Commercial Floor Care Waxing in Columbus, OH
Floor stripping and waxing service in Ohio Columbus Cleveland Youngstown.
If you have ever hired a janitorial company to strip and wax floors you know 2 things. 1. It's time consuming. 2. Its Expensive.
By far stripping and waxing is the most time consuming and pricey project in the janitorial industry. This is the proper way to strip and wax floors.
Strip the edges and corners. Common sense to strip the corners right? You’d think but a lot of people don’t do this because doing it properly requires a lot of extra work. Since a machine can’t fully reach the corners, good old-fashioned elbow grease is the only thing that is really effective. If you stick with a machine, eventually you will end up with a lot of built up finish that looks terrible. To fix this, use a 3M Doodlebug unit with a brown pad after soaking the edges for ten plus minutes with stripper solution. If you wish, you can use an aerosol baseboard stripper but be careful not to leave it on too long as it can ruin rubber base cover and VCT if let to dry. I recommend staying away from it in general, but it is a great product for metal thresholds.
Flip your pad. The four elements needed for efficient cleaning are temperature, agitation, concentration and time. Most people focus on the concentration and temperature and forget that dwell time and agitation are essential too. In a perfect world you would have all four elements but often you will be missing one, usually temperature. This doesn’t always matter, however, since most floor strippers don’t require hot water because it can cause the cleaning agents to evaporate. Lukewarm water will do just fine. Checking your pad often to see if it is “loaded” will ensure that you have agitation needed. The first 8×8 section you strip will tell you a lot about how much you will need to flip and replace pads. Check it often.
Lay finish to edge every other coat. After years of applying finish to the edge each coat, I was taught by an old floor zen master to take it every other coat. Of course you have to edge off doorways but this practice makes the stripping process so much easier later on. Still, box out your areas and stay six inches away from the coving. Never apply more than three coats of finish to the edges at any time. So, if you choose to apply five coats or more, never add more than three to the edges.
Take it slow. Stripping a floor is dirty, labor intensive work. Take a break between the stripping and finishing of floors, otherwise you may go too fast and achieve less than satisfactory results. Taking a break also allows you to phase off workers (you won’t need the same amount of staff for finishing) and get some perspective on the floors appearance prior to finishing. When you are finishing the floors your head should be in a totally different almost calm place. Take your time…every flaw will show up in your finish. The first coat must be perfect!
Budget: $4500