The photographs below are from a large commercial premises we were asked to clean recently in Dagenham, East London. The property had been used as a large furniture retail outlet and the 250m2 Terrazzo floor was in need of a deep clean before the new tenants moved in. The customer had struggled to clean and improve the condition of the floor and the tenant was going to use the premises as a food hall so it was important to get it clean. Time was tight so we completed the clean over a weekend between the old tenant leaving and the shop fitters moving the following week with fridges, counters and shelving etc.
Cleaning a Terrazzo Floor
To clean the floor we used Tile Doctor Pro-Clean diluted 1 part cleaner to 2 parts water, Pro-Clean is a heavy duty alkaline cleaning product and this was left to soak into the Terrazzo tile for thirty minutes to help soften the ingrained dirt. We then started working the solution into the floor using black scrubbing pages fitted a Numatic buffing machine. This activity was continued for the weekend over and over until we were happy with the condition of the floor.
There were a few stubborn stains in places and we tackled those using Pro-Clean again but this time mixed 50/50 with NanoTech Ultra Clean which adds tiny abrasive particles into the cleaning solution; again this was left to dwell on the Terrazzo for up to one hour in order to penetrate deep into the surface and soften the ingrained dirt before being worked in with a machine. Remove and Go was also used in some areas of the floor to tackle some of the stubborn areas and we also brought in rotary machines with a faster RPM to progress the work as we found the heavier and faster machines made a difference.
For some of the really stubborn stains we concocted a poultice made up of a strong dilution of Pro-Clean and NanoTech Ultra Clean which we covered in a plastic sheet and left on the floor surface overnight; it did improve the stain quite a bit, not perfect but a big improvement. The end result was good and can be seen in the photograph below . There were some rust stains that we could not remove in places, but the customer was ok about this given the deadline.
