Suggestions for removing strong VOC smell from concrete slab?

[MasterCarpet]

I've got a customer with a large open finished event area. A construction company did some sort of coating removal on the concrete a couple weeks ago. It left a strong solvent type of odor. It's pretty bad. My customer even rinsed it himself with a home carpet cleaner. I don't often use ozone, but I have an ozone machine so I let him borrow it for a few days so he could experiment with it for different durations and see if anything worked. He called me today and said it's still pretty bad. I had suggested to him that if the ozone didn't work, I could try rinsing all the concrete with my tile spinner. So tomorrow I am going to go there. Thinking I'll just prespray with some saiger sauce and bump the heat and psi up and see how it goes. It's not a highly polished concrete or anything, it's just like the type you would see in a garage, and now apparently with no coatings on it. I thought about putting some saiger cide in the prespray. Although he didn't want any more smells in it, I think the smell from saigercide wouldn't really linger. He's going to have some clients to visit here in a week or two so I've got a bit of time to figure something out if it doesn't get the odor out tomorrow. Thanks everyone.

 

[Dwain Ray]

I've got a customer with a large open finished event area. A construction company did some sort of coating removal on the concrete a couple weeks ago. It left a strong solvent type of odor. It's pretty bad. My customer even rinsed it himself with a home carpet cleaner. I don't often use ozone, but I have an ozone machine so I let him borrow it for a few days so he could experiment with it for different durations and see if anything worked. He called me today and said it's still pretty bad. I had suggested to him that if the ozone didn't work, I could try rinsing all the concrete with my tile spinner. So tomorrow I am going to go there. Thinking I'll just prespray with some saiger sauce and bump the heat and psi up and see how it goes. It's not a highly polished concrete or anything, it's just like the type you would see in a garage, and now apparently with no coatings on it. I thought about putting some saiger cide in the prespray. Although he didn't want any more smells in it, I think the smell from saigercide wouldn't really linger. He's going to have some clients to visit here in a week or two so I've got a bit of time to figure something out if it doesn't get the odor out tomorrow. Thanks everyone.

Without seeing and just furnishing an educated guess I would probably try a degreaser with a floor buffer and stiff bristled brush vacuum off and thoroughly rinse maybe something as simple as dawn dish soap(youll need defoamer if you use dawn). I would however pre-qualify the job as a fixin someone else's mistake and have no guarantee or okie guarantee ( if it breaks they get to keep all the pieces(for same price) ). Dawn would be my first choice, if you need something stronger maybe step up to a Zep product but i would be hesitant to use products that would add additional smells/ odors . Home depot has several degreaser options in the cleaning products isle and you can unscrew the caps and take a smell before you buy

 

[Jim Pemberton]

I've got a customer with a large open finished event area. A construction company did some sort of coating removal on the concrete a couple weeks ago. It left a strong solvent type of odor. It's pretty bad. My customer even rinsed it himself with a home carpet cleaner. I don't often use ozone, but I have an ozone machine so I let him borrow it for a few days so he could experiment with it for different durations and see if anything worked. He called me today and said it's still pretty bad. I had suggested to him that if the ozone didn't work, I could try rinsing all the concrete with my tile spinner. So tomorrow I am going to go there. Thinking I'll just prespray with some saiger sauce and bump the heat and psi up and see how it goes. It's not a highly polished concrete or anything, it's just like the type you would see in a garage, and now apparently with no coatings on it. I thought about putting some saiger cide in the prespray. Although he didn't want any more smells in it, I think the smell from saigercide wouldn't really linger. He's going to have some clients to visit here in a week or two so I've got a bit of time to figure something out if it doesn't get the odor out tomorrow. Thanks everyone.

These things are complicated to solve, but a few things I know about this type of issue might help.

1. Avoid using ozone when dealing with VOC issues. The nature of how ozone works can create new and potentially worse VOC issues when ozone gas interacts with whatever you are dealing with there.

2. Cleaning in the way you are suggesting might help. If you are using a truck mount (most spinner use is with truck mounts, though sometimes high pressure portables are used........DO NOT USE A PORTABLE FOR THIS....it will spread the contaminants in the interior air) you will be removing some of the VOC source material and the truck mount will remove it out of the structure.

3. Skip the deodorizer. It won't help, and it could annoy him when he's already in a state of anxiety.

4. If you own (or have access to) air scrubbers with carbon filters, these will help this situation a great deal. If you don't, then open as many doors and windows as you can and just "airwash" the house as best as possible. If you have several airmovers, set them up blowing IN, not out. It is challenging to exhaust bad odors out, but far easier to introduce large volumes of fresh air in, which should displace the contaminated air.

Do you know what chemical was used to remove the coating? If you can share that, it could help.

 

[MasterCarpet]

These things are complicated to solve, but a few things I know about this type of issue might help.

1. Avoid using ozone when dealing with VOC issues. The nature of how ozone works can create new and potentially worse VOC issues when ozone gas interacts with whatever you are dealing with there.

2. Cleaning in the way you are suggesting might help. If you are using a truck mount (most spinner use is with truck mounts, though sometimes high pressure portables are used........DO NOT USE A PORTABLE FOR THIS....it will spread the contaminants in the interior air) you will be removing some of the VOC source material and the truck mount will remove it out of the structure.

3. Skip the deodorizer. It won't help, and it could annoy him when he's already in a state of anxiety.

4. If you own (or have access to) air scrubbers with carbon filters, these will help this situation a great deal. If you don't, then open as many doors and windows as you can and just "airwash" the house as best as possible. If you have several airmovers, set them up blowing IN, not out. It is challenging to exhaust bad odors out, but far easier to introduce large volumes of fresh air in, which should displace the contaminated air.

Do you know what chemical was used to remove the coating? If you can share that, it could help.

Thanks for the response. I didn’t know how well the ozone would work but figured it was worth a shot. Me and him were both researching how to use it safely. We both figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. I’ve only used the machine for personal use a time or two.

I will be using a butler so no worries on the fumes. I also wish that I could’ve gotten the specific chemical that was used, but he isn’t quite sure. There’s a high of 58 here tomorrow, the warmest it’s been in awhile, so it’ll be a good day for me to be able to open up windows and doors and blow air. It’s been so cold recently that the place had to be pretty much closed up the past 2 weeks. Will go at it tomorrow with the spinner and a bit of detergent and see what happens.

 

[BIG WOOD]

What has the temperature in that room been since that voc was used?

 

[BIG WOOD]

The first thing I would do is Force off gassing by raising that room temp to 85F, lay down an air scrubber or two, and if possible, create negative air pressure with the exhaust going outside