Can paver cleaning remove oil stains?

ICPI Tech Spec 5 gives oil that has soaked into a paver its own entry, separate from grease dripped from food, so the first question is which one is on the driveway.

Under foot and vehicle traffic, ICPI notes, a paver surface can become exposed to dirt, stains and wear, and stains on specific spots come out first, before any whole-surface cleaning. For oil or grease that has penetrated a concrete paver, ICPI's remedy is an absorbent: mop up the excess with rags, cover the spot with kitty litter, talc, fuller's earth or diatomaceous earth, leave it on the stain for a day, then sweep it up.

Grease dripped from food has a different entry, grouped with blood, candy, ketchup and mustard. For stubborn stains of that kind, ICPI calls for liquid detergent at full strength, left to penetrate for 20 to 30 minutes, then scrubbed and rinsed with hot water, and it says removal is easier when these stains are treated immediately. ICPI wrote that entry for food grease on concrete pavers, not for motor oil.

ICPI says to identify the stain before a cleaner goes on and to check a test application in a small, inconspicuous stained area. Commercial stain removers made specifically for concrete pavers, ICPI adds, give a high degree of certainty in removing stains, many kinds of stains can be removed while minimizing the risk of discoloring or damaging the pavers, and the container label often lists the stains a product removes.

A degreaser is the kind of product made for oil, and one sealer manufacturer draws the fresh and old line in its own catalog. Techniseal describes its Professional-Grade Oil & Grease Remover as removing penetrated petroleum-based products and ideal for older, penetrated stains, and its Dirt & Grease Cleaner as removing motor oil and grease and ideal for sealed surfaces and fresh stains. Those are a maker's descriptions of its own products.

Which product suits a given stain, and whether it is safe on a sealed surface, is settled on that product's label: ICPI says the label directions and warnings of every stain remover, cleaner, stabilizer and sealer should be read and followed for all precautions.

ICPI's oil remedies are written for concrete pavers. Natural stone has its own document: the Natural Stone Institute says an oil-based stain darkens the stone and normally must be chemically dissolved so the source of the stain can be flushed or rinsed away, cleaned gently with a soft liquid cleanser and one of household detergent, mineral spirits or acetone. Travertine and marble are natural stone, so a drip on a travertine deck falls under that line rather than under ICPI's concrete paver steps.

In ICPI's sealing sequence the sealer comes after stain removal, efflorescence removal and overall cleaning, with oil stains named among what has to be gone first, so a sealer is not a way around a stain. Why cleaning before a sealer means chemistry, not water alone, sets out that sequence, and whether a driveway can be sealed without cleaning it first is answered on its own page.

After the oil is out, ICPI says a sealer can protect pavers from stain penetration and is useful on driveways and where oil drippings are not wanted, though silanes and siloxanes do not resist petroleum stains unless they carry additives for that purpose. What each sealer family does against oil is on the service page.

ICPI states the limit plainly. Some stains may require repeated applications of the remover, and ICPI says this is often the case for deep set oil stains. For small stained areas, it says removal and replacement with new pavers may be an option; badly stained units can be replaced, though it is usually easier and less costly to clean them; and pavers with stains too difficult to remove are replaced with the same type of unit. Replacing a paver is a paving step ICPI describes, not a cleaning.

What a paver cleaning takes off, and the pressure ICPI publishes for it, is on the service page. Once the stain is gone, whether sealed pavers are easier to clean and whether sealed pavers still get dirty take up the next drip.