When I was in high school I worked as a pump jockey at the corner service
station -- that was back in the day before service bays were filled with
potato chips -- and was periodically charged with cleaning the floor of the
garage. As I recall we used a solvent and some kitty-litter like stuff to
hold the solution on the pitched concrete. Don't remember what the stuff
was, but do recall that it was supplied by the same big oil firm that
supplied the petrol for the pumps. Mixing some of this (now probably
regulated out of existence) solvent in a poultice is probably the ticket.
Now, of course, we need to ask what effect the solvent will have on the
brick.

If the answer to that question is "bad stuff", how about another trick I
learned on the farm? Steam cleaning. A really hot poultice -- a chemical
formula harmless to brick but sufficiently exothermic to reduce the
viscosity of the oil -- may draw out enough of the material to leave a clean
surface. And, if that doesn't work, how could steam be any worse than sand?

And, my last service station solution...a can of the specially-formulated
paint we used on the CMU walls of the garage to cover all the grease
splatters and hand prints. Colors seem to have been limited to grey and a
light blue, this stuff (which was also supplied by the refinery) stuck like
chewing gum to concrete.

The Shell Answer Man


-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Becker [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 1999 1:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Removing Oil from Brick Masonry


I don't know diddly about really doing this, having had no experience,
but... that has never stopped my kibitzing before, in spite of your
specific question.

My intuition is that it has been absorbed into the masonry, and you will
need to use some kind of poultice to draw it out.

How about microbe-infested kitty litter?

On July 13, 1999 1:34 PM, John Leeke
[SMTP:[log in to unmask]] wrote:
> Has anyone had experience removing oil from brick masonry:
> >how do you get oil off a brick
> >building, maybe three feet up the wall where it has been accumulating
> >for
> >many decades.