11 services · Miami, FL
Marine Ice Blasting
South Florida salt air never stops working on a vessel. Abrasive cleaning takes the protective finish with the salt; dry ice removes the contamination and leaves the coating.
What we clean, and what it is covered in
The build-up here is salt, corrosion product, oil, exhaust soot and bilge residue. Work happens dockside, in the yard or aboard.
Most of the people who call are captains, yards and vessel owners. What they are protecting against is stripping a coating that was the only thing holding corrosion back, which is exactly why an abrasive or a solvent is the wrong answer.
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Questions about this work
What makes dry ice right for this work?
South Florida salt air never stops working on a vessel. Abrasive cleaning takes the protective finish with the salt; dry ice removes the contamination and leaves the coating.
Do you clean in place?
Work happens dockside, in the yard or aboard. Most of this work does not need a teardown.
Will it damage the surface?
On most substrates, no. The pellet is soft and sublimates on impact, so the work is thermal rather than abrasive. We test an inconspicuous spot first on anything unusual.
Is there any residue afterward?
None from the media. Dry ice sublimates, so what is left is the contaminant we came to remove, and that is ours to clean up.
Do you come to us?
Yes. The rig is mobile and works across South Florida from Miami out to roughly a hundred miles.
What does it cost?
It depends on the equipment, the contaminant and the access. Describe the job and we will give you a real figure rather than a guess over the phone.
What comes off
What comes off, and why
Most of what we remove falls into a handful of families. Each one is bonded a little differently, which is why the notes below say why the cold breaks it loose.
- Resin and mold release
Mold release and resin that build up cycle after cycle. The cold lifts it cleanly, with no solvent film left behind to carry into the next part.
- Paint and coatings
Taken off in a controlled way when what is underneath matters more than speed.
- Salt and corrosion product
A constant in South Florida. Removing it without stripping the protective finish is the whole trick.
- Ink and printing residue
Ink and coating on anilox and press rollers, surfaces where changing the texture changes the print.
- Food residue
Carbonized product, fat, starch and sugar build-up on processing equipment, cleaned without chemicals touching a food contact surface.
- Grease and oil
Old oil soaks into the dirt around a leak and hardens. Cold makes it brittle, which is why it releases where a rag only smears it around.
- Carbon and soot
Baked carbon on a manifold, oven or weld fixture. Thermal shock is exactly the wrong thing for the bond holding it on, which is why this works.
How a job runs
Nothing about this should be a surprise
Nobody should have to guess what they booked. This is every stage of a job in the order it happens.
- You look before we pack up
A second pass while everything is still connected is free in every sense. A return trip is not.
- You describe the job
Tell us the machine, the mess and the constraint. A couple of photos answers more than a long description, and if the honest answer is that something else suits it better, we say so.
- We look at access and containment
Siting the compressor, masking what must not be touched, and catching what comes off, settled before the first pellet.
- We test a small area
Before the hose points at anything you will see, we try it somewhere you won’t, like the underside of a bracket or the back of a panel. That patch tells us the pressure and pellet size the rest of the job runs at.
- We blast, then clean up
The media disappears on contact; the contaminant does not. Gathering what came off is included, not a line added afterward.
The comparison
The other ways to do this
- Hand scraping
Hours of work for an inconsistent result, with gouges where the blade slipped.
- Media blasting
Abrasive by definition. Anything with a tolerance or a finish worth keeping comes out changed.
- Pressure washing
It is fast and it is wet, which is fine outdoors and unusable on anything with a winding in it.
- Solvent and degreaser
Softens the contaminant but leaves a film, fumes and a disposal problem, and attacks finishes you meant to keep.
- Dry ice
Cold breaks the bond and the media vanishes. The substrate is untouched and there is no second mess to clean up.
What to expect on site
The only thing the process leaves behind is a chill. Sometimes that just means waiting before you pick the piece up, other times a bit of condensation forms while it warms.
Everything the rig needs arrives with it. No tap, no drain, no outlet.
We cover what should not be hit before anything gets blasted. It takes minutes and saves arguments.
Solid CO2 leaves no film and nothing poisonous behind. In a sealed room, though, the gas it becomes takes the place of oxygen, and that is something we plan for ahead of time.
Why us
How we work
- The rig comes to you
We are mobile. The equipment stays where it is and we bring everything needed to it.
- We clean up after ourselves
Nothing of the blasting media remains, so the only cleanup is the dirt itself, and that is ours to handle.
- Firefighter owned and operated
The owners are firefighters. Preparation, checking your equipment and doing the job properly under pressure are habits that came with them.
- You speak to an owner
Giancarlo or Kenny answers, quotes the work and turns up to do it. There is no call center and no handoff where the details get lost.
- We will tell you no
Some jobs want a different method. We would rather say that up front than discover it on your machine.
- We test before we commit
Unfamiliar material gets a hidden test patch before anything visible is touched.
Send us the job.
Send the equipment, the location and a short description. Photos help. You will hear back from Giancarlo or Kenny, not a call center.