Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: Tony Stewart on May 16, 2012, 08:59:54 am
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I've got a Minton Floor to clean and I have told the lady that it will not be a restoration job but a clean.
I was going to use
A rotary with green pad
Prochem QMT but not over wet the area
15 mins dwell
Clean Water rinse
Mop off and dry
Evans Superseal Polyurethane
As she want a shine on the floor.
But has anyone used say M Power and would that be better.
Thanks guys
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you would be better off with a heavy duty crb to get into the grout lines. And a rotary pad is not going to touch the lower parts of the tiles. Have never used prochem chems on hard floors.
There is a hard floor section where you can post.
Peter
www.carpetcleanercardiff.com (http://www.carpetcleanercardiff.com)
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Hi Peter
Actually got a TM4 crb and not thought of using that. Also have the harder brushes that came with it
Thanks for that
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Be carefull on how much water you put on the floor if it has no DPM otherwise you will cause other issues for yourself
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These tile were not designed to have a shine. They should have a semi matt finish and may end up with a lethal slip risk. I have cleaned dozens and a good brush gets the grout looking better. The worst one had had the carpet stuck down all over with contact glue. The lady and me were pretty high on the solvent by the end.
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In my experiences, surface coating sealers won't noticeably lessen the friction coefficient (slip resistance to you and me) when the floor is dry. However when wet it may be a lot slippier.... BUT I wouldn't be worried about slip hazards in a domestic home. What do you do when you mop the floor? Keep everyone off it until it's dry!!
Tony, M-power is a fantastic product for a variety of uses but it is not the right choice for this. You would need to test out several things and maybe need to use more than one of them to get the right result. You're dealing with decades ( or maybe a century or more?) of soil here. I would be trying a heavy duty tile & grout cleaner, which will have a moderately high pH, I also quite often use a stripper which will be very high pH and it can often get a remarkable result. The other approach is something with phosphoric acid in it, but that would maybe be aimed more at the grout.
The cream coloured tiles probably won't ever come up like a shiny new penny, so I would pre-qualify that.
A pad will be the best agitation for the surface of the tiles, as long as they are all uniformly flat and the floor is evenly laid. As said above if there are any low spots a pad won't get into them - especially true on very small tiles, if some are not laid level the lower half of the tile won't get cleaned very well so you get a kind of clean triangle on some of them!
I would not go in as heavy as a green pad to be honest, maybe start with a white which should be enough, maximum red. Due to the age of these floors, there may be wear issues to consider. The way these tiles are made, the original top surface of them will be a lot denser and less porous than the centre. If it has worn through to the more porous material, not only will it have absorbed more soil but it will absorb the solution as you're trying to clean it. A simple wet spot test will tell you, although the other give-away is the fact that the tiles will be less shiny if worn down. OH yes and too heavy a scrubbing pad will wear yet more material off them, increasing the dullness! You can't polish that back in with a sealer so be careful.
If you've got a brush attachment on your rotary you would probably want to give it a whizz over with that too, so you can get to the places where the pad can't. If the grout is original it might be in pretty poor condition, and it might be a lime mortar grout which is pretty soft. You need to be a bit careful
Another sealing option is Aquamix "enrich n seal" which isn't a shiny surface coating but deepens and... well, enriches the appearance
When you have the time and budget, get yourself on a couple of the different hard floor courses available - it'll help you out no end ;)
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Thanks everyone for the input. I've left loads of time for this and I sort of knew that these floors are just laid on the bare ground, so I will not swamp in water and vacuum up. I actually have an old shampoo brush attachment that came with the rotary I have and I have also a new one that I bought so I can try the softer one first.
Will look at the "enrich and seal" as I was offered the selden products to seal and then put a shine on............trouble is they take 2 coats of sealer and 3 of the finish to apply and 40 mins drying time.
And Jim you are right I will get on a floor course as soon as possible.
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I usually leave these anything from 24hrs to a week (depending on time of year) to dry before sealing if they insist on a topical treatment. I do my best to talk them out of the high gloss look they often desire.
As Jim suggested a colour enhancing impregnator is often a better option on these tiles as it wont trap any residual moisture as the tiles breath it out to the surface.
Personally I would shy away from using a PU product on them.
If it turns white how are you going to remove it?