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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.