Facility managers face a relentless battle with dirty, stained, and degraded surfaces. Whether you're overseeing a warehouse, a manufacturing plant, a school, a hospital, or a mixed-use commercial building, the floors and hard surfaces throughout your facility tell the story of everything that happens in it: every forklift leak, rubber tire mark, spilled lunch, and accumulated year of foot traffic. Knowing which cleaner to reach for (and when) is the difference between a surface that looks and performs like it should, and one that gets worse every time you clean it.
PROSOCO makes four products that together cover the full spectrum of concrete floor and hard surface cleaning challenges a facility manager is likely to encounter. Here's how to match the problem to the right solution.
Problem #1: A Localized Oil or Grease Stain That's Already Set In
This is one of the most common and most frustrating cleaning challenges in any facility with vehicle traffic, mechanical equipment, or food service operations. A forklift leaks hydraulic fluid on a loading dock. A delivery vehicle drips motor oil on a concrete drive. A fryer overflows in a commercial kitchen. By the time someone notices, the oil has already penetrated into the porous surface — and pressure washing, scrubbing, and conventional cleaners won't fully remove it.
The solution: PROSOCO Oil & Grease Stain Remover
Oil & Grease Stain Remover works differently than conventional cleaners. Rather than trying to flush or scrub the stain out of the surface, it uses a poultice action to draw the contaminant up and out. Pour it directly onto the stain. It self-levels into a thick, batter-like layer that requires no mixing, spreading, troweling, or plastic covering. As it dries over the next five to eight hours, it pulls the oil out of the substrate and captures it in its highly absorbent blend of surfactants, solvents, and powders. Once dry, simply sweep it up and discard.
It removes motor oil, brake fluid, power-steering fluid, antifreeze, hydraulic fluid, cooking oils, food grease, and other oil-based stains from concrete, pavers, block, stone, tile, and brick. Critically, it works on old, deeply set stains that other methods have already failed to address — making it an effective last resort for problem spots that have been accumulating for months or years. It leaves no residue and won't discolor stone, making it safe for marble, granite, limestone, and travertine as well as standard concrete.
Best used for: Spot treatment of localized, embedded oil and grease stains on loading docks, parking areas, mechanical rooms, commercial kitchens, and anywhere vehicle traffic is present.
Problem #2: Widespread Oil and Grease Films, Tire Marks, and Adhesive Residue on Concrete Floors
Localized stains call for a poultice. But widespread contamination, like a warehouse floor coated in a thin film of accumulated oil and grease, a manufacturing plant floor covered in rubber tire scuffs, or a space with adhesive tape residue from floor markings or protective coverings… that calls for a different approach. These are area-wide problems that require a powerful, dilutable liquid degreaser that can be applied with conventional equipment and rinsed away.
The solution: PROSOCO Cleaner/Degreaser
Cleaner/Degreaser is an environmentally responsible, highly concentrated liquid degreaser that cuts through widespread oil and grease films, fuel residues, adhesive residues, rubber tire marks, and atmospheric soiling on concrete floors. Unlike many industrial degreasers that rely on harsh acids, caustics, and aggressive solvents like ketones, benzenes, chlorinated and aromatic compounds, Cleaner/Degreaser contains no phosphates, no chlorinated or fluorinated solvents, and no hydrocarbon solvents. It's nonflammable, water-soluble, and low-toxicity, making it a significantly safer working environment for maintenance crews.
The concentrate is flexible enough to dilute with anywhere from 4 to 200 parts water depending on the severity of the soiling, which makes it highly economical for routine maintenance use. It applies easily with a brush or low-pressure sprayer and cleans up with a water rinse, with pressure rinsing improving efficiency on heavily soiled floors.
An important distinction: Cleaner/Degreaser is the right tool for widespread surface films and scuffs, but it is not designed for embedded, deeply penetrated oil stains -- those require the poultice action of Oil & Grease Stain Remover. For many facility managers, the right protocol is to use Oil & Grease Stain Remover on problem spots first, then follow with Cleaner/Degreaser for the broader field.
Cleaner/Degreaser is also compatible with all PROSOCO Consolideck hardener/densifiers, color coats, and stains, making it the right prep product before applying any protective coating or treatment to an industrial floor.
Best used for: Warehouses, manufacturing plants, machine shops, loading docks, distribution centers, and any large-area concrete floor with widespread grease films, tire marks, fuel residue, or adhesive residue. Also excellent as a pre-treatment before applying floor coatings or densifiers.
