Is Your Cleaning Damaging Your Stone Floors

The blog post Is Your Cleaning Damaging Your Stone Floors is republished from Abbey Floor Care

There's nothing worse than inviting friends over for a meal and feeling embarrassed with your dining room floor. It looks grimy. The grout lines are black. You're dreading the conversation turning to your stone floor. Grubby stone floors make your home feel yucky.  If you are like most people, you won't have put much though into whether your mopping is contributing to the problem. Mopping, yes, I agree not the most exiting subject. That is until your beautiful stone floor just doesn't seem to come clean, and always looks dull and grimy.

Are You Mopping Your Stone Floors This Way?

If you're like most people, here's how you clean your floor. You start, by filling a bucket with hot water and your personal cleaning solution. Image credit You grab your mop! A classic cotton or synthetic kind is still the most popular, so this is what you use. Next you dip your mop into the cleaner and wring it as best as you can so it is not too wet. Then you mop it over part of the floor. Then you rinse your mop in the cleaner, wring it out and mop some more floor. But here's the key. Each time you wring the mop, the cleaner is getting dirtier and dirtier. As you mop, you’re just putting the dirty water right back down! It's not your fault; it's just the way with buckets and cotton mops. A standard cotton mop works on the principle of the fibers soaking up the dirty water. But when it gets wet, it's ability to soak up more dirty water is reduced considerably.

What To Replace Your Mop And Bucket With

There are many options on the market today including:

• mop and double bucket (one for the cleaner, one for the rinse water)
• electric steam mops
• electric mini orbital mop
• robot mops

However having tested of them, I always come back to one option, a microfiber flat mop. A microfiber of mop is

• low cost
• long lasting
• highly effective
• versatile (floors, walls and ceilings)
• very easy to use.

Why Microfiber Makes A Brilliant Floor Mop

Microfiber traps dirt in the fibers rather and does not release it until the you launder it. Water is only needed to create the capillary action that pulls the soil particles into the fibers. They only need to be damp and use much less water than standard cotton mops. The snippet from  Paragon Microfiber Ltd explains the science behind microfiber

  Microfibre consists of very fine threads of polyester and polyamide (nylon) that combine to form a single thread. One Microfibre is 100 times thinner than a single strand of human hair. When they are woven together, the Microfibres create a surface area 40 times greater than that of a regular fibre. Due to this expanded surface area, and to the capillary action of the fine threads, Microfibre Cloth has dramatically enhanced absorbing power. Microfibre is traditionally defined as a fibre with a denier of less than one. Denier is a measure of the thinness of a fibre and is the weight in grams of a continuous fibre of 9,000 meters. Due to its incredibly thin structure, Microfibre is able to penetrate the finest microscopic particles of dirt and grease on any surface. Split Microfibre, as it is more specifically described, possesses numerous wedges rather than the rounded threads found in ordinary cloth. This wedge structure is what provides the superior penetration of grease and oil verses that of common fabrics. In addition, the rounded fibres on most cloths only push the dirt along the surface, whereas the wedge-shaped Microfibres grab the particles of grime and pull them into the dense internal structure. Microfibre has two polymers: polyester and polyamide. Polyester is lyophillic, or has an affinity to oil, so that oil and grease adhere directly to the fibres. Polyamide is hydrophilic, which means it has an affinity to water. As a result, any type of dirt is very quickly and completely removed with Microfibre, leaving a sparkling-clean, streak-free surface. Microfibre cleans any surface without streaking, smearing, or scratching. Ordinary towels move or push dirt and dust from one place to another. Microfibre actually lifts or scoops the dirt and stores the dirt particles in the towel, until it is washed. In addition, Microfibre can absorb up to seven times its weight in fluids. Microfibre cloths are also extremely durable. They can be washed up to 500 times and still maintain their effectiveness: This makes it an exceptionally cost effective cleaning product. See more...

Microfiber Is Also A Great Dry Mop

Many people vacuum their stone floors before mopping, which is an excellent idea. However, a vacuum can scratch the stone if it has exposed metal edges. Also, you need to use edging tools to get into corners and edges. A microfiber flat sweeping mop does away with all these problems. It doesn't scratch the stone or damage furnishings, and it is very light,  easy to maneuver and quicker. As you move the mop over the floor, it creates a static charge that attracts dirt to microfibre, which then 'holds' the dirt until the you wash or vacuum the mop. Image Credit.

A Simple Way To Stop Dirty Grout

Mop and bucket cleaning is also a primary reason for dirty grout. As the mop passes over grout lines, the tile edges scrape the dirty cleaning chemical off the mop into the grout lines. After a while the dirty chemical starts to break down the surface of the grout, allowing it to soak deep into the grout. Microfiber does not suffer from this because it traps the particles inside the fibers. In fact, the microfiber will pick soil out of the grout rather than add to it. So the answer to keeping stone floors clean is to use flat microfiber cleaning equipment. Your cleaning will be much easier, it will save you money in cleaning chemical use, and your floors will look cleaner for much longer.If you think your stone floors are"past cleaning" contact Marble, Travertine, Limestone and Terrazzo floors are the most common floors to suffer cleaning issues. If you think your stone floors are"past cleaning" contact Abbey and we'll be more than happy to advise you how to restore the finish to your stone floor.