Details below of a Limestone floor installed in the reception of a Victorian hotel in London’s West end. The Limestone Floor had been cleaned incorrectly leaving very noticeable staining marks to the grout lines. We were asked to return the floor to its natural appearance and improve the finish from Matt to Polished.

Cleaning the Limestone Floor

Working at night to minimise disruption for the hotel guests our first step was to clean the floor and grout with a dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean. Pro-Clean is ideal for this purpose due to its alkaline formula, acidic products even those with mild acidity will damage the floor over time and can lead to small holes forming where the calcareous stone has been dissolved.

The next step was to burnish the floor using four stage diamond encrusted twister pad system. This is a labour intensive process where you scrub the floor using a buffing machines fitted with different pads; each pad is designed for a different purpose and will remove sealers, grind off ingrained dirt, smooth the surface as well as polish.

Polishing and Sealing the Limestone Floor

To obtain the requested highly polished finish the floor was then polished using Tile Doctor Shine crystallising powder which as well as providing a high shine also leaves a tough durable finish, ideal for high traffic areas such as this. We finished off the floor with a single coat of Tile Doctor Colour Grow impregnating sealer which was then buffed to a high shine finish.

For regular cleaning we have advised the hotels maintenance team to use a 1-30 dilution of Neutral Cleaner applied with a microfibre flat mop, water rinsed and the dried with second clean microfibre mop.

Source: Limestone Floor Cleaning at a Hotel in London