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Handling Leaks in the shop

wishin4snow

Plastic
Joined
Dec 17, 2018
I was wondering how you guys deal with leaky machines or oily spots in the shop. Our floor is bare concrete, no epoxy. We have bunch of machines that have a minor oil leak or times when an employee spills something, our standard clean up is Speedy dry. I can't stand the piles of speedy dry around machines or where the stuff gets kicked. We have machines that don't have a consistent leak so there really isn't a spot to fix. For example, we have a Doosan Mill that seems to have a super slow leak out of the hydraulic unit. You can see the oily spot underneath it in the concrete but there is never enough to create a puddle.

I was wondering how you guys keep the shop clean. I can try enforcing a faster clean up of the speedy dry but I feel like we will fly through bags of it.
 
Emphasize that it is floor SWEEP, not floor spread. If it is used to clean up a spill and then picked up and put in a container, it can be used again and again. If they toss it on the spill then walk over it for a month, it is just a mess. Under machines is not for storage of floor sweep either. If it hasn’t been walked on and ground into a fine powder you can actually use a long air nozzle to push it across the underside of a machine to take care of spills there too(be prepared to clean the whole area)
 
A friend of mine had sheet metal pans made to catch the leaks. Works grea!

I saw this in a shop in Latrobe PA. It was the best Idea I have ever seen. spotless floor. Never had the time, but I always have the time to clean up the floors multiple times a day.
 
Emphasize that it is floor SWEEP, not floor spread. If it is used to clean up a spill and then picked up and put in a container, it can be used again and again. If they toss it on the spill then walk over it for a month, it is just a mess. Under machines is not for storage of floor sweep either. If it hasn’t been walked on and ground into a fine powder you can actually use a long air nozzle to push it across the underside of a machine to take care of spills there too(be prepared to clean the whole area)

I thought that stuff was illegal in Cali, did something change? When I was there we had to stop using it and had to mop all spills and put the mop water in barrels and pay for hazardous waste disposal. This was in the OC in the early 90's.
 
For example, we have a Doosan Mill that seems to have a super slow leak out of the hydraulic unit. You can see the oily spot underneath it in the concrete but there is never enough to create a puddle.

I was wondering how you guys keep the shop clean. I can try enforcing a faster clean up of the speedy dry but I feel like we will fly through bags of it.
First you say it's a tiny leak, then you say you'd be going thru lot's of oil dry ?

It's simply one or the other.
 
For spills I do immediate cleanup with brake parts cleaner and shop towels. Will pull even old stains out of concrete, no expense/cleanup of speedidry and quicker.

For a persistent slow leak under a small area a sandwhich size plastic tupperware filled with speedidry is much cleaner looking than a pile and less likely to get spread around.

For a larger area a cookie sheet with a pig mat in it.
 
Shop I used to work at had a giant pan made from stainless for each new machine. When the crew came in to set the machine in place, they would set it on top of the pan. Then if a machine had a leak, it was contained in the pan. Cleanup was easy. If I was rich and had more money than I knew what to do with I would do the same.
 
Shop I used to work at had a giant pan made from stainless for each new machine. When the crew came in to set the machine in place, they would set it on top of the pan. Then if a machine had a leak, it was contained in the pan. Cleanup was easy. If I was rich and had more money than I knew what to do with I would do the same.
You would buy a Yellow bellied sumpsucker, and drive around the shop....that what you would doo....
 
a long time ago, when I worked in a really big shop, when they poured the foundation for a machine, they would lay a 2x4 upright in the concrete all the way around the machine. So when they pulled it out, there was a 2" wide x 4" deep moat around it. It kept any leaks or runoff from spreading out all over the floor.
 
a long time ago, when I worked in a really big shop, when they poured the foundation for a machine, they would lay a 2x4 upright in the concrete all the way around the machine. So when they pulled it out, there was a 2" wide x 4" deep moat around it. It kept any leaks or runoff from spreading out all over the floor.

Make it drain into a sump box for some storage time.
 
Make it drain into a sump box for some storage time.
My shop used to have a big grinder, that's exactly what they did. Moat around the foundation draining to a sump.

I blocked it off because I didn't want employees dumping coolant or other crap into the sump- goes straight into the storm sewers. Sure as hell they'd trace it back to me...

One air compressor was leaking oil, but I finally found the problem and fixed that one.

Other than that, I don't really have oil leaks- most floor messes happen when the coolant gets out of the machine.
 
Floor pans are pretty gross after awhile. I had to remove a couple large HMC's that had been in floor pans for 15 years. It was pretty gross.
 
For spills I do immediate cleanup with brake parts cleaner...

A guy across the parking lot from us back in Maryland did that and the next thing he knew a truck full of guys in white moon suits were setting traffic barriers around his shop and taking water samples from the nearby rain puddles. All it took was a neighbor calling the hazmat tip line and complaining about a strange chemical smell.

IDK about floor-dri being illegal in CA but it wouldn't surprise me.
 
Plastic fast food trays are great for catching drips. They come is several sizes, and ebay has them. I primarily use them at workstations for organization and cleanup.
 








 
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