Maintenance Tips

Get Great Looking Hard Floors with Products Designed for Your Needs. 

The best floor care products in the world are worth nothing if they are not properly used. Using proper procedures together with quality products will allow you to achieve great looking floors using as little labor as possible. Floor care programs can be broken down into several general maintenance techniques that progressively require more labor to complete:

• Preventative Maintenance
• Daily or Routine Maintenance 
• Spray Buffing or Burnishing 
• Deep Scrubbing and Recoating 
• Stripping and Recoating

Preventative Maintenance

The greatest damage to finished floors comes from abrasive soils that are tracked into a facility. Stop it by removing it from footwear before people enter the building. Exterior (and sometimes interior) matting is essential for preventing this soil from entering the facility and being worn into floors. Your WAXIE Sanitary Maintenance Consultant can recommend the right sizes, types, quantities and placement of mats for your needs.

Daily or Routine Maintenance
There is no inexpensive substitute for regularly keeping floors clean. A program of vacuuming, sweeping, mopping or autoscrubbing floors as often as possible is the most important aspect of any floor care system.

Spray Buffing or Burnishing
For periodic surface gloss restoration when floors start to show wear or lose their shine and for removal of deep black marks, scuffs, etc., spray buffing or burnishing after daily or routine maintenance is the next step to prolonging floor appearance with the least amount of labor. With these similar procedures, in general, a floor machine or burnisher turning a floor pad with low to medium aggressiveness over a floor coating removes scuffs, marks and lightly embedded soil. This process can also renew the surface.

Deep Scrubbing and Recoating
When floors no longer respond to spray buffing or burnishing, but some finish still appears to be on the floor and no buildup or excessive dirt is evident, deep scrubbing and recoating the floor is the best way to prolong the floor’s appearance without doing a more labor intensive complete strip and recoat. Deep scrubbing uses a floor machine or autoscrubber, a more aggressive floor pad than spray buffing or burnishing, and a little “hotter” cleaner than a neutral-pH, routine maintenance cleaner to remove dirt and some of the finish from the floor’s surface. After rinsing and letting the floor dry, the clean floor is ready for more coats of finish. After the finish is applied, the result is a clean, shiny and well-protected floor.

Stripping and Recoating
When dirt and buildup are evident, and there is very little or no finish left on the floor (this could be annually or more or less often depending on traffic and soil conditions), it is time to perform the most labor intensive floor care procedure of stripping all the old finish and dirt off the floor and starting all over again with new finish. This requires a floor machine or autoscrubber with aggressive pads and a stripping solution designed to emulsify all the floor’s finish into a slurry that can be removed with a wet vacuum or mop. After the floor is thoroughly rinsed and dry, new finish is applied, and the floor’s appearance and protection is renewed. 

Your WAXIE Sanitary Maintenance Consultant can provide additional information about the techniques discussed here and make product and equipment recommendations for your specific requirements.