National Cleaning Suppliers Association

DEVELOPMENTS AND SAVINGS IN STONE FLOOR MAINTENANCE

For many years the accepted method of maintaining stone floors was to seal with a sacrificial polish. This surface polish material would take considerable maintenance labour and would need constant replacing. The replacement would involve, at best, cutting back with an aggressive floor pad and then applying replacement polish. Unfortunately, too often, it involved stripping and resealing and that has always proven to be an extremely costly procedure.

Introducing diamonds

Five years ago a new concept was introduced. This involved the use of floor pads that were surface coated on one side with a diamond dust paste. The procedure required what, in fact, amounted to a mild surface grinding with three pads of different degrees of aggression used one after the other.

Using regular speed standard scrubbing equipment such as an autoscrubber, a white pad would be used, scrubbing with water.. After six passes with this white (aggressive) pad, the resulting slurry would be picked up . Then the white pad would be replaced with a yellow (less aggressive) pad and the process repeated. Finally the least aggressive green pad, the third pad, would again repeat the process.

After the final slurry has been picked up and the floor rinsed and dried, a green pad would again be used, dry, to burnish the floor. If used with an UHS machine the gloss would be enhanced. Thereafter maintenance only is required and that procedure would be a repeat of the green pad used dry.

The benefit of such a system is that once the initial preparation is completed there is no further use for the three-pad process. Only burnishing with a green pad is required. And so the need to back or strip and seal disappears and the cost of maintenance dives dramatically.

Advances

Since then there have been further advances in the process. The extreme cost of diamond dust did militate against the system with the p[ads being extremely expensive. However, pads are now available using ceramics (similar to the material used in car brake discs) which replace diamond dust. In addition the manufacturing process allows the ceramic to penetrate into the pad rather than only remain on the surface. This means that the pad is more effective for longer and does not run out of effectiveness immediately the surface coating is worn away.

In addition, of course, ceramic is considerably less expensive than diamonds though just as effective in this process. The six pass concept and the three pad grades, have been retained. So, while the procedure remains essentially the same the results are a less expensive improvement

Use of gloss enhancers

If there was a negative in the process compared to the use of polish it is the initial gloss level. The gloss attained with the new processes is about 85%-90% of that using polish. If better gloss is required there are now additives which can achieve this. Either fluorocarbons, as used in carpet stain prevention, can be sprayed onto the stone surface and replaced as it is walked off or fluoridated resins incorporating nano-particles which penetrate the stone to offset minute surface imperfections in the stone make a great difference to gloss levels. In the latter case the chemical, very diluted, is incorporated into scrub water, the floor is scrubbed, depositing the gloss enhancer and then dry burnishing follows.