Tile Floor Cleaning

 

Our tile floor cleaning service gets grout as clean as brand new. The challenge with getting grout clean is that it is very porous. Dirt and detergent residue has been soaked deep into the grout with repeated mopping’s.   To get this embedded soil out of the grout requires a combination of the right chemistry and a lot of rinsing.

The grout gets cleaned using two different detergents. A strong alkaline grout detergent is used first. This a very good general cleaner and removes oily soils like the atomized cooking oils in your kitchens grout. This detergent will get the grout most of the way clean and gets the grout ready for the acid wash. A pump up sprayer is used to apply the detergent in a safe and controlled fashion. The grout lines are brushed with grout brush to work the detergent into the grout and to draw the soil to the surface of the grout. When all the grout has been brushed and the detergent has had 15-20 minutes to do its work, we rinse the floor with our contained pressure washing system.

The key to success with tile floor cleaning is the rinsing. We use a powerful truck mounted hot water extraction cleaning machine that uses a contained wash head. The rinse tool applies the water in a spinning cyclone of that is very effective at absorbing the deeply embedded soils from the grout and uses 1200psi water at 4.5 gallons per minute. It has vacuum ports around the edge of the tool that suck up the water. This keeps the water fully contained in the wash head and never gets the floor more than mop damp.

Once the floor has been completely rinsed of the alkaline detergent we repeat the process with the grout restoration acid. The acid detergent is what gets the grout back to as clean as brand new. It dissolves the stains bond with the grout allowing it to rinse from the grout with our powerful truck mounted hot water extraction. Brushing is very important in this step and heavily soiled areas get a lot of brushing.  The grout restoration acid is also used to correct grout haze.

Grout haze occurs when the tile installers do not effectively remove all the grout residue from the face of the tile after the grouting process. The grout acid dissolves the bond of the thin layer of grout from the tile so it will rinse with our contained pressure washing system.

To get the corners and edges as clean as we get the rest of the floor we use special edge cleaning and detailing tools. These allow use the reach under counters, beside toilets, corners, and edges close to the wall edge in a safe contained and effective manner.

Now we use microfiber mops to dry the tile and grout of standing water before sealing. Our standard tile and grout sealer is a water based penetrating sealer that soaks into the grout and changes the surface tension so water doesn’t penetrate and oils don’t stick to the surface. This sealer lasts between 3-5 years.

The grout sealer is allowed to soak into the grout for 5 minutes before being cleaned up. The floors and again mopped with microfiber mops to remove any remaining sealer residue. Once the grout sealer residue has been cleaned up the floor is ready for use.

 

To keep the freshly cleaned tile and grout looking great we recommend using a microfiber mopping system. Microfibers are a cleaning technology developed in Sweden that can keep your floors clean using nothing but plain water. They are used two ways: Dry for dusting and wet for cleaning.

When used dry they create a natural static cling that draws dirt and hair into the microfiber and holds it there. This should be done daily.

When used wet the microfibers wedge shaped fibers cut greases and oils and the water moves then into the absorbent microfibers to be removed from the floor. This VERY effectively cleans the tile and grout without adding any new chemicals or leaving any detergent residue.

When the grout starts getting too dirty to clean without mopping make sure you do not use a strong alkaline cleaner as this will degrade the performance of the sealer.

Always rinse the floor with fresh clean water after putting any detergents on the floor. Dry with microfibers after mopping for best results.

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