Problem #3: Maintaining Polished or Densified Concrete Floors Treated with Blended Hydraulic Cement Mixes
Polished and densified concrete floors have become one of the most popular flooring choices in commercial facilities. They are durable, attractive, easy to maintain, and significantly more resistant to dusting and surface abrasion than untreated concrete. But maintaining them correctly requires understanding their chemistry. Floors treated with PROSOCO's Consolideck densifiers, particularly those poured with ASTM C595 blended hydraulic cement mixes, including the increasingly common Type 1L cement, need a maintenance cleaner that doesn't just clean the surface but actively supports the floor's hardness over time.
The solution: PROSOCO BD Klean 595
BD Klean 595 was specifically engineered for this purpose. It contains a blend of silicates that, during the cleaning process, hardens any soft calcium hydroxide left over from the original densifying treatment or exposed by traffic and abrasion. This means every cleaning cycle with BD Klean 595 isn't just maintaining the floor's appearance, it's actively reinforcing its hardness and performance. Over time, regular maintenance with BD Klean 595 as part of a comprehensive program helps ensure the floor retains the hardness and shine that densifying was designed to produce.
BD Klean 595 is specifically optimized for surfaces treated with PROSOCO's LS, LS/CS, Blended Densifier, or BD1 products, and it carries US EPA Safer Choice conformant CleanGredients-listed surfactants, making it a responsible choice for facilities with sustainability requirements or occupant health concerns. It's flexible enough to dilute for both surface and routine maintenance cleaning, and readily biodegradable.
For facility managers overseeing buildings with polished concrete floors in schools, healthcare facilities, retail spaces, warehouses, and corporate environments, BD Klean 595 is the maintenance cleaner that protects the investment made in densifying and polishing the floor in the first place.
Best used for: Routine maintenance of polished or densified concrete floors, particularly those treated with lithium silicate or blended silicate densifiers and/or poured with Type 1L or other ASTM C595 blended hydraulic cement mixes.
Problem #4: General Soiling, Grime, and Light-to-Heavy Contamination Across Multiple Surface Types
Not every cleaning challenge in a facility involves a concrete floor. Facility managers are also responsible for stone entryways, tile restrooms, masonry exterior walls, stucco facades, EIFS cladding, metal panels, windows, countertops, and dozens of other surfaces -- each of which accumulates everyday soiling, grime, food residue, and atmospheric dirt. Maintaining all of those surfaces with a different product for each one is logistically complicated and expensive. What's needed is a single, versatile, safe cleaner that can handle light-to-heavy soiling across the full range of hard surfaces in the building.
The solution: PROSOCO All Purpose Cleaner
All Purpose Cleaner is a fragrance-free, US EPA Safer Choice certified cleaner and degreaser formulated for exactly this role. It's appropriate for soiled stone, tile, masonry, EIFS, stucco, and metal panels, as well as windows, bathroom tub and tile, countertops, and more. The EPA Safer Choice certification means every ingredient has been evaluated against stringent health and environmental standards, with no phosphates, no hazardous solvents, and no environmentally harmful surfactants. It's biodegradable, safe for use around people and pets, and meets the Safer Choice direct release criteria for outdoor use.
Importantly, All Purpose Cleaner is appropriate for use in food processing facilities – an important distinction for facility managers overseeing commercial kitchens, cafeterias, food production environments, or any space where food safety compliance is a requirement.
The product is dilutable, making it economical for large-scale use, and safe enough for delicate historic surfaces while effective enough for heavily soiled conditions. For facilities where a single trusted cleaner needs to work everywhere from the lobby floor to the parking structure facade to the restroom tile, All Purpose Cleaner fills that role without compromise.
Best used for: Multi-surface general maintenance cleaning across stone, tile, masonry, EIFS, stucco, and metal panels. Particularly well suited for facilities requiring EPA Safer Choice compliant products, food-safe environments, and buildings with a variety of surface types that need a single, reliable everyday cleaner.
Choosing the Right Product: A Quick Reference
|
Problem |
Surface |
Product |
|
Embedded oil/grease spot stain |
Concrete, pavers, stone, tile, brick |
|
|
Widespread grease films, tire marks, adhesive residue |
Concrete floors |
|
|
Routine maintenance of polished/densified concrete |
Blended cement concrete floors |
|
|
General soiling across multiple surface types |
Stone, tile, masonry, EIFS, stucco, metal |
The Bottom Line
No single cleaner solves every problem, and using the wrong product can make conditions worse, strip protective treatments, or create unnecessary hazard for maintenance staff and building occupants. PROSOCO's lineup gives facility managers a matched set of solutions that cover the full range of cleaning challenges in a commercial facility, from the most stubborn embedded stain to the daily maintenance routine that keeps polished floors performing the way they were designed to.
For product-specific guidance or help specifying the right cleaning program for your facility, contact PROSOCO's customer care team at 800-255-4255.
