How to care for your Floors

Floors have to be cared for and the job is easy if mats are placed by doorways, however on sealed surfaces, and high gloss finishes you should only choose non-slip mats.

Use a soft sweeping brush for general care. Remember, instant care saves much time and money later.
Never wax a sealed marble, stone or clay floor.These need serious care. Use only the bare minimum of water to clean these floors. It may be a forgiving surface but that does not mean total negligence, nor absolute panic over it. Wood flooring comes either waxed or sealed, and wax is not sealed. You can easily test for wax by putting drops of water in a hidden place - if the floor turns white where the water drops are, then it is waxed. This means you need extra care on its cleaning.
 

Waxed wood: is not usually cleaned well by detergents. Remember wax is removed by detergents The level of protection is less than that of sealed wood in areas which get a high level of humidity so that would make this a poor choice of finish for bathrooms and kitchen areas for example. Water turns a waxed floor into a skating rink. You can very lightly mop over the floor, to clean it generally, but it must dry very quickly, and will need buffing after. About two times a year, the floor will need re-waxing, so you must strip off the original wax first, using a proprietary ingredient, and then re-apply new wax.. There is no way out on waxed flooring - it takes much care to keep it looking bright. Your best friend is probably a buffing machine and a sheepskin pad, which should be kept clean by washing it.

Waxed floors can be repaired by using a very fine steel wool pad to remove the mark and then using a small amount of wax to even off the surface, but be aware that this will show until your next re-waxing.
Sealed wood flooring can be used anywhere but it should be completely sealed - and in areas of very high humidity it may be that it shows black spots. Sealed wood should not be repaired by wire wool pad. It can be sanded and re sealed if the floor is particularly bad. Sealed wood can be washed with detergent solution as a routine maintenance.
If you choose to mop your floors:

• Use a very weak detergent solution
• Wring your mop out well
• Quickly wipe over the floor
• Using clean water, rinse 2 times more
• Leave to dry and buff, if necessary

NOTE WELL: Do not use bleach, vinegar, ammonia, to clean your wooden floors with. You can buy a wax-based detergent to maintain your waxed floors, but do not use this on a sealed floor, nor should you fully wax a sealed floor. You want to break your legs? Use a proprietary cleaner for wooden flooring or use a good hard surface detergent.
General flooring care is easy if you use mats by doorways to capture incoming dirt and dusts, and use a vacuum cleaner daily, to remove dust on the floor. Just study your floor at regular intervals and act on stains and spillage when they arise. Scuff marks are removed by rubbing with a damp cloth.
For further information and wood care products visit - www.WoodFloorsOnLine.com

HOW TO CLEAN VINYL AND OTHER SIMILAR FLOORING.

Vinyl are tiles, or plastic wooden flooring or similar plastics of any description which are laid on your floor to be cleaned at regular intervals, (or not at all, depending on which way you are thinking at the time)
Vinyls are hard wearing but you should note well the following:
1.They usually require sealing. This is a layer of acrylic or polymers which protect the vinyl. Now not all need this treatment - you cannot seal pre-sealed vinyl and non - slip flooring and in this category you should include the sealed plastic wooden floors. 2.The time to apply a seal is before the scratches start
to show but once a floor has a seal on it, it will always need it.
3.Do not seal a floor which is frequentlywet during the day - toilets or kitchens for example.
4.The seal itself attracts soiling and grease far faster than bare tiling does and this shows in the corners and the edges if the floor is not moppedproperly, although you will want the shiny floor to look at.
Seal should be stripped off and replaced about once every three months. Seal is NOT a replacement for cleaning. Your sealed flooring needs cleaning with a very dilute solution of hard surface detergent. Rinse and leave to dry. If you get a streaked floor then you have not rinsed properly. Or, If you have a dirty - looking floor after a good washing, your floor seal needs stripping - it is worn out.
How many layers? How much time do you have? You will need to leave each layer to dry and each layer should be clean, so probably 3 is more than enough for most people, including us.
If your floor seems to be worn -out very quickly, it pays to check that it has an underlay. Vinyl should be laid over an underlay but we have seen it laid without. The floor wore out within 3 years, but cheaper flooring will wear out faster. It pays to buy the best, if only for longevity. If you start to get brown dirty stains around the edges of the tiling then the adhesive is running. This is the floor layers using too much adhesive, which works up through the seal over time. It is water - based so it washes off. The other cause, if you use a buffing machine, is using a dirty pad, so wash out your pad regularly. We once had to leave a floor in soak overnight to clean off this type of soiling, which was left from a soiled buffer pad and built up over time.
Vinyl can change colour - and this cannot be improved. It is a fault in manufacture or staining from sunlight. You may be able to minimise it with seal but you can never entirely get rid of it.
Floor seal should contain a non - slip ingredient. However, to maintain the shine, you can use a cleaner which has a wax content. But you should only use this type of cleaner when the floor needs it. Again this is no substitute for a proper wash; it can be used only as an additive when the floor looks dull.
On vinyl and other types of flooring, clean when it needs it! You should look at the floor and then decide.
LINOLEUM and OILCLOTHS should be washed, rinsed, and can be waxed after cleaning.

