What Is Required to Maintain Commercial Stone Floors Properly?

When it comes to commercial properties and office spaces, there is no more elegant or practical finish than stone. Establishing an effective maintenance program is crucial to keep commercial stone floors in good condition and looking their best.

1. First, identify the stone.

The beginning phase of designing an effective maintenance program involves identifying the stone. Is it granite, marble, quartzite, or limestone, and if so, is it hard or soft? If the stone is marble, is it polished, honed, or flamed? Can this flooring type handle its traffic load? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you should contact a trusted stone supplier or restoration firm. It is crucial to fully grasp your stone's qualities to design an effective maintenance program.

2. Was it installed properly?

Before evaluating the stone's quality, check whether the tiles are even and flat. Is the floor free of uneven tiles? Proper maintenance will be challenging if the surface is not adequately honed, ground, and polished. Are there any cracked tiles? If so, they should be replaced or, if replacements are unavailable, filled with a polyester resin to prevent dirt from accumulating in the cracks.

3. Determine the stone's condition.

Before establishing a maintenance program, you must remove coatings like wax, urethane, or acrylic. You may discover that the stone appears in fantastic condition, only to uncover a pitted, scratched disaster once the coating has been removed. Damage should be repaired before beginning a maintenance program.

4. Make it more resilient.

All office flooring is subject to spills of coffee, water, or other liquids that can seep into the pores of your stone floor. Impregnators are made to penetrate and seal the pores of the stone and its grout lines, if present, all without creating a surface coating.

5. Dust mop daily.

The most vital aspect of a maintenance program is dust mopping. Sand, dirt, and grit are tracked into the building by everyone's shoes, and this debris is highly destructive to stone. By eliminating these substances with frequent dust mopping, stone requires less maintenance, appears new, and stays in good condition longer. A dry, untreated, clean dust mop should be used at least twice a day in high-traffic locations and less frequently in low-traffic areas.

It's essential to install at least 10 feet of walk-off mats both outside and inside an entrance to prevent debris from being tracked inside. On average, it requires about seven steps to eliminate all the loose dirt from the bottom of one's shoes, so keep this in mind when selecting a walk-off mat. The more grit that is removed by the mat means less material that will dull and scratch the stone.

6. Go green neutral with your cleaning chemistry.

Regular cleaning of polished or unpolished natural stone is important in high-traffic areas. Use a clean microfiber mop with cold or warm water and a quality neutral cleaner or stone soap. A neutral cleaner is a cleaning agent that falls between six and eight on the PH scale. The PH scale is a rating from zero to fourteen. Any cleaning agent in the range of zero to six is considered acidic. Any cleaner that is in the range of eight to fourteen is considered alkaline. Both acidic and alkaline cleaners can damage your stone. Anything between six and eight is considered neutral. Seven is perfectly neutral. Another bonus of neutral cleaners is that they rinse off surfaces very well and leave little to no residue behind, which means no buildup to deal with later.

7. Avoid coatings for natural stone.

In most cases, waxes, acrylics, and other sacrificial coatings should be avoided. If a coating is necessary, you should seek expert advice. However, sacrificial coatings generally increase the maintenance required for most stones, and it's surprisingly inexpensive and simple to maintain a polished surface without using coatings.

8. Polish it naturally.

Historically, highly polished stones have been produced by employing a natural polishing procedure. Modern technology has enabled this traditional approach to be simple, economical, and time-saving, preserving the stone's optimal appearance without applying coatings not appropriate for stone. Many high-traffic hotels and office buildings employ this method, and with a bit of professional help, you can enjoy a highly polished stone floor.

Using a buffing machine and a floor pad, the stone is abraded to remove grit damage and maintain a high degree of shine. An abrasive powder—aluminum oxide or tin oxide—is mixed with a polishing powder using a buffing machine and buffing pads to buff the stone. You don't need to buy a fancy machine; you only need a 175 rpm buffing machine, a buffing pad (white or hog-hair pads are good for most stones), and polishing powder, which you can buy from a marble supplier. An automatic scrubber benefits large areas like mall or department store floors.

Use a small amount of water to mix one tablespoon of powder into a slurry on the stone under the buffing machine. Experiment with the ratio of powder to water; some stones may require a very wet polish, and others might require buffing until almost dry.

If you are dust-mopping a stone floor, you should plan to polish it properly. The frequency with which you polish the stone will depend on the kind of stone, the quantity of traffic it gets, and whether you've been dust-mopping the floor. A home, for example, may only require polishing once a year, whereas a hotel might require daily polishing.

You may wonder, “Will we grind away the stone until nothing is left if we employ this procedure?” The reply is a quick no. The abrasion is so delicate that most stones may be polished daily without significantly wearing down.

Non-professionals shouldn't use this buffing process. Although the above procedure is suitable for most situations, the nature of the stone and other factors will dictate the most effective polishing method for your floors, so you should consult a stone care expert if you're unsure.

9. Hire a professional for periodic maintenance and restoration.

If you haven't followed a proper maintenance program, if the kind of stone you possess is unsuitable for the conditions it encounters, or if the stone does not react well to the type of maintenance it received, you must restore it.

Depending on the level of care or neglect your stone has received, the deep restorative cleaning and honing frequency could range from once a year or as infrequently as once every five years.

Do not try to rehone stones yourself, as this requires expertise and experience. Instead, seek the services of a reputable restoration company. It is not a job for your janitorial crew.

It's been said that the function of preserving and maintaining natural stone floors is as old as humanity itself. A maintenance program that combines tradition and modern science can ensure that your commercial stone floors look beautiful for years to come.

Is it time for a change?

You shouldn’t put up with meh or good enough stone care when you can have a self-managed, highly-trained, proactive team to support your goals of improved appearance, performance, and longevity of all the surfaces in the buildings you manage.

Reach out to learn more about our stone care programs, get a free quote, or schedule a demo.

About Corporate Care – A sustainability company

Corporate Care exists to improve the appearance, performance, and longevity of every surface in the commercial buildings you manage – reducing capital expenditures, stress, and management burden on facility managers from coast to coast.

As true surface care experts, we understand the unique properties and cleaning protocols every surface needs (or doesn’t) to look amazing and comply with manufacturer warranties. We’re here to support your existing janitorial crew with cadenced deep restorative cleaning and tailored maintenance protocols – performed by IICRC®-certified cleaning technicians.

We are firm believers in restoration over replacement. Let’s reduce waste together!