Before you try to remove efflorescence on pavers, you’ll want to be aware of a few mistakes to avoid making, as well as solutions that allow you to fix a poor muriatic acid application.
Efflorescence is a white, or sometimes blue, chalky, hazy substance that comes naturally from the cement content in your paving stone through moisture. Muriatic acid is the standard way to remove it—muriatic acid basically being diluted hydrochloric acid. There are other efflorescence cleaners out there that can provide you with similar results, but they may be costly and perhaps not readily available, while muriatic acid more than likely will be.
When using muriatic acid to remove efflorescence, the most important thing is your safety. This is a very harsh chemical, and it poses a problem not only if it were to get on your skin, but if the vapors were to enter your respiratory system. So you’ll want to make sure you wear the proper PPE, including gloves to cover your skin, glasses to cover your eyes—even a face shield to cover your face, as well as a vapor respirator to reduce the chance of those vapors getting into your respiratory system, which can be incredibly harmful.
Using the wrong dilution ratio is another big mistake that can be made. Each paver product is made of different cements and aggregates, so they’ll handle efflorescence removal a bit differently. When we’re working with our Western Interlock materials, we usually start with a 21 to one ratio when we’re trying to remove efflorescence. That’s 21 parts water and one part muriatic acid.
If that doesn’t remove it all the first time, you can do multiple lifts at that dilution ratio and reduce the amount of damage to the top of your stones. What you’re basically doing is degrading your stones to make them all look uniform while removing the efflorescence. So it is a bit of a trade-off. You’re making them look a little bit older and weathered, but you are removing the white hazy substance from the tops of your pavers.
Aside from the risk of damaging your paving stones with this muriatic acid ratio, you could actually harm some metals nearby, especially if they’re galvanized. This dilution ratio, even at the high rate of 21 to one, will strip the galvanizing right off of steel and promote rust very rapidly. We’ve learned through trial and error that this dilution ratio doesn’t do anything to plants or grass. But the risk is if there’s any galvanized metal nearby that the liquid can splatter or splash onto and inadvertently remove the galvanization.
If you accidentally used too much muriatic acid or efflorescence cleaner during this process and exposed the aggregate in the stone or removed a lot of fines, you’re left with a couple different options. Option one is to leave the material the way it is and hope that everything deteriorates evenly over time.
The second option is to replace those individual stones or areas with new products to make it look as good as possible. They won’t match the exact same, but you still will have a functional hardscape.
If you want to learn about more projects you can do by yourself in the paving stone world, take a look around our website or watch our Western Interlock how-to videos on YouTube.
Choosing a paver can sure feel overwhelming. You have to consider size, style, thickness, color, and more. That’s why we made a short and simple quiz that asks a few questions about what you’re looking for and, at the end, provides a recommendation, or two, you can start with.
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