When it comes to choosing a flooring material that will serve you long and well, you can’t go wrong with epoxy floors. They’re durable, long-lasting, and readily lend themselves to easy cleaning. Still, to get the best out of this choice of flooring, you need to know how to clean indoor epoxy floors thoroughly.
The most efficient way to do this is to first prepare the floor, then scrape the surface before preparing and applying your cleaning agent. You clean up with your mop after this and you’re done!
As a floor surface that lends itself easily to a wide variety of uses, you can’t afford to be carefree when it comes to cleaning and maintaining your epoxy. So here, we’ll be concisely breaking down all you need to know to remove even the toughest stains and spots from your beautiful floors!
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What are Epoxy Floors?
Also commonly referred to as resinous flooring, these types of floors are well-known as highly solid, easily customizable, durable, and decorative surfaces. They’ve become especially popular over the past few decades as they’ve demonstrated a unique ability to withstand wear and tear with greater ease.
One reason for this is that this type of flooring comes with a combination of hardeners and polymer resins eerily similar to what is found in epoxy glue.
In the right proportion, the mixture of hardener with epoxy creates a stiff plastic material that has three unique properties.
- It’s highly durable.
- It’s more resistant to degradation.
- It bonds perfectly with its substrates.
All of this is possible because of the multiple layers of epoxy that the flooring is coated in.
There are five types of epoxy flooring you should be aware of. These are:
- The self-leveling epoxy floors.
- The epoxy mortar floors.
- The quartz-filled epoxy floors.
- The anti-static epoxy floors.
- The epoxy flake floors.
Each of these types of floors is better suited to particular spaces and locations.
Why You Need to Clean Your Epoxy Floors
There are various reasons why you simply need to give cleaning your epoxy floors special priority. We’ll be highlighting some of the most important ones here.
Clean Floors Reduce the Chances of Accidents
No one needs to be told that occasional slip and fall can happen to anyone at any time. That being said, you need to be aware that there is something you can do to significantly reduce the frequency with which such occurrences happen!
When your epoxy floors are clean, you can walk on them with a greater level of confidence knowing that they won’t get slippery and lead to an unwarranted visit to the hospital.
Clean Floors Promote Your Image
When you have glistening epoxy floors, you improve your image and the general perception of what you represent in the public eye. This is more so the case if you have these floors on commercial property.
The fact that they look so clean will give people who come to the people with you the impression that you’re someone to be taken more seriously.
Clean Floors Help You Save Money
It’s true that on the surface, the money and time that you invest into keeping your epoxy floors clean won’t feel like saving anything. However, if the epoxy floors are in a place that experiences high traffic, you will have to change them sooner than you planned because of the increased wear and tear.
However, because you clean and maintain the floors diligently, you can significantly push back when you’ll have to get new floors!
How to Clean Epoxy Floors in 5 Step
If you want to get your precious flooring spick and span in record time, here’s all you need to do to get it in this condition in record time!
Step 1 – Prepare the Floors
To get your epoxy floors in perfect shape, you need to carry out two levels of preparation to get them in the right condition for cleaning. This is the first step.
You start by taking a broom to the floor to clear it of all debris and dirt particles on its surface. If you’re cleaning a much larger utility area, you can use a blower in place of the broom to displace the dirt.
This step is important because performing it helps you condition your floor for the remaining cleaning processes that are to follow.
Step 2 – Start Scrapping
Remember we said there were two stages to the preparation process?
Well, this is the next phase!
Step One helps you eliminate the dirt that can be easily removed so that you can get direct access to the surface of your floor. This next step helps you eliminate the more stubborn particles of dirt and debris that may have attached themselves to the surface of your floor over time.
To perform this exercise properly you need to get either a squeegee or a paint scraper. This is what you’ll apply with pressure to areas of your floor with large dirt deposits stuck to it.
You need to be careful of two things during this process.
The first is that you mustn’t apply too much pressure during the scraping process so you don’t damage your floor’s surface.
The second is that, if you’ll be using a squeegee with a metal frame, it has to be one with rounded corner frames. This ensures that the metal blades won’t scratch the beautiful finish of your floor.
Step 3 – Prepare Your Cleaning Agent
There are two ways you can do this.
The first is to mix half a cup of mild detergent into one gallon of hot water. In this case, you can opt to use normal dish detergent or an all-purpose household cleaning detergent. To be on the safer side, we recommend that you use dish detergent as this is likely to be far gentler on the floors.
The second way you can go is to use 1 or 2 ounces of weak ammonia solution in one gallon of water. This is equally potent as it will not only clean your floor but disinfect it to a point as well.
Step 4 – Mop the Floor
Having prepared your cleaning solution, you’ll need to use a mop to apply it liberally to the surface of the epoxy floor. To get the best results here, you need to make sure that you use the mop evenly and you cover the entire length of the ground properly.
This will prevent any instance of one portion of the floor being cleaner than the other.
In cases where you’ll need to scrub in addition to mopping, make sure that you use a push broom with gentle fiber bristles or moderately stiff plastic.
Step 5 – Wrap Up!
You’re almost done! All that’s left to do is to wring the mop out and then use it to dry the floor. Lastly, make sure that you rinse out the mop properly so that it doesn’t hold any soap residue anymore.
Go over the floors one last time and ensure that you mop off any excess water. Do this till the floor is completely dry before walking over it.
And with this, your epoxy floor is clean!
Best Practices for Maintaining Your Epoxy Floors
While cleaning your epoxy floors is very important, it’s not the end of it all!
Your job doesn’t end there as you need to take steps to maintain it as well. This will complement your cleaning efforts and help you use your floors for longer.
Some maintenance practices you need to keep in mind moving forward here include;
- Make sure that you try to sweep or mop the floor at least once daily. You can use a commercial dust mop or soft bristle broom for this exercise.
- Never forget to do a thorough cleaning exercise only after you’ve swept away and removed all dust and debris particles on the floor. Failure to do this might sabotage your cleaning efforts.
- Never use products with strong acids or soaps to clean the epoxy floors. It’s important to avoid these kinds of cleaning products because they can make your floors extremely slippery when wet, constituting a real hazard in the process.
- You can minimize the occurrence of wear and tear on the floor as a result of water by placing welcome mats outside. These will absorb much of the moisture before it comes in contact with your floor.
- If you want to stain the floors properly, make sure you do so very lightly with a soft scrubbing pad.
With these measures, you’ll be able to extend the shelf life of your epoxy floors significantly!
Bottom Line
Epoxy floors are a beautiful and worthwhile investment for any space. However, if you don’t take the necessary steps, these floors can easily lose their gloss and shine!
However, when you floor the cleaning and maintenance practices that we’ve highlighted here, you’ll be able to get the very best out of these beautiful floors!