Removing Oil Stains on Driveway

[Ace A.]

Hi,

Does anyone on BP have any experience with removing oil stain on a concrete driveway? I have a tenant in place, and I went over to the property and noticed a huge 3 foot radius oil stain on my driveway.

How hard is it to repair?

Is it a big deal to bug the tenant to repair or the fix is so major, I can just do it when they move out?

Here's a sample of what it looks like.

[Pat L.]

From my experience (& my organic chem minor) you can't scrub established oil and grease stains away. So the strategy is to draw the grease & oils out of the concrete.

Try this:

1oz of trisodium phosphate (or the TSP substitute since they have banned PO4), a cup of water and a cup of the 'powdered' cat litter to produce a thick paste. (Don the required eye protection and rubber gloves).

Spread it over the stains & as the TSP soaks into the stain it should break up the old oil, and the absorbent base captures it. Once the paste has completely dried out most of the oil residue should have been captured by the cat litter. Repeat for heavy/old stains.

In the old days Na3PO4 worked like a charm.

good luck