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A Floor
Care Primer
By George Weise,
Zone Manager, University of South Carolina
The maintenance
of resilient hard floor is important for building managers and any individual
on your campus concerned about building maintenance and upkeep. Resilient
hard floor requires a great deal of maintenance for several reasons:
- First
and fore most is to protect the floor, as sealer and floor finish will
protect it from wear and tear.
- Appearance
of flooring is very important. Having a clean floor with a high gloss
finish leaves a very positive impression about the facility.
- Slip
safety is another reason for floor care, as by using proper products
and procedures you can reduce slippage and the associated liability
from slip and fall claims. Using UL approved floor finish with a slip
resistant (coefficient or fraction) valued at 0.5 or greater will help
prevent slippage. Having a floor care program with written policies
and procedures, and by using proper safety equipment like wet floor
signs and ongoing documented training can provide evidence that you
are utilizing a reasonable standard of care. In the case of a slip and
fall claim this will be a big plus in the department’s favor.
- Indoor
air quality is another reason that floor care is important. Whether
hard floor or carpet, daily maintenance is necessary to remove all the
biological contaminants that settle on flooring. These contaminants
are a leading cause of poor indoor air quality and must be removed by
daily maintenance.
Maintenance
of resilient flooring
Starting
from the beginning, for a new floor, you need to remove the factory finish.
Most floor care experts will remove this finish with a light stripping
solution and a blue pad. Make sure to use ammoniated stripper; as the
mop-on stripper or so-called hot/high pH strippers will attack the newly
applied adhesive. You should consider using an autoscrubber since the
factory finish is very thin and takes little pad pressure to remove.
Stripping
of old floor finish
Usually
this is a tedious and time-consuming job. Make sure your staff has proper
safety equipment like goggles, stripping boots, gloves and long sleeves,
and read the MSDS sheets. Remove any obstacles that can be moved, scrape
up any gum or sticky debris, dust mop the floor, and barricade or use
caution tape in any areas where you will be using stripper.
- Mix
Stripper following label directions as the recommended label dilutions
as well as the recommended water temperature will enhance overall performance
of the stripper. If no specific guidelines are given on water temperature,
use cold water, as this will slow evaporation and reduce the fumes that
come from the stripping solution.
- Apply
stripping solution liberally covering all of a small area. Let the stripper
stand for at least 10 minutes.
- With
a scraper and doodlebug pad, clean all corners and edges. Then use a
175-slowspeed scrubber with either a stripping brush or stripping pad
to scrub the area where the stripper has sat for at least 10 minutes.
- After
scrubbing the floor area, remove the remaining solution with a wet/dry
vac and rinse the floor with a neutralizer and then with plain water.
Using a neutralizer will neutralize any chemicals that could negatively
impact the ability of the floor finish to adhere to the floor. Floor
stripper has a pH of 13 and using a plain water rinse will get the pH
around 9.5 the first time, and after two more rinses you will be at
8.5. When using a neutralizer with a pH of 2.2 you will get at PH of
around 7.
- After
this stripping process is done, the floor is ready for a finish coat.
Floor stripper can usually remove about seven coats of floor finish.
If the floor has more that seven coats it will require a repeat of the
stripping process. For a quality job make sure that corners and edges
are very clean prior to applying the finish coat to your floors.
Applying
the new floor finish
After your
floor has been stripped and is dry, apply floor sealer or a self-sealing
floor finish. Sealing the floor fills in the pours and will help protect
it from liquids and will give a better gloss. Some sealers are harder
to remove than floor finish and may require special strippers to remove
them. Usually the application of two coats of sealer and 2 to 3 coats
of floor finish is all that is needed.
Follow the
manufactures suggestion for the number of sealer and finish coats to apply.
Because finish dries from the bottom up do not apply more that six coats
of finish per day and make sure each coat is dry before applying another
coat of finish. If quicker drying is needed you can use fans but do not
have the fans point directly on the floor, have them circulating and exchanging
the air in the room above the floor. Having the air forced on the floor
can cause ripples near the fan and will cause the top of the finish to
harden and prevent the bottom of the finish from drying properly which
will cause cracking and the creation of a soft layer of finish.
