It's never too late to clean your overgrown retaining wall. After years of overgrowth and erosion, our owner Aaron Lindholm takes a turbo nozzle to the front retaining wall of our headquarters. In this blog, we'll go through all you need to know about cleaning your retaining wall with a turbo nozzle.
Get Ready
Safety first! Before you begin cleaning, make sure you are properly protected. Cleaning a retaining wall can be a gamble, depending on the level of decay you may experience rocks and pebbles flying up at your body and face. We recommend wearing a pair of safety goggles or sunglasses to protect your eyes, long pants to protect your legs, and close-toed shoes to protect your feet.
Pre-Treatment
First, you can choose to spray a pre-treatment on the retaining wall before the cleaning process. This is not necessary for all applications but may assist in gently loosening grime before the turbo nozzle hits it.
Supplies
Once your pre-treatment is applied it's time to prep your pressure washer! See the list below to view our setup of choice. One thing to note is that we use a turbo nozzle with a filter installed. A filter in this case prevents debris and sediment from the retaining wall from flying into the nozzles orifice and clogging it or eating up the ceramic interior.
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Lance
Pressure Washing
Once your pressure washer is ready to go, it's time for the fun part - cleaning! We suggest starting from the top and covering small sections back and forth. Moving in a side-to-side motion allows the user to completely cover the space while tracking what has been cleaned and what has not. With a very dirty retaining wall, you will be able to see the discoloration disappear after you have made a pass. Multiple passes may be required in difficult cases. Use your turbo nozzle to remove any remaining debris below the retaining wall, and you’re done!
Turbo nozzle cleaning tip:
Be careful around anything that is painted when using a turbo nozzle. Turbo nozzles are used to strip paint.
Maintenance
Cleaning your retaining wall can be done as maintenance once a year, every other year, or even seasonally depending on the climate and the amount of traffic the area gets.
Watch the video on YouTube