MAINTENANCE GUIDE
Keeping Your Floor Clean
Things happen. Things happen big time to specialty flooring used in sports, fitness, and the performing arts. First and foremost, you want your floors safe, your clients, customers, and students sound, and your investment secure. Before you get fancy, you need to consider creating a floor maintenance schedule. Number one on the agenda is keeping your floor surface clean on a consistent basis.
All floors get dirty. Dust, dirt, sweat, shoe marks, food, soda, and gum are the prime offenders. The more the floor is used, the more it needs to be cleaned. What exactly does "clean" mean?
A mistake people make is they think what they do at home also applies to studio or stage. Not so. Cleaning materials and applications created for home use are not appropriate for commercial and professional situations. Specialty floors are subject to much more wear, tear and environmental punishment. They may need special protective finishes. The desired aesthetics and coefficient of friction are very different from your floors at home. To begin, you need a general purpose, mid-range PH (measures acidity and alkalinity) detergent/degreaser. It cleans without destroying finishes and without leaving any surface residue.
In fact, many cleaners leave a residue on the floor to make it shiny or resistant to dirt. When you use a cleaner that leaves a residue of any kind, you inevitably change the coefficient of friction. In simple terms, if you use the inappropriate cleaning agent, your floor becomes stickier or more slippery after application. If there is one thing you want in a specialty movement floor, it is consistency. Supermarket products are not what you want. Better to shop in a hardware store offering industrial cleaning supplies.
Once you have secured your detergent/degreaser, Aeson offers Proclean, Proclean NS, and Slip NoMor Finish Cleaner. Each it can be used with a mop or a flooring machine, usually with a green pad. The two bucket technique is more effective and efficient if you use a mop. One bucket (use warm water) contains the detergent/degreaser; the second bucket just plain warm water. Put the mop in the detergent bucket, ring out (you never want to put excess water on any floor surface,) and mop your floor. Rinse out the mop in the second bucket then repeat. When you use most detergents/degreasers with a high concentration of water, you will not have to rinse your floor. At the very least, you will have picked up the dust, dirt, grime and sweat.
If your floor is not entirely clean, it is time to increase the intensity of your effort. Usually what is left is bad scuff marks, dye marks, gum, adhesive residue, or food stains.
A floor stripper, applied with a floor machine and red pad, usually used in conjunction with floor finishes, is an aggressive and effective way to address dye and scuff marks on a large scale. There are also a number of products to attack spot problems. These are solvents, usually made from a citrus base. They can cause damage if left on your floor. They definitely will degrade finishes. When using these products, make sure you immediately wipe up the solvent, then flush the area with water and dry. A safer way to go is with Aeson's Wipeout.
After using a stripper, it is very important to clean your floor with your detergent/degreaser. Stripper left on the floor can damage the surface, destroy a finish about to be applied, and can damage shoes.
An appropriate finish applied to the floor will help reduce the time, effort and frequency of cleaning. Make sure you follow instructions as to the number of applications, technique of application, drying time and other requirements. The cleaner you keep your floor, the longer it will last, the better it will look, and the safer it will be. Slip NoMor Maintenance System has both a non-slip finish and specially designed cleaner.
