Tag Archives: Greater Manchester

Victorian Hallway at Grade 2 Listed Salford Town Hall Remodelling

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This original Victorian Tiled floor was uncovered at the Grade 2 listed Salford Town Hall in Salford, Manchester. This public building which built around 1827 was the former Salford Town Hall and Magistrates Court; it’s currently being turned in to luxury apartments and this amazing floor is located in the main entrance hall. The floor was only recently re-discovered during the conversion works after being hidden for many years and was in surprisingly good condition. The company remodelling the building are maintaining the historic features so we got the call to go in and clean and seal the floor.

Victorian Tiles at Salford Town hall before

Cleaning Victorian Tiles

Cleaning the floor was fairly straight forward and involved the application of a dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean which was left to dwell on the tile for around ten minutes before being worked into the Tile and Grout using a rotary machine fitted with a black pad. The dirty solution was removed using a wet vacuum and the whole floor rinsed down three times to ensure there was no trace of cleaner left on the floor. It’s a large tiled area so it took the whole day to complete.

Sealing Victorian Tiles

I returned the next day to see that the floor had dried off overnight and so started to seal it using Tile Doctor Seal & Go which is a topical sealer that adds a nice shine to the tiles, five coats of sealer were needed before the tiles were fully sealed. I think you would agree the floor now looks fantastic; certainly the client was happy with the finish.

Victorian Tiles at Salford Town hall after

 
 
Source: Commercial Tile, Stone and Grout Cleaning in Greater Manchester

Cleaning Etched Anti Slip Tiles

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You may recall a Limestone job I did recently at a Manchester country club in Hale. This Anti-Slip porcelain floor was installed at the same location in the passageway on route to the toilets and in the toilets themselves. Slips and falls can be a huge problem for buildings with public areas and so tiles which have been etched to make a normally smooth surface rough make perfect sense, the downside of course is that those rough surfaces trap dirt and are difficult to clean. Tile Doctor have a chemical Anti-Slip alternative that only activates when the tile get wet that doesn’t require the tile to be etched but it does need to re-applied every few years.

Anti Slip Tiled Hallway Before Cleaning Anti Slip Tiled Hallway Before Cleaning

Cleaning Anti Slip Floor Tiles

The floor tiled need a deep clean to bring out the ingrained dirt so we applied a strong solution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean using two parts water to one part Pro-Clean and left it to soak into the tile for twenty minutes. The solution was then scrubbed into the tile using a rotary machine fitted with a black scrubbing pad. You could see the dirt coming out the pores of the tile and the resultant soiled solution was removed using a wet vacuum before washing the tiles down with clean water.

Anti Slip Tiled Hallway After Cleaning Anti Slip Tiled Hallway After Cleaning

Including the ladies, gents and hallway there was a lot of floor area to cover and some of the stubborn areas had to be re-treated so it was a long job but I think you will agree the floor now looks great.
 
 
Source: Commercial Tile Cleaning Problems solved in Manchester

Cleaning a Manchester Country Club Stone Floor

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This beautiful Limestone tiled floor was installed at a busy country club in Hale, Manchester around eighteen months prior and had seen significant foot traffic with around 500 people traversing it daily. The floor was taking a significant amount of punishment and although regularly cleaned the dirt had started to become ingrained into the stone and the maintenance team were struggling to keep it looking good, I also suspect that the cleaning product used on the floor may have accelerated the degradation of the sealer leading to the premature ingress of dirt.

Cleaning Limestone Floor Tiles

The floor was given a quick wash with Tile Doctor Neutral Cleaner in order to remove any surface grit and then cleaned using a set of Burnishing pads fitted to a rotary machine. The burnishing pads come in four different types and you work your way through them starting off with a course stripper pad with a little just water and then carry on with the white pad and then the yellow pad until the floor is thoroughly cleaned and any previous sealer removed. Next step was to use Tile Doctor Pro-Clean along the grout lines with a stiff brush to get the grout clean as well. To bring up the polish on the Limestone tiles I used a green polishing pad which is the last in the set of the four burnishing pads.

Sealing Limestone Floor Tiles

Once the floor was dry we set about sealing it using two coats of Tile Doctor Colour Grow which is a colour enhancing sealer designed to provide maximum stain protection on natural stone floors whilst bringing out the deep colour in the stone. The last step was to buff the floor to a nice shine with a rotary machine fitted with a white pad.

The Limestone floor is now backed to its best and I took the time to explain the need to use a neutral cleaning product such as Tile Doctor Neutral Cleaner on the stone in future.
 
 
Source: Limestone Floor Cleaned, Polished and Sealed at a Hale Country Club