Art or graffiti?
The house has just been freshly plastered and is gleaming. But barely a night later, the beautiful new facade is once again "decorated" with graffiti. What delights graffiti fans drives property owners and managers to despair. Often, the only way to remove the graffiti is through professional cleaning with chemical solutions. Many owners aren't keen on that. But what are the alternatives?
Areas where few people congregate during the day and at night are particularly attractive to graffiti artists. It's less appealing if these areas are at least well-lit. The brighter the surroundings, the less graffiti defacement is to be expected. Paints and anti-graffiti coatings can make spraying walls more difficult, but not impossible. Furthermore, experience shows that graffiti artists quickly lose interest in walls that are regularly cleaned.
Dry cleaning – how it works
So, when a graffiti artist has once again left their mark on a home's facade with spray paint, many property owners quickly resort to chemical cleaning. This method is particularly common on smooth, absorbent, and non-absorbent surfaces. A special solvent mixture dissolves the graffiti's binding agent. This mixture causes the paint to swell, allowing it to be easily washed off the facade using hot water and high pressure.
Depending on environmental regulations, the water may need to be collected and treated, or even disposed of by a specialized company. Since this is expensive and time-consuming, many property owners rightly wonder whether graffiti removal is possible without the use of chemicals.
Innovative methods – gentle and chemical-free
There are now innovative methods that make chemical-free cleaning possible. Using a vacuum process, various granules are blown from a nozzle at a speed of 400 km/h onto the soiled area. This causes the contaminant to flake off the surface.
The particles released in the process are immediately extracted, so there is no contamination of the surrounding area. Overall, the system operates very gently. To give you an idea: the system is so gentle that you could even blow printer ink off a brochure without damaging the paper.
The advantage of this method is that the surface is not damaged or removed. At the same time, the paint is not dissolved, but rather flakes off. This prevents environmental pollution. In most cases, no further treatment of the substrate is necessary.
Quickly removing graffiti leads, in the medium term, to graffiti artists losing interest in these surfaces and no longer using them. Graffiti removal therefore not only deters graffiti artists but also increases the property's value.
Do you want to know how much graffiti reduces the value of your property, or whether it's worth removing graffiti before selling? Contact us! We'd be happy to advise you.
Didn't find what you were looking for here?
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti
Legal notice: This article does not constitute tax or legal advice for any specific case. Please consult a lawyer and/or tax advisor to clarify the facts of your individual situation.
Photo: © magann/Depositphotos.com
About the author
Harry Mohr
Real estate agent (Chamber of Industry and Commerce)Harry Mohr, author of this article
