Hey everybody, Mike here with everything about concrete.com. In this video I'm going to show you how to clean and seal stamp concrete. And this is part three of my three pot series where I show you how to form a curved stamp blockway and then how to pour and stamp the walkway. Now we're going to clean it and seal it. If you're new to this channel, if you don't know me, my name is Mike Day. My channel is all about concrete stuff so if you like that kind of stuff, go ahead down there and hit subscribe now and hit the little bell notification right there so you'll be updated when all my new videos come out. So what we're doing is we stamp this concrete walkway yesterday actually. And we come back the next day and now we got to wash off all the release agent, the powder that we put on the concrete to keep the stamp from sticking and also the powder adds like a second and teaking color to the concrete. So we wash this off using a 3,000 PSI pressure washer with a fan tip on it. And you can see Luke's there washing the concrete. He doesn't get the tip too close to the concrete. He keeps it about 18 inches away and that's going to help wash off that release powder. We need to wash the release powder off so the concrete sealer will bond. I'm going to show you later on in the video what we use for a sealer and how we seal it. So stay tuned for that. And you can see how that pressure washer is taking that release off that release. You know it's it sticks to the concrete pretty good. You got to you got to get that off or when you put your sealer on your sealer will fail. Your sealer won't stick to the concrete. It'll just flake right off. So what we do first is we get we get 90% of that release agent off just using the pressure washer like this. And then what we do is we take a brush. You can see the brush is there and we kind of scrub the surface. But we use we use a dawn district. You can see we got a bucket there and we put some dawn district in there. Now we're going to dump that on the surface and kind of scrub the surface almost like you know almost like you'd wash your car with soap. We scrub the surface of this and that dawn just detergent breaks down the release agent even more so you can get most of that off. You know you want to get about 90 to 95% of that release agent off. The only parts of that release agent that you want left on the concrete for the in-ticking effect is the parts that are kind of down in the the crevices of the stamp concrete down in the grooves of the stamp concrete. The parts that actually got pressed right into the paste of the concrete right into the surface when you were stamping. So we just dump that that solution on. I mean we just squirt a little bit of dawn in the bucket and fill the bucket up. There's no special amount you need to use. It just needs to be kind of soapy and then we just lightly scrub all that extra release agent off. You can see how Luke's you know working his way down the walkway there with the pressure washer and I mean that stuff doesn't just rinse right off it takes a little bit of time a little bit of effort to do it right and then you know to follow up with that the scrubbing is the second part of that. You can see what I'm doing I'm following Luke I got a I got one of those metal pins in my hand and I'm just I'm just going down and making sure all the grooves in the stamp concrete look really good sometimes when you stamp concrete and you press two of the stamps together you'll get a little bit of paste that that sticks up between the grooves so I'm just running that state in the grooves and getting out at any little bit of paste that sticking up and doesn't look very good. See I got the two grills there helping scrub concrete this was a summer job for them one of them is my daughter the one that has the USM on her shirt and the other girls her best friend they worked all summer for us. They did a really good job they didn't mind the work. Once we get this once Luke gets all that release agent rinse off and then we get it scrubbed you'll see he's going to go back and just rinse the residue off rinse that soap off and there'll actually be quite a bit more release agent that comes off with it. Leave me a comment down below in the section if you guys got any questions about this you know we need some comments off I get back to my comments sometimes it takes me a day or two or a couple days but if you got any questions down there I'll answer them for you. And stay tuned coming up I'm going to show you just what we use for a seal or how we seal it to make sure this thing comes out looking really really good. You can see we're finishing up scrubbing Luke's coming right behind he's getting all the soap residue off and any parts of residual release agent that the scrubbing helped remove from the surface he's rinsing that off too. Once we get this rinse off we're going to let it sit for at least 24 hours to dry out before we seal it. I've had some comments before on projects videos I've done about you know the need to let the concrete dry for 30 days well no you don't if you're using in a acrylic solvent base seal or breathable sealer you can come back the next day and seal this stuff. I mean the sealer is breathable so it's going to allow moisture to pass through it and not make it fail not turn it white. The problem with sealers and failing is when you get them on too thick most of the time you know they'll they'll stop peeling they'll stop turning yellow they'll stop fading they'll stop turning white. If you guys are getting value out of this video go ahead down there and smash the like button now it helps helps my helps you to push it out to more people so more people can see this and learn about it. So here we are the next day what first thing we do is we release floor any little dust or bugs or leaves or anything that might have gone on the concrete since last time we washed it. There is just taking the leaf floor is blowing off anything he sees on there that might not might not want to be sealed on the surface and then usually if you come back the next day the concrete's pretty darn clean still you know the wind the wind might have blown some dust on there from the dirt but that's about it it comes right off without leaf floor and he's not walking on the concrete he doesn't have to so we'll get it all blown off and ready to seal and then what we use we use a solvent-based acrylic sealer right there from foundation on that AR 350 that's the one I recommend you'll be a link for that down in the description so you guys can can get that or you can check it out that's the one I highly recommend if you're using on stamp concrete you can use it on pavers too you can use it on a bunch of other things but this is the one we use this is one that's worked well for us and we use that stainless steel sprayer too because the solvents in those sealers I mean they'll they'll eat away a cheap sprayer the seals on a cheap sprayer so I mean you might be able to get one use out of them but that solvent that stainless steel sprayer you can use over and over and over again I've had that for a couple years now all you could do is just clean it out after with either some acetone or some zylene and you're ready to go for the next job you can see how easy that is the seal looks just spraying on a really light coat there's a bunch of benefits of the sealer up there I got made in the USA is one breathable apply with a roller sprayer it's non-yellowing UV resistant reduces dusting in surface where it'll help protect against water stains and chemicals and most importantly against salt damage if you're in a freeze and thaw area you can see how easy that was to apply and we let that dry for about 30 to 40 minutes and we come right back and put a second coat on first coat is going to sink in there pretty good the second coat you can you can put it on a little bit thicker we like to go about 300 the 400 square feet of gallon when we apply these and he's he's just spraying it on nice and light not making sure it doesn't puddle getting on a really nice coat and that'll help darken the concrete a little bit it'll help bring out the colors in the concrete and if you think you need a third coat I mean you could put in a third coat a nice really light third coat on if you if you think it needs it generally we just put two coats on this is a little front entry pad we did along with that walkway you can see how light he's putting that first coat on when when you stop putting sealers on too thick that's when they start failing that's when you start having problems you better off going really light and see in what it looks like after you can see how much that dried up that first coat the second coat will help keep it darker it'll help keep it more uniform looking and then like I said if you think it's a little bit blotchy still and it needs one more really light coat you just pray on a third coat that's it guys thanks for watching I'll see you in the next video