[Kev Martin]

Kev,

Got to say that you're advice was absolutely spot on!! I completed the clean a few weeks back with amazing results and a very, very happy customer. The job has created repeat work and referrals left, right and centre. Hopefully, I'll be coming to you very soon to buy a new rotary scrubber vor more of the same work.

Curious, do you sell a travertine floor maintainer which can be used after the floor has been sealed with sealers choice gold?

Thanks,

Stu.

Stu

You need some Aqua Mix Concentrated Tile Cleaner or some LC 6 they are both pH neutral cleaners.  Also do you leave them with a set of the Floorcare instructions as these are a good way of leaving your details without appearing to be pushy and they call you for products.  If you want give me a quick e mail to tilinglogistics@hotmail.com and I will send you a set of my Floor Care Instructions which you can adapt as your own!

Kev Martin
Ting Logistics
Marblelife Ltd

Kev,

Nope, haven't left anyone with a set of floor cleaning  or care instructions as yet, although I do like the sound of that. A copy of what you use would be of great help. My email is stuart@cheshirecarpetclinic.co.uk.

How much do you sell the above cleaning solutions for?

Cheers,

Stu.

[Kev Martin]

Stu

E Mail sent with the Floor Care instructions and the prices you asked for

Kev

[StoneSealersHQ]

Have to say chaps, the thread made for some very entertaining and interesting reading... Not sure I would entertain the idea of diamond pads with travertine due to the results I had on this job. Although, I'm always open to new ways of working.

Hi Stu, as pointed out already there are lots of different ways to achieve the same aim. Which one you choose is down to the individual, I use pads because they are easy (stick them on and go), we use them on lots of different materials and they work well for cleaning, maintaining and buffing of tile & stone. The main thing to remember with diamond pads such as twisters, kgs and 3m pads is that they can only do so much, they will not remove lippage or major scratches from floors, but they will smooth deep scratches and remove fine scratches, add gloss and reflectivity a floor.

I've attached a couple of photos of a travertine floor we did before christmas. A very quick job for two guys, we used 3 pads on a 150 rpm numatic, a little pH neutral cleaners and some extra weight on the machine, a long handle grout brush for the joints. 55m2 cleaned in a morning, sealed after lunch; easy peasy.

Naturally the finish doesn't have the clarity of a full grind and polish, but neither does it have the associated cost. Any easy mornings work.

[B Bailey]

Hi, I too use diamond pads frequently for polished stone, especially for maintenance programmes.
Each method has it's merits and negatives so it is up to the professional to use the best method for each situation.

[Kev Martin]

Have to say chaps, the thread made for some very entertaining and interesting reading... Not sure I would entertain the idea of diamond pads with travertine due to the results I had on this job. Although, I'm always open to new ways of working.

Hi Stu, as pointed out already there are lots of different ways to achieve the same aim. Which one you choose is down to the individual, I use pads because they are easy (stick them on and go), we use them on lots of different materials and they work well for cleaning, maintaining and buffing of tile & stone. The main thing to remember with diamond pads such as twisters, kgs and 3m pads is that they can only do so much, they will not remove lippage or major scratches from floors, but they will smooth deep scratches and remove fine scratches, add gloss and reflectivity a floor.

I've attached a couple of photos of a travertine floor we did before christmas. A very quick job for two guys, we used 3 pads on a 150 rpm numatic, a little pH neutral cleaners and some extra weight on the machine, a long handle grout brush for the joints. 55m2 cleaned in a morning, sealed after lunch; easy peasy.

Naturally the finish doesn't have the clarity of a full grind and polish, but neither does it have the associated cost. Any easy mornings work.

Dave

You are going way off track here and digressing towards a different thing!

The original thread was discussing how best to deep clean travertine!  Period!  So without you telling me I am getting agressive polishing was not mentioned!  However, I stand by what I said and had you used a soft to medium brush instead of a pad and added a little honing powder to your high alkaline the brush would have cleaned all the pits and fissures in the stone and brought all the grout up immaculate as well as leaving the stone with a very even appearance.

Think about it you have a roughish textured surface with recessed grout lines!!!!  So how can a FLAT PAD be as efficient as a brush???

Then if you had polished it would have looked better!

This is not a slur on you or anyone elses ability or me trying to rubbish the final result of your photos!

Finally I lose the will to live when people want Travertine highly polished like this because it can never look right when polished and will always look uneven due to the different properties.  So no matter what it will always look uneven when polished.  Let's face it if it was meant to be polished the Romans would have done it when they built the Colosseum in Rome.

Kev Martin
Marblelife Ltd
Tiling Logistics

[StoneSealersHQ]

Kevin,

This is an advice forum and I was offering advice to the post I quoted. I'm sure most would agree there is no need to turn every thread into a p'ing contest, it is tiresome at best. You offer your advice and I'll offer mine.

[Kev Martin]

Dave

The truth clearly hurts!

Kev Martin
Marblelife Ltd
Tiling Logistics

[StoneSealersHQ]

Dave

The truth clearly hurts!

Kev Martin
Marblelife Ltd
Tiling Logistics

Hardly Kevin, when you're right I'll let you know 

[B Bailey]

Most of the travertine I do is polished, obviously the customers like it.

