Thread: Removing Concrete Build Up From Shovels and Barrows

Soak the shovels in diesel in the wheel barrow for 1 week, remove, scrape of as much as you can then use a wire brush in a drill to clean up the rest, wash down with diluted acid ( if there is any really stubborn bits, apply neat acid and wire brush off). Wipe every thing with a rage soaked in diesel and you wont get any rust between uses.

I have known concretors to go to a sand blasting business and pay them to do it.

Hit the side of the barrow with a hammer, old brickie method.

Chip it off with a hammer then go after what's left with a wire brush. Then next time you work concrete remember how well you enjoy chipping off the dried concrete and you'll be more likely to wash it off proper.

ron

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

Hit the side of the barrow with a hammer, old brickie method.

Good for brick mortar, problem is you end up with a dimpled wheel barrow that "grabs" concrete and mortar and you end up with an even harder job cleaning it. That brickies method is only a lazy brickies method.

Originally Posted by Kidbee

Over a period of time I have had concrete getting affixed to my shovels and the inside of my wheelbarrow. Yes, I probably should have cleaned them better in the first place.

Any tips on how to easily get the concrete coatings off?

i have found hitting them with a bit of heat quite effective ... i assume the metal expands and breaks the concrete off (i have used an old kero blowlamp, a propane gas weed burner and even with a shovel just a small fire out in the open)

regards david

We once had a team of Cement Renderers on a job. They were a father and son and one more bloke. They had worked together for years. The third bloke did the mixing and scaffolds and stuff. Of an afternoon he would gather the barrows and shovels and run the hose over them and the mixer got a couple of buckets of water thrown at it. Fridays though, he would gather all the gear and bash the build up off everything ("dry clean"), shovels, barrows and mixer with a lump hammer.....and yes all the gear reflected this practice. I once asked the father why he did it that way and he replied he had tried a number of times to get him to do a better job daily but he just kept on his own ritual. They were good at their job but there gear didn't reflect their plastering abilities

I have found that if you leave a small amount on today it will keep attracting more as time goes on. So keeping the gear clean is a daily affair. I have used a diamond wheel in a 115mm angle grinder an easy solution to a lot of build up, as well as acid

Mythbusters did an episode on the myth of using explosives to clean out a concrete truck... they ended the episode by putting in 850lbs of dynamite into the mixer. Nothing much left of the truck..

Mythbusters Cement Truck Blow Up - YouTube

I find hosing eveything down works, plus I don't have the mythbusters explosives budget.

Ray

Just to ad to Ray's comment.....hosing isn't enough. I use a stiff scrubbing brush with the hose to wash up. Just hosing won't remove a "cloudy coating" of cement that is on the surface. To leave the coating on will only promote more to buildup

Originally Posted by rwbuild

Good for brick mortar, problem is you end up with a dimpled wheel barrow that "grabs" concrete and mortar and you end up with an even harder job cleaning it. That brickies method is only a lazy brickies method.

Funny you should mention lazy brickies. My first holiday job on a building site was chipping out the mixers and I don't mean inside. The brickies would use them for mixing mortar until all that was showing was a few bit of machinery. This was well over fifty years ago and I'm sure they are more careful these days.

There are many products that will dissolve concrete without dissolving metal.

Some like the Speedy Clean Concrete Dissolver contains 30% Gycolic acid.

Here is one from VEK tools called Crete Off
CRETE OFF Concrete Dissolver With Sprayer-5l

Here is another from At Work supplies
DISCRETE - CONCRETE REMOVER | At Work Supplies WA

Bob, I like the name Discrete.

Originally Posted by chambezio

Just to ad to Ray's comment.....hosing isn't enough. I use a stiff scrubbing brush with the hose to wash up. Just hosing won't remove a "cloudy coating" of cement that is on the surface. To leave the coating on will only promote more to buildup

Thanks for that tip..

Ray

Originally Posted by chambezio

Just to ad to Ray's comment.....hosing isn't enough. I use a stiff scrubbing brush with the hose to wash up. Just hosing won't remove a "cloudy coating" of cement that is on the surface. To leave the coating on will only promote more to buildup

I used to have a concrete garden edging business (I had to stop when my back gave in). It was the job of my hired helper to clean the gear and repack it into the trailer at the end of the job. I would always work with a new worker for the first couple of days to make sure they knew how to clean everything, including the need for the stiff brush.

Almost every time I left them to do it themselves they immediately got slack and stopped using the brush. They regretted it when they found their sorry selves with their heads inside the bell shape of the concrete mixer bowl with an angle grinder under my house on a Saturday morning after a Friday night on the town. One dose of that and they either learned the lesson or quit. Either way I was happy.

Cheers

Doug