Restoring a Vienna landmark with karcher IB 7/40 dry ice blaster, The Votivkirche Church

The crossing tower of the Votive Church c1879 was cleaned as part of the comprehensive restoration of the whole church. A cleaning team, trained by Kärcher, cleaned the hard-to-reach tower with the dry ice blasting machine IB 7/40.
The dry ice method was chosen in order to remove the two different patina layers. With a temperature of -79 °C the dirt freezes and cracks. Therefore, the dry ice pellets, dashing against the surface with a high speed, are able to remove dirt from several hundred years without damaging the original substance of the tower. The Ice Blaster IB 7/40 and the six to eight tons of dry ice were provided by the family-owned company Kärcher within the scope of their cultural sponsoring.
The cleaning of the tower yielded a historically relevant finding: On the surface, an inscription with a year, older than the tower’s suspected year of construction, was revealed. This discovery takes on a new research on the construction of the crossing tower.
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