[StoneSealersHQ]

Most of the travertine I do is polished, obviously the customers like it.

Agreed. There's load of it out there, it looks nice, its easy to work with and if the customer likes it.... even better.

[B Bailey]

Most of the travertine I do is polished, obviously the customers like it.

Agreed. There's load of it out there, it looks nice, its easy to work with and if the customer likes it.... even better.

👍

[Jason Smith]

After receiving Kevin's very strong opiniated reply it got me thinking, maybe after 12 years of cleaning & restoring and trying most processes available I had missed something. These specialist manufacturers who have come up with my recommended innovation of non-woven diamond pads, which I and I see a couple of members are now fans of. My thinking needed confirmation, so I and a couple of my sales guys got on the phones to the professionals out there, I must admit we avoided phoning Marble Life. Since the early part of the week we've contacted approximately 25-30 floor cleaning and restoration companies to ask what process do they use to clean and hone stone floors? The honest majority consensus was if there wasn't a need for resin bonded diamonds they would use a non-woven pad over powders.

Whether you like them or not Kevin, they are more popular than you believe and more people use pads than powders, not for polishing but for cleaning and honing which was what this topic was about. Also if these pads don't work then HTC, Klindex & KGS need to pack it in and leave you to covert everyone back to honing powders, plenty of people to convert from what information we gathered this week.

[Jamie Pearson]

I believe there is now a hardener system available to treat Travertine before polishing to get a uniform finish between resin and stone.
Not tried it personally. Its possibly similar to the densifier used for concrete polishing but looking forward to trying it as I work with an Italian family who own a Travertino quarry and like to use diamond polished epoxy resin coatings to get a uniform appearance.

With regard to the pads vs honing powder that this thread has become I will share my 2 pence worth.

We are distributors of both 3M and KGS "diamond".
We are also contractors and find ourselves using honing powders more and more often now that an extended range of grits has become available in the restoration industry.

If a floor has been previously flattened we will use the pad system usually followed by polishing powder but if it is new with lippage that the customer doesn't want to spend money removing we will use honing powders as I feel that the coating is removed too quickly by the pads coating being shaved off to be cost effective.

So whilst sitting on the fence I can see the argument for the use of either system and we evaluate each job and use whichever is going to work best for that application.

[Floor_Tony]

Jason

Kevin is under no illusions of how popular pads systems are, your just in a long list that have tagged it on to your business. It is not possible to achieve a high gloss with just honing powders and polishing powder.

What we would do as follows for a dirty floor, will use above as a example if you don't mind.

In the case of above we would probably go with a 800 grit honing powder with a brush attachment with a ph neutral cleaner perhaps even a very diluted high alkaline cleaner, the reason as Kevin has stated that a pad just will not get into any of the pits or grout joints. Then a good rinse and vac.

Then we would go over it with a super shine no.3 rinse and vac again
Then polish it.

Now what Kevin hates about pads is that they are seen and sold to be the answer to restoration problems and replace resin diamonds which I'm sure you would agree.

Thank you Jamie for bringing such a great post.

[Jason Smith]

Tony, I never mentioned restoration I am as aware as you or anyone else what they are capable of achieving.

Thanks for your sensible replies including CSUK, a little different to Kevin's initial one of "I can't believe this post"

[Floor_Tony]

Your welcome, I think it's best for everyone to drop this post now. Even though it makes for excellent reading on different techniques carried out in our industry

[StoneSealersHQ]

Your welcome, I think it's best for everyone to drop this post now. Even though it makes for excellent reading on different techniques carried out in our industry

I suggested that hours ago 

[Kev Martin]

After receiving Kevin's very strong opiniated reply it got me thinking, maybe after 12 years of cleaning & restoring and trying most processes available I had missed something. These specialist manufacturers who have come up with my recommended innovation of non-woven diamond pads, which I and I see a couple of members are now fans of. My thinking needed confirmation, so I and a couple of my sales guys got on the phones to the professionals out there, I must admit we avoided phoning Marble Life. Since the early part of the week we've contacted approximately 25-30 floor cleaning and restoration companies to ask what process do they use to clean and hone stone floors? The honest majority consensus was if there wasn't a need for resin bonded diamonds they would use a non-woven pad over powders.

Whether you like them or not Kevin, they are more popular than you believe and more people use pads than powders, not for polishing but for cleaning and honing which was what this topic was about. Also if these pads don't work then HTC, Klindex & KGS need to pack it in and leave you to covert everyone back to honing powders, plenty of people to convert from what information we gathered this week.

Jason

Your right I don't like pads at all and Honing Powder is a more efficient and better method but that has already been stated.

However, no matter how many times I say it both you and Dave cannot get it into your skulls that I don't give a monkeys whether you or anyone else use Honing Powder or Pads.  I sell 100's of pads every week and I am the only one selling them in such a wide variety of sizes so it's a win win situation for me.

So long may pads continue!!!

Kev Martin
Marblelife Ltd
Tiling Logistics

[StoneSealersHQ]

Your tone says otherwise 

[Forum Admin]

Thanks for the posts guys - let's leave it there and agree to disagree.

The forum is a mine of information to learn, share, support and grow
for members.

We thank all those for their input and hope we can all exist together
for the better of the forum.

Thanks.

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