Block paving - shaving foam stain

Delambre

Hi,

During the recent cold snap my wife decided to use shaving foam on the inside of the car windows to stop them fogging up. The jury is out on whether that worked, but she also managed to spray some foam on our block driveway. It’s left some unsightly white stains everywhere and they don’t come up with water / scrubbing. 

Any bright ideas on how I can get the stain out??

seanfos

Can you lift the blocks and turn them over?

Sean

FreeBear

seanfos said: Can you lift the blocks and turn them over?

Many paving blocks have a chamfer on the top face only, so flipping over will look odd.

CliveOfIndia

FreeBear said:

seanfos said: Can you lift the blocks and turn them over?

Many paving blocks have a chamfer on the top face only, so flipping over will look odd.

If you do have blocks that are not symmetrical top to bottom, then one option is to swap the stained blocks for some from a less conspicuous area (e.g. a side somewhere).

But to try cleaning them, what can often work quite well is to mix up a thin paste of laundry detergent, scrub that in then rinse it off thoroughly.  No guarantees, but it can often help.  Might be worth trying a small test patch first, just in case it ends up leaving marks of its own!

twopenny

Or you could treat the rest of the blocks the same? 
I'll just add to an interesting post that Milton fluid also stains.
I had a bottle to get rid of and squirted the weeds in the driveway drain. It got rid of the weeds, a good thing,  but i have a bleached stain of a trickle from the bottle on my tarmaced drive. 
So far it's not weathering out.
Just a warning.

rob7475

I can't believe nobody's asked - how did she see out of the windows if they were covered in shaving foam? 

A simpler solution to stop the windows fogging are bags of silica gel beads. You can get large bags that you leave in your car. I have one in the wife's car that hardly gets used and it works pretty well. The beads change colour when they have absorbed as much moisture as they can and you just pop the bag in the microwave for 5 minutes to dry it out and reuse.

SpudGunPaul

rob7475 said:

I can't believe nobody's asked - how did she see out of the windows if they were covered in shaving foam? 

A simpler solution to stop the windoes fogging are bags of silica gel beads. You can get large bags that you leave in your car. I have one in the wife's car that hardly gets used and it works pretty well. The beads change colour when they have absorbed as much moisture as they can and you just pop the bag in the microwave for 5 minutes to dry it out and reuse.

Where did you get it from? I could do with one thanks. 

rob7475

SpudGunPaul said:

rob7475 said:

I can't believe nobody's asked - how did she see out of the windows if they were covered in shaving foam? 

A simpler solution to stop the windoes fogging are bags of silica gel beads. You can get large bags that you leave in your car. I have one in the wife's car that hardly gets used and it works pretty well. The beads change colour when they have absorbed as much moisture as they can and you just pop the bag in the microwave for 5 minutes to dry it out and reuse.

Where did you get it from? I could do with one thanks. 

I picked up one in Tesco. Think it was £8.You can get them on Amazon but they look to be more expensive on there

Postik

Strange that is has left white stains.  Shaving foam can be used as an oven cleaner, so I heard, because it sits in the same spot for a long period and contains water and alcohol.  Although when I looked recently most brands are now "sensitive" and don't contain alcohol so I suspect the cleaning properties are diminished.

Are you sure the spots that are left aren't where it has cleaned the block, and actually it's all the other blocks that are dirty?

The only things I could think of trying are to pressure wash it, or perhaps try scrubbing vinegar on the marks.

As an aside I remember getting gloss paint on an old patio of mine many moons ago. I didn't attempt to clean it off but it did eventually weather away.

plumb1_2

twopenny said:

Or you could treat the rest of the blocks the same? 
I'll just add to an interesting post that Milton fluid also stains.
I had a bottle to get rid of and squirted the weeds in the driveway drain. It got rid of the weeds, a good thing,  but i have a bleached stain of a trickle from the bottle on my tarmaced drive. 
So far it's not weathering out.
Just a warning.

That’s because it’s a mild bleach 

diystarter7

Hi

To remove the block is diffuclty as easier said than done if its been down for a while - the the new one may stick out but get a used one or exhange with from one that is not that noitced - then there is the risk of chipping the blocks - best thing is, leav it and imo within a year it will go away, hopefully

I used patio magic to remove gree stuff in a shaded area, possibly try that but its not really made for shaving foas

We had white spots appear on our drive could not get rid of them  - but noted a few months ago they have also gone so the foam mark may just disappear

Thnaks