Scene of the Grime

The good news is that, for the last question, the answer is yes. The problem is that many people don’t get the right information – or, they end up listening to someone who’s guessing.
That bit of guesswork is a big problem when it comes to stone installations and maintenance. Let’s look at two very common maintenance issues and see why they happen, and how to prevent them.
We’ve all seen dirty grout, tile and baseboards. If you’re in a coffee shop or fast-food restaurant reading this right now (and, hopefully, finished eating), you may see it by looking at the edges. How do baseboards get that dirty and filthy?
This answer may seem simple: Mop jockeys are swabbing right to the edges every time they clean. But, there’s more, especially when you see this occur more-frequently in commercial applications:
• They’re slop-mopping;
• They’re using dirty water and/or mops; and
• They’re mopping where there’s no need for mopping. (Remember, stone is low-maintenance).
Slop mopping is where you use a mop to completely wet the whole area you’re working on. What’s the harm in that, you may ask?
Essentially, you’re just spreading around dirt. It looks clean when wet and even after it dries, but all that has been accomplished is the thinning out of the soil and depositing it back in multiple locations. Much gets deposited back on the floor in a thin concentration, which does not seem like much after you mop that time. After all, the dirt is in the mop bucket water right?
Now multiply that thin concentration of dirt over the three-plus times a day many commercial establishments are mopped. It starts to add up; as soon as you rinse your mop out the first time, you’ve contaminated that water. That dirt needs to go somewhere.
Think about the grout joints, which are the weakest link in your floor chain. Even if you do not have your typical porous, cementous grouts, the material is still recessed. This gives all that dirt from your contaminated mop water a place to set up and party (think of all the bacteria in there). Because it hides away from foot traffic and wear, after the water evaporates, it’s found a home.
If the grout joints aren’t sealed, this dirt can take root – so to speak – and make it all the more difficult to evict down the road. Sort of like giving it squatters rights.
Does that sound bad? It can get much worse.
What if that dirty water that your maintenance staff is using is also hard? Yes, calcium- and/or iron-filled hard water. You’re not only depositing dirt everywhere; you’re encrusting it under a microscopic layer of calcium build up. Think of the scenic caves where all those stalagmites grow.
I remember being called into an installation of ceramic tile that was etching. The cleaner accidentally spilled toilet-bowl acid on the tile and it etched. Those of you who know the makeup of ceramic materials know that acid won’t etch it (or, for that matter, granite) unless it’s covered with a thin layer of calcium.
This is not a hard (pardon the pun) problem to solve if it occurs on acid-resistant stone. The real problem is when it is done to marble because you are actually going to need to remove, from the surface, the same material (calcium) that the stone is made of. This will require abrasive action.
How to prevent it? Only use a damp mop, and only mop where it is needed. Use clean water; if you can’t see the bottom of the bucket, it’s already too dirty. Use soft water, if at all possible.
Do not cross-contaminate, either. Never use a mop from a greasy kitchen in the dining room; that grease will not come out of the mop.
Have entrance matting for commercial establishments, using the 15-step rule. Industry standards say that it takes 15 steps (30’-45’) to dry a wet shoe; make sure there’s a three-step scraper, scraper/wiper and wiper mat to completely remove moisture and grit.
It’s also wise to invest in a good quality wet vac system. This will not only remove wetness from soaked matting, but can also remove wet contaminates from your grout and stone surface.
For commercial establishments an autoscrubber makes good sense. This, however, brings us to our second maintenance issue.
I was called into a large office building in a busy metropolitan city core. One of their concerns was that the edges were a different color than the center of the floor.
Since they were using an autoscrubber, the answer was simple right? They assumed that the maintenance staff were mopping the edges and leaving a slight build up. Now, I have to tell you, I’ve never seen anyone mop in a straight line before with perfect edges.
The truth was that the night cleaners were not mopping the edges at all – and the edges were actually clean! Figure that out. (Or, as Arsenio used to say “things that make you go hmmmm.”).
OK, ready for this? No one walks on the edges of the floor. How often do you go into a building and see everyone up against the walls, creeping along like a police officer moving into the next room? In my world (and I am sure yours as well), never.
I informed the building management that their maintenance staff was actually doing them a favor. Although they were supposed to be mopping the edges, they were actually preventing a build-up of dirt.
Now let’s get to the real culprit in this mystery: the autoscrubber, and he still had the weapon on him. Why the melodramatics? Because no one ever suspects the quiet, unassuming autoscrubber.
The autoscrubber was innocent on the clean-edge case because it was only doing what it was made to do in this situation. Normally an autoscrubber is the best thing for cleaning a large commercial establishment; however, this one was fitted with cylindrical, not disc-type, brushes.
Cylindrical brushes resemble the curlers that once were the standard overnight wear of bouffant hairdos. In this set up, they sit one in front of the other, with the goal of picking up debris during cleaning. Pretty simple and thoughtful, right? It even saves maintenance staff the need to pre-sweep.
The problem is as the autoscrubber wets the floor, the brushes are only touching the floor in a straight line for a microsecond. This doesn’t give them enough time to agitate the dirt, and therefore have it suspended in the cleaning solution for pickup by the wet vac squeegee behind the brushes. The result was a smearing of dirt all over the center of the floor, with that telltale straight line along the edges.
Why are these systems employed? Because janitorial-supply companies tell maintenance companies that the systems are made for stone – and that’s because manufacturers often tell supply companies the same thing.
Cylindrical brushes on autoscrubbers, as far as sweeping, work great. When it comes to cleaning stone, they fall short. The idea works good on paper, but not on stone.
The beautiful thing about stone is that these problems are easily solved. I’d like to see how easy they are to fix on other types of flooring.
Until next time, keep your stick on the ice.
Tom McNall is founder and owner of Great Northern Stone Care, a Huron Park, Ontario-based stone-cleaning and -restoration company servicing all of southern Ontario.