Welcome back to the latest edition of Finfloor's Good to Great Series. Today we're tackling how to
clean your floors. And so many people are getting it wrong and that's why everybody's exploring
the YouTube, and whatever person who knows a little bit about flooring, about how to clean
floors. You would think it'd be so basic. Well, we're going to get into it on how you can keep your floors
looking like this and that they're not looking like this. All right, when it comes to cleaning
your floors of vinyls, SPC's, laminates, and even your engineered wood timber flooring products,
it's actually quite simple. There are some basic principles you need to follow and we're going
to get into those principles today. Ultimately, we need to protect our floors from dirt entering our
homes or workplaces in the first place. So that's where a typical walk off mat is going to save you
a whole lot of sweat further on down the line. So when you get these floor mats that will absorb
water moisture, mud, and take off that grit, it's going to save that surface of your floor and give
you longevity and a cleaner looking floor for longer. Ultimately we need to get into a general
sweeping and vacuuming routine. This is going to remove that loose surface dirt before it gets
tramped into the surface. Again, make sure that you're following the particular product's cleaning
specifications with regards to vacuum beater bars. Some of these different types of vacuums can
damage your floor, so just make sure that you do follow the instructions before you finalize that
cleaning regime. Obviously, every living space is dynamic. If you've got a flow from your living
space into a pool and you know the kids are going to be running in with wet feet, this is something
to pay attention to and understand how your living space or dynamic works. And you can put the various
preventative measures in place, again preventing that contamination of your interior floor from
it being accelerated. All right, now I need to get into the tools and this is where it can get quite
opinionated and there are loads of different products out there in the marketplace. But I
think we need to focus on the basic principles of what is required to clean the floor. All right,
so when it comes to the bucket, do you need one bucket or do you need two? Well, actually,
for the perfect cleaning solution you actually need two buckets and we're going to get into this.
But besides having two individual buckets, you do get buckets that are divided into sections
and this is one of the most critical elements in cleaning your floor. You need two buckets.
Stay tuned, we're going to get into that. The other element is the cleaning apparatus. You
know, it could be your string mop, it could be a microfiber cleaning broom like this one.
The cleaning apparatus is absolutely critical in being almost that mechanical element that
contributes to your cleaning regime. Ultimately, we want to make sure that we put the least amount of
liquid on your floor as possible. So that's my personal preference is the microfiber dust broom,
but you can use a string mop if you squeeze it out properly. The problem is most people don't.
They slop it around and they do a sloppy cleaning methodology and that ultimately damages floors
at a high rate of knots and it's it's almost like a loaded gun. It's dangerous.
So understand the tools that you're using and who's going to be doing the cleaning.
Make sure that they are properly trained because the wrong apparatus in the wrong hands
can destroy your floors. Finally we'll get into the cleaning agent okay. So there are
loads of different products out there in the marketplace and it can get very confusing. Also
budget is a real factor and we need to balance all these variables up into our cleaning regime.
Now ultimately most floors require a pH neutral cleaning agent and we want to make sure that
we are using a cleaning agent that is designed for the floor type. When you start using things
like dishwashing liquid because you've all of a sudden run out of your favorite flooring cleaning
solution, dishwashing liquid can actually be really harmful especially to vinyl floor options
where the phenols in some of the cheaper dishwashing liquids can actually attack the PVC,
polyvinyl chloride. Also a lot of these different cleaning agents have foaming agents and wetting
agents etc. etc. that are not necessarily going to be contributing to an easy clean solution for
you because when you are spraying these cleaning solutions on, you're not rinsing them off enough,
and we're leaving a sticky residue which, while initially your floor looks super clean,
it unfortunately is sticky. It'll still leave footprints that you'll see almost like a haze
in the highlight or it will attract the dirt so that loose dirt that we
initially vacuumed and swept up that now sticks into the sticky residue and accelerates your
floor looking dirty for a much longer period of time. Now we're going to get into why the bucket
is so important. All right, the rinsing regime of having two buckets is absolutely critical.
You're going to prevent your floor from creating this kind of end result of where as I mentioned
earlier with your cleaning solution, is that you are leaving that residue on the surface and it's
attracting dirt. Now if we're not rinsing the floor correctly, because of the cleaning solution or
because we are creating a lot of grey dirty water. So if you've ever washed a floor you know that
when you're rinsing your cleaning apparatus in that bucket the water becomes gray and dirty.
Now that's a good sign because it means you're removing dirt from the floor surface and you're
depositing it into that water. But unfortunately we don't rinse these applicators often enough okay.
Also when we are using our cleaning liquids, we are not removing enough of this from the surface.
So you can see how it's a bit of a multi-faceted approach on we need to rinse the floor correctly
and we need to have the right cleaning liquid so that we can not leave that residue on the
surface. Now when we are rinsing the floor we want to take our dirty cleaning apparatus and clean it
in a clean water bucket once it's clean and we've removed majority of the dirt. We squeeze it out
to leave that dirty water on the dirty water side and then we go across to our cleaning solution,
a diluted cleaning solution, where we'll then dip it in, rinse it out, so that it's nice and dry. And
then we will go back to cleaning our floors and that's the process that we repeat. Now please hold
on, you've got to do this on a regular basis as you're busy cleaning your floor. You can't clean
the entire floor with one or two rinses. You've got to continually maintain that relationship of
wiping the floor, checking the underside is it holding dirt, and then going into your
rinsing cycle. That is one of the most key important elements in preventing your floor
from holding dirt and the dirt especially gets held especially along the skirting lines, in
the texture, you can see how bold this texture is because all that dirty water has now been layered
in the texture of the wood or in the grooves of the plank and that's what gives us this result.
So now you know how to clean your floors. Now you know how to keep them looking brand spanking new.
Remember the least amount of liquid on your floor is going to safeguard them over the long term.
Don't use that sloppy cleaning apparatus. Don't put too much water on the floor because that
will damage your floor. If you found this video informative and you've got any questions for us
or Finfloor, please hit us up in the comments below and please as always share a little bit of love.