Maintenance
system
After your
floors are stripped and sealed, the next step is to figure out how best
to maintain them. When maintaining floors it is important to consider
what your maintenance operation has in terms of equipment, resources and
personnel. For low maintenance use a non buffable finish, if you want
a nice gloss finish but do not have much equipment use a buffable or spraybuffable
finish, and if you want to maintain a high gloss finish use one that can
be burnished with a high speed buffer. If a “wet look” finish
is desired, use a UHS burnishable finish.
Maintaining
floors after they have been stripped and finished
- The
first step after the floors have been finished is to keep dirt away
from the floors. The best way to do this is with entrance matting. Matting
should be available at every entrance door both inside and out, and
as a guideline the mats in entry areas should be 12 feet in length.
- Trash
receptacles should be available near building entry and exit areas,
and sized in a way so that they are appropriate to the needs of the
facility.
Daily
maintenance: The daily maintenance of floors should involve the vacuuming
of entrance mats, and dust mopping or vacuuming and spot moping the flooring
as often as is necessary per the day. The daily removal of gum and stickers
with a putty knife, as well as wet mopping and scrubbing the entire floor
at least once daily, should be part of any quality maintenance program.
Interim
maintenance: Interim maintenance needs are based on traffic in the
facility and an assessment of what is needed to keep the floors looking
clean and at your desired appearance level. Interim maintenance consists
of autoscrubbing or slowspeed scrubbing of the floor. You also need to
plan on spraybuffing or burnishing the floor, and providing a light scrub
and recoat with one coat of finish when needed. Depending on facility
traffic and desired appearance, these procedures could be needed daily,
weekly or even monthly.
In determining
an interim maintenance system for the floors in a facility, you need
to consider your staffing level, the equipment and the type of floor finish,
and the amount of traffic wear and tear on the floor. Consider the following:
- Staffing:
Are enough personnel available and trained to do the required tasks
for the desired gloss/floor appearance?
- Equipment:
Does the department have the proper equipment to achieve the desired
finish?
- Floor
finish: Are the proper finish and equipment being used together? (Example:
Do not use a Ultra High Speed (UHS) finish if the staff is spraybuffing,
do not use a nonbuff or buffable finish if using a Ultra highspeed or
Propane burninsher, etc.)
- Traffic:
Choose the floor finish and desired gloss based on the traffic and labor
available to keep the appearance of your floors to the desired and an
acceptable level.
Restorative.
This is a labor-intensive last resort maintenance process. Deep scrubbing
involves removing the first few layers of floor finish using a 175-rpm
scrubber with blue pad and a neutral cleaner or slightly higher pH and
then applying two coats of new finish to prevent a complete stripping
of the floor. Corners and edges should also be cleaned.
Some
common floor care problems
- Streaks
and alligator effect----Finish was not thoroughly dry before applying
next coat…Used contaminated mops or buckets…Finish applied
over factory finish on new tile
- Poor
gloss--- scrubbing or buffing pad may be too aggressive…Using ammonia,
bleach and other non-neutral cleaners or too strong a dilution---Not
enough coats of finish applied or wear has removed finish and more finish
needs to be applied
- Yellowing
of floor finish---Dirty mops or inadequate maintenance (may be mopping
when scrubbing is needed)…Used cotton mops to apply finish…Buffing
dirty floors causing dirt to be buffed in finish…Refinishing dirty
floors sealing the dirt in the finish…Build up of floor finish…Refinish
floors too often and putting too many coats of finish on floor in particular
the edges (edges need far fewer coats than the center of the floor due
to lack of traffic on the edges)
About the Author:
George Weise is a zone manager at the University of South Carolina. He has over 17 years experience, and has worked at Penn State University and Penn State Hershey Medical Center. George has had over a dozen articles published and has won the ACUHO-I Robert Cooke award for article of the year. He is a certified IICRC Master Cleaner and Master Restorer.