Glass Reinforced Plastic.
Surface Preparation – Nationwide
GRP – Glass Reinforced Plastic
We specialise in using a low pressure sand jetting system that has been used nationwide for boat cleaning. Obviously we do this sort of work mainly in Yorkshire, but have worked in Nottinghamshire, Huntingdonshire and Derbyshire – inland counties! We cleaned another boat at Lake Windermere in Cumbria some years ago.
The low pressure sand jet can clean GRP and wood with minimal surface damage, at the same time, the ‘damp’ system also captures dirt, paint, and abrasive, preventing the health and safety risks associated with dry blasting.
A further advantage of the system we use is that it also uses far less abrasive than traditional techniques, making expensive abrasives cost effective, but more significantly reducing waste. Abrasive does not need to be recycled, preventing cross contamination between jobs, and apart from in specialist cases, is not a major part of the running costs.
Dry Ice Blasting
There are times when alternative methods are called for, one of which is Dry Ice blasting. Here a surface to be cleaned is blasted with solid CO2 particles, and the surface is cleaned through thermal shock, the massive volume change as dry ice particles turn into gas, and some abrasion of the surface contaminant, making the process ‘grit or sand free’.
The advantage of this system is that the ‘abrasive’ evaporates on impact, so the only ‘debris’ is the material being removed. It is nearly ‘dustless’ – about as dustless as it is possible to get for an open blast system – however it will still blow cobwebs, birds nests, paint debris etc. fairly liberally!
It is used widely in the printing industry to clean print rollers, and for mould and weld cleaning.
Environmentally Friendly Chemical Paint Stripping
We specialise in using a low pressure sand jetting system that has been used nationwide for property restoration, including gaining approval for and subsequently working on many Listed Buildings. The system, in our trained hands, causes minimal damage to an underlying surface and is flexible enough to tackle most property restoration cleaning tasks. The low pressure sand jet can clean stone without injecting large quantities of water into the surface, and with minimal surface damage, at the same time, the ‘damp’ system also captures dirt and abrasive, preventing the health and safety risks associated with dry blasting. We would normally expect the sand jet systems to be around half the price of chemical stripping.
That being so, there are times when chemical paint stripping is needed. It can be considerably cleaner to use than abrasive cleaning, although generally the stripping solvents return paint to its liquid state, and therefore reintroduce the mess potential of paint. In general this is the technique to use for minimal surface damage. However as pressure washing is the most cost effective method for chemical and paint removal, some pointing etc. may be lost, more recently our Thermatec machine has provided a more gentle approach, which has worked well with projects in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.
Pressure Washing, rapid environmentally friendly cleaning.
We specialise in using a listed building approved low pressure sand jetting system used nationwide for property restoration. The system, in our trained hands, causes minimal damage to an underlying surface and is flexible enough to tackle most property restoration cleaning tasks.
That being so, there are times when pressure washing is an acceptable, environmentally friendly alternative. It is certainly cheaper rapid, and can be quite effective for surface contaminants such as algae and grime. Subsequent cleaning with the sand jet can remove stubborn stains. We have electric, petrol and diesel powered machines, and the big diesel machine will also generate high pressure hot water and steam. These cleaning techniques have been used effectively in projects in Lincoln and Derby.