Floor Waxing Tulsa
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Floor Waxing has been a strength for the Multi-Clean Floor waxing Tulsa team for 30 years. Our owner, Kevin Thomas started his company with 1 hair salon and a church. The hair salon that he cleaned was called Frida’s Salon. He tackled his first strip and wax job back in 1993. Kevin waxed the entire salon by himself, and the floor looked amazing. He has since learned a lot more 30 years later the proper techniques of floor waxing. Many of the techniques he has learned include making sure that you have the proper equipment to clean, strip and wax the floor. Also, Kevin learned that this type of project requires an enormous amount of patience. Floor care can be a very long and tedious job. The floor wax requires hours to cure and dry to make it ready for traffic the next business day. One thing that can make the floor drying time slow is the relative humidity on the outside of the building.
Below is described the best procedures to follow when stripping waxing a vinyl composition tile floor. We will refer to this floor as VCT for the duration of this blog and informational page about floor waxing.
Having proper equipment
The overall key success to Floor Waxing Tulsa is making sure that you have the proper equipment. In any industry such as hair styling, having the right scissors and other tools help the styling professional do their job correctly. As in hair styling, having the proper tools helps the floor technician properly strip down the floor, rinse it and lay the proper number of coats of floor wax.
When stripping a waxed floor Multi-Clean uses the Nylo-Grit brush for stripping all the old wax off the floor. The Nylo-Grit brush is even more aggressive than a black pad on removing the wax off the floor. Multi-Clean also uses a dry strip method known as Square Scrub. This new technology is cutting edge and is more of a green way to strip and wax floors than any previous method.
The specific square scrub machine that the Multi-Clean Floor Waxing Tulsa crew uses is called The Pivot. The Pivot is an orbital machine and can handle numerous types of floor care cleaning and waxing. The Pivot machine features a pivoting head that allows the user to work more efficiently at floor waxing Tulsa.
The Pivot, made by Square Scrub, also has the seal of approval of the Carpet and Rug Institute. This Square Scrub machine improves the time between pad changing and drastically improves pad wear, especially in certain areas. The pad wear is the same all through.
Types of Floor Wax
There are several types of wax or floor finish that Floor Waxing Tulsa companies use on floor tile. There are basically 4 types of floor finish available to Janitorial Services. The first is water-based polyurethane, the second is an oil-based polyurethane, the third is oil, and the last is wax. In the Floor Waxing Tulsa market and most janitorial services will use water-based polyurethane. Multi-Clean currently uses the water-based floor finish from Spartan. Spartan offers several good types of floor finish. Multi-Clean currently uses On & On, and iShine. The most popular floor covering to apply floor finish is called VCT. VCT, otherwise known as Vinyl Composition Tile, is used widely in the commercial building industry. There is a wide variety of colors, and the maintenance is easy, and because VCT is at low cost makes it a good choice for most building managers.
Removing the Old Wax
There are several methods in removing floor finish from a VCT tile floor. Multi-Clean will describe below our winning techniques for removing floor finish.
- Step 1 – We sweep all of the heavy debris from the top of the floor surface, and then we remove any hard grime that might be stuck on the floor like gum, residue or even residue from an outside parking lot.
- Step 2 – Prepare the floor stripping solution. Multi-Clean floor crews will use yellow mop buckets due to the safety hazards that are present with applying floor stripper to a VCT tile floor. We are always careful to dilute the floor stripping solution as directed on the outside of the container. Not mixing the correct way can be hazardous to the floor and keep the stripping solution from doing its job correctly. Making the stripping solution thin will result in the wax that is on the floor not being stripped at a very efficient level. This will require several attempts at getting all the wax off. Making the stripper too strong does not always work either. When there is too much stripping solution in the mop bucket, the stripping solution will tend to dry quickly before using the wet dry vac to remove the solution. Only a proper dilution from the manufacturer’s recommendations will work.
- Step 3 – Lay down the stripping solution in what we call “slop” mode. You will put the mop down in the solution, and without wringing out the water you will just put the solution directly on the floor in a slop type of process. Because there is a chemical reaction going on between the stripper and the wax, it is important to wait 5-10 minutes before using the floor machine to strip off the old wax.
- Step 4 – Multi-Clean Floor Waxing Tulsa crew then uses a swing machine to strip off the old wax with Nylo-Grit brush on the bottom. Once all the old wax is removed from the floor, it is very important to rinse the floor with water. If you have access to an acid rinse formula to put in the water. We highly recommend the acid rinse process. It keeps the residue off the floor when laying the wax.
- Step 5 – Wet vac all of the wax and solution that has been stripped off of the floor. Then it will require that you rinse the floor at least two times once the solution is removed.
- Step 6 – Application of the floor finish is the final and sometimes the most important step in laying finish on the floor. We recommend using a flat mop and laying 3 coats of wax in a very symmetrical pattern. Multi-Clean Floor Waxing Tulsa recommends a dry time of at least 30 minutes between coats, and a dry time of 5-8 hours before traffic is allowed back on the floor.