There are a ton of different reasons to choose polished concrete floors created by a qualified concrete polishing company. They’re eco-friendly, as they reuse old concrete. They’re extremely durable, because they’re made of concrete and hardeners. They’re beautiful to look at, with a smooth, polished surface, and a wide variety of colours and patterns available. All of this is well and good, but if it took substantial effort to clean them, it might not be worth the trouble. Fortunately, polished concrete is a breeze to clean – follow these maintenance tips, and your floors will look incredible for years.
You’ll want to use a soft microfibre mop or dust squeegee and sweep up the floors every day – it’s very important that you don’t leave any debris, grit, litter, sand, anything at all on the floor for too long. The reason is simple; as grit accumulates on the floor, people will step on it and walk along the flooring. This, in effect, acts like sandpaper, abrading the top of the floor over time and scuffing it up. Removing the debris before it has time to do this will keep your floors looking great.
You’ll also want to mop or auto scrubber your floor every day. A lot of folks opt to use water for this – that’s acceptable, but it might not be the most effective method of cleaning. You’ll want to find a neutral cleaner, preferably one designed to clean polished concrete floors. Concrete is reactive, and caustic chemicals can cause problems, so you can’t just use any old floor cleaner – one formulated for polished concrete is definitely best. Instead of using a mop, you can opt to use an auto scrubber or a floor buffer – these options are a bit more costly, but they can reduce the time spent cleaning by quite a measure. It’s very important when using an auto scrubber to consult your polished concrete installer for the proper pad to be using. Typically, the correct pad is the ‘white’ pad which is the least abrasive.
Prevention is another important element of maintenance, and with polished concrete, you’re looking to prevent stains. As we mentioned above, concrete can react poorly to acidity, so if soda, vinegar, or any other acidic liquids fall onto your floor, you’ll want to clean it off immediately. To give some resistance to acidic liquids, there are concrete cleaners that have built-in hardeners; while you’ll still have to clean off any spills right away, regular cleaning with specially formulated cleaners can increase the window of time you have before a stain forms.
For any cleaning equipment you use, softness is of the utmost importance; you don’t want to accidentally scuff the concrete floor you are cleaning. You’ll also want to do a deep clean of the floors about once or twice a week; this might require special equipment, and you should talk with the concrete polishing company you hired to get the details on exactly what kind of equipment and chemicals you’ll need.
