paint and still keeping my sanity? The dirty water has been getting lighter, but oh so slowly, and it's getting to be a drag having to change the mop bucket every 5 minutes.
Is there a better product I should be using? Should I just jack up the KC:water ratio and let it sit longer? Or would my best bet to be doing small sections on my hands and knees making sure to scrub and deep clean each bit? At which point I might say 'screw it' and not paint at all :(
 
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#2 ·
Not much else you can do. If you have a floor drain and have a squeegee you might have more luck pushing the slurry into the drain. It would go much faster than mopping. But, if you don't have a floor drain this idea doesn't help you.

All you can do is keep mopping until you're confident you got most of the dirt off the floor. Otherwise you will be painting over dirt/dust and will have adhesion problems.
 
#4 ·
I'm a fan of getting the floor wet with the mop to slop it around, using a stiff bristled brush to work it in and loosing the dirt, then using my big shop with the squeegee nozzle to suck it up.
I've found the mop just tends to move the dirt around.
 
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