Pressure washer for driveway crack weed removal?

[Paul F.]

Been thinking about getting the weeds out of some cracks in my driveway and trying to use a concrete repair to seal the cracks....

I was wondering if a tool rental pressure washer would make short work of the weeds, or if manually is going to be the order of the day?

I like the pressure washer idea because it would also clean the driveway... two birds with one rock and all that..
But not having RUN a pressure washer before, I thouht I'd see if someone here HAD, and what you might think of using it for driveway weeding?


Thanks in advance!

[blusubaru]

Gasoline works well for killing weeds. So does spraying WD-40 through and open flame. Homemade Napalm might be a little overkill, but melting Styrofoam in gasoline, pouring that on the weeds and setting fire to it will get the job done too. Stay back though, it'll burn through anything.

[papercup]

The pressure washer won't work well, and make a mess of crud & dirt everywhere.

Use Roundup, the best albeit slowest way.

[AlphaDog]

Well... I have a small pressure washer, and I've never used it just to get rid of weeds in the cracks, but there are no weeds left when I finish cleaning. Of course, if the cracks are big and filled with a lot of crud, the mess papercup talks about might be worse than you imagine.

On the other hand, if you're going to pressure wash the driveway before you start filling the cracks anyway, you're going to have a mess from the dirt in the cracks in which the weeds are now living, whether the weeds are alive or dead when you start. Got that?!

If pressure washing is already part of the plan, try doing it before tackling the weeds. If it doesn't get them out, you're really no further behind, and the uncracked part of the driveway will already be clean. You'll just have to do some light hosing to get rid of the loose stuff after removing the weeds.

At least that's what I'd do.

[Ted King]

I would use Round-up and then if you didn't mind dealing with the mess, you could use a pressure washer to gouge out the crack so you could patch it with filler. If you just use the pressure washer you may leave living roots behind that may try to grow back through your patch material. It's amazing how much force plants can exert - I once saw weeds pushing up on couple of inches of asphalt after someone had put it down without completely killing the weeds that grew there beforehand. Round-up will kill the weeds right down to the roots.

[spearmint]

Depending on the PSI a pressure washer at like 1600 could scarify your concrete. I like the above posts that suggest chemical warfare.

[AlphaDog]

Or, use the pressure washer to clean the driveway and the cracks, and then put down a nasty chemical - a soil sterilizer would be good - before doing the filling.

[haikuman]

If you have some time... Mix some ..."""Dawn"""" with something like wesson oil.
Do this on a hot sunny day. It will cook those weeds dead. just spray on the weeds.
No toxic waste *(:>*

Second I have used bleach and soap like Dawn with a deck brush to clean many
side walks and driveways. This was also done in conjunction with pressure washing.

Dawn contains surfactants which has a penetrating action.

rudie *(:>*

[Yoyodyne ArtWorks]

Roundup is toxic, and the water from the pressure washer will carry it right into your community's water system. Check with a local envoronmentally-conscious landscaper to see if there isn't a non-toxic alternative that would kill the weeds, or at least weaken their root structure enough to make it easier for the pressure washer to blast them out.

[AllGold]

My environmentally-friendly method for killing weeds in cracks is boiling water. Or just run your coffee maker without coffee. The only problem is a pot of hot water doesn't go that far if you have a lot of weeds.