2338 Gross Violation.

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Rulette’s entire shop is loosely based on a real location. The grease wall is a real thing & it’s one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen in my life. Grease & concrete merged into one very gross substance. Many bugs had been killed by trying to feed on the wall & had become part of it. I don’t even know how you would clean such a thing.

I do know that Patreon is a way to support my work, as is Subscribestar. Hopefully you will remember me when the recession comes to claim us all… T^T

30 Comments

If, for some reason, I was put in charge of cleaning such a gross wall, I would first try a steam vapor cleaner. Preferably a professional model. Spray the wall with a degreaser (for example, Simple Green); let it soak for a bit to give the degreaser some time to work; hit it with steam; scrub with wire brush and/or scrape with a scraper tool; repeat as necessary.

And you’d better believe I’d have a mask over my mouth and nose, and some kind of eye protection, in case gross chunks fly around unpredictably. Eeewww. Ugh. Eewwugghh.

I have a consumer steam vapor cleaner. I bought it to kill mold that can grow on bathroom walls during the cold winter months when the windows are never open. It works great: no chemicals needed, just water turned into steam. I’m a little bit sensitive to chemicals, so I wanted to try steam before resorting to mold-killer chemicals, and I’m glad I did.

I’ve heard a mixture of actone, hot water and a scraper would work, but that would only be tacking the symptoms. The other side needs to be cleaned and sealed

Really, after the surface treatment, all surfaces need to be sealed to prevent the grease in the core doesn’t leach out and more doesn’t leech in.

That restaurant definitely needs a look-see – preferably in a hazmat suit.

I wonder if the wall can be set on fire from all that built up grease?

I was just reading about the King’s Cross Station fire. Machinery grease built up under a wooden escalator. The grease was thought to be hard to ignite, but there were fibers embedded in it, including rat fur. People leaving trains would light up cigarettes and drop matches. Then, there was fire behavior never before seen, where hot gas will flow along the bottom of a trench with a 30 degree slope, causing the escalator treads to flashover before they could fully evacuate the station.

Yeah, that was horrible. But can fire start or ignite an accelerant that’s embedded inside of set concrete? I have no clue.

You need three things for fire
Fuel
Oxidizer
Heat
So once things get hot enough and there is sufficient airflow that concrete would act like one of those oil candles.

It would depend on how much grease was actually available to participate in a fire. Almost anything will burn given enough heat and oxygen (or an oxidizer). If there is just a stain in the surface pores of the concrete, probably not. If it is deeply impregnated into the concrete such that it will sweat liquid grease when the concrete is heated, maybe. If the grease has run down the wall and puddled on the floor, you gotta problem. As noted in the description of the King’s Cross fire organic debris makes a pretty good wick. Cooking grease is relatively difficult to set alight by it self. Most common cooking oils need around 400 degrees F to reach their smoke point. If you have grease soaked cloth, paper or other flammables around then you have the makings of a pretty good oil lamp that will spread and feed on the grease.

If the grease has been seeping THROUGH the concrete for decades, I would think it’s beyond being able to be cleaned at this point. You might be able to get the grease on the surface, but the grease INSIDE the concrete is a different matter.

Oh yeah. You can clean the surface of concrete, but if grease has seeped through the concrete that means it’s inside the concrete and there’s no way to fix it short of “tear out the concrete and replace it.”

@Ability King KK

I suspect that the restaurant is through the wall from Rulette’s shop.
And hence ABOVE that wall.

The grease is flowing down, not (necessarily) through.

You would be surprised at just how porous concrete can be, unless formulated not to be.
It is why sealant and drain tiles are used on and around concrete foundations.

If I were Rulette at this point, I’d be thinking, and probably saying, something like “I brought you down here as a favor. Please don’t close my business for several months by getting the city involved and having them close the whole building while they remove and replace an entire basement wall.”

Depending on the situation, having ones business closed a few months can be a good thing. I mean, it’s better to have your business closed for a few months than to have your business be the starting point for a fire that blew out a five block stretch of businesses.

To be clear, I’m not thinking of this particular business when I say that, but rather one that may have had a correctable issue before the disaster that gave Richmond, Indiana its promenade area. I do not know if there was a code violation, as I understand it there wasn’t much to investigate after the explosion was over. Officially they came up with findings, but they had to. I’m skeptical how much they were really able to determine.

This probably wouldn’t be *that* horrific of a disaster, but it could still be cause for something that burned down the whole building and all of the associated businesses. I’d guess fewer than 41 people would die from it, but a total loss of all of her merchandise would still be ruinous to Rulette’s business.

All of that said, if it could be fixed without closing businesses, that would probably be better. Sometimes, business owners can manage that. However, since in this case the business owner isn’t the property owner, that may very well not be something Rulette can manage.

Allright, I have been quiet too long. This comic brings me joy, out right joy. I’ve been reading it for years and when I’m at my lowest I pull out my phone and read this comic and suddenly the world sucks a lot less. So with that said, I’m going to do my damn best to get this comic in the top tier of the Top webcomics listing, now who the hell is with me?!?!?!

Having read the next comic, I wonder why she says here that the grease has been seeping for decades, when in fact the seeping apparently stopped 40 years ago?

Then again, I guees it would be more difficult to work the code violation pun in there, had she phrased it diffrently. And I did like that pun, so..

It didn’t just stop existing. It’s working it’s way through. That’s how seeping works.

I’m admittedly no expert, I just thought that if they resealed the grill 4 decades ago that it would have stopped seeping at some point. Maybe I overestimate the speed with which grease seeps through concrete. It’s really a minor quibble anyway, so I’m sorry to bother you with this. It just threw me off a little, is all

The source is gone, however the decades of accumulation in the wall is still there, and while it will eventually stop, it will take a while.

Sure, the accumulated grease is still in the wall, of course. But what is “it” that will eventually stop? I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying the grease will slowly ooze/evaporate out of the wall and be gone eventually or something like that?

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