Marble Cleaning

We’ve said this so many times in the past:
Marbles, limestone and clay floorings are delicate materials to clean, so treat them as such. You will never ever get a nicer surface, and it will last a lifetime but treat with care and use care when cleaning.
Never use any acids - and that includes vinegar, lemon juice, and most grout cleaners.
Never use bleach, and take great care on the alkalis. You will find that a low foaming detergent based around d-limonene will clean marble quite effectively.
These surfaces will clean with a very dilute detergent solution - which should not be washing - up liquid. They should be well rinsed after cleaning and left to dry. They can be polished up with a dry cloth if needed, or gently buffed.
What you shouldn't do:
You should never scrub any marble with a scouring pad, especially not a metal scouring pad, the damage will be pure vandalism, because the small pieces from the scouring pad will stick to the marble and rust in situ, so your marble will show sometimes extensive rust staining. This can only be removed by re-polishing, which can be an expensive procedure.
Use extra care if the marble is pitted or has lost its shine - this means it needs repolishing and that is a specialist job. Never be persuaded that an acid etch will clean the marble - it will not, and will damage the marble. Marble subject to heavy wear should always be impregnated. Use the specialist cleaners and maintainers available from MB Stone who are experts in all aspects of marble care. Avoid using a buffing or scrubbing machine if the surface is unsealed and powdery -you will see the swirl marks and these can only be removed by repolishing.

CONCRETE FLOORING

Cleaned by a mix of caustic detergent with d-limonene that has oil and grease over it. Leave it and then wash it off. Rinse and leave to dry. Rust stains on concrete are removed with Oxalic acid, for preference. Rinse and leave to dry.
Concrete can be acid cleaned to etch it, and it has to be perfectly clean for this treatment. You acid etch before you impregnate the concrete. What you do with it afterwards, depends entirely what you want to use the floor for. Not all concrete flooring is worth spending too much time and money over. Concrete should however have an epoxy impregnator on it.

FLOORING

Of any type is what you walk on so you can expect it to get full of dirt and grease. Obvious? Not to some people it isn't. It stands to reason that flooring should be chosen for the situation, and ease of care. A regular, quick mopping with a good detergent in solution is usually all that is needed, but you will need to protect that flooring with a coating. Floor sealing and waxes are used for just that, but they need removing periodically, and it is as well you understand that these flooring coveringsactually attract soiling, and the continual maintenance can be almost time wasting. And we have seen so many cases of flooring being worn out through enthusiastic use of a buffing machine.
Do you really need that high gloss floor seal? 7 layers of that, is 4 too many! And the wax to go on top of that? And the stripping it off and starting again? And worse, the use of floor seal instead of cleaning the floor properly, in the first instance! In a house, you will not get the wear of a busy shop, so buy flooring that looks good with the minimum of care. And remember that streaks and dullness occur when detergent is not rinsed off with clean water. Or that the mop is not rinsed properly. Or that the water is recycled onto the clean floor taking all the soiling back onto the floor with it.
Floors always look dirty if the corners and edges are not kept clean, so pay particular attention to these. If you do not believe us, go to a particularly filthy shopping area and try to prove us wrong.
Those corners will really shout at you.

MOPPING

Download our guide to a perfect mopping technique

Change your water very regularly
Rinse the floor after cleaning
Wash your mop in detergent solution, after use
Keep your mop as dry as you can.
All that black water over the floor, a smelly mop, all the puffing and panting that goes with throwing a heavy mop around, and those are the cleaning companies we have come across. Heaven only knows what the householders are like. And you complain that the floor looks dirty five minutes after?
Use a light cotton mop, so it is easy for you to handle, keep it clean and washed after use, and halve your mopping time by keeping the floor as dry as you can, by wringing it out properly. push your mop, don't drag it.
Now you know how to mop.
Just in case you are tempted by flat mops or mops made of any other material other than cotton, these can be expensive, are very heavy to use, and do not produce such a good effect. A cheap cotton mop is as good as anything else on the market.

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