Once your floor has been professionally cleaned or restored it is up to you to preserve its new found beauty . It is crucial for you to know when to dry mop and when to wet mop. Knowing this will add months or even years to the life of your floor. There are many types of floors, ( to many to discuss in one post ) so for conversation sake we will be addressing only tile floors today. We will talk about Natural stones in another blog post very soon. Stay tuned.
WET MOPPING
Let's take a look at wet mopping first.Tile floors are almost never in need of a fully soaked wet mop. All the wet mop does is push the dust, debris and dirty mop water into your grout lines. The grout lines then drink up all that dirt then become stained and discolored making your grout look old and dingy. No one wants that . We never recommend to use a string mop and bucket for this reason. A lightly damp flat mop will work much better at actually picking up the dirt without destroying the grout lines. We suggest you use a spray bottle with warm water and a little bit of neutral cleaner ( 10 to 1 ratio approx. ) . Lightly mist the floor
then proceed to go over it with said flat mop. If you feel that you have used to much water or saturated the surface to much do to higher soiled areas don't fret. Just retrace your steps with a microfiber rag and make sure to dry up any excess water. The key is to have NO standing water on your floor. That leads to the breakdown of your sealer and causes discoloration to your grout lines. This process is only 3-4 times a month depending on traffic. For really high traffic areas you can spot clean with the same neutral cleaner spray bottle as talked about earlier with a microfiber cloth . This will help maintain your floor in between wet mopping. That pretty much sums up wet mopping for tile floors.
DRY MOPPING
Now let's dive into dry mopping. Dry mopping is very important if you want to preserve the life of your tile floor .Dry mopping can be done on a daily basis without damaging or discoloring your tile and grout. Dry mopping is especially essential if you recently got your tile and grout professionally cleaned or restored. We always apply a sealer to the grout after cleaning or restoration. It can be a clear sealant for new grout or a color sealant for old stained, discolored grout. In any case you are going to want to preserve this sealant and the best way to do that is to maintain your floor with a dry mop as much as possible. Dry mopping is pretty self explanatory. You can use a flat mop with a microfiber pad on it or a flat mop with fringes as pictured . Start at the back of the room and work your way out getting as close to the edges and corners as possible. A little trick that we use is to dry mop all the dust and debris to the edges and corners then take a vacuum hose and vacuum it up. That insures that you are getting ALL of the dust up off the floor. That's it for dry mopping. Super easy right.
CONCLUSION
Wet and dry mopping are equally important. It's all about knowing when to implement them. You can keep your floors looking new by using both wet and dry mopping techniques. If you have any questions on how to maintain your floor please feel free to chat with one of our technicians on our website. Thanks for reading.
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