What should your facility’s temperature and humidity be to ensure successful floor finish application? Many temperature and humidity combinations can produce successful results, however, one strict limit to follow is that the air and floor must be at least 55°F.

Pay special attention to areas where it can be colder such as near exterior doors, or the freezer aisle. Also, consider instances when the floor finish is left inside a cold vehicle, and always allow the cold floor finish to warm to room temperature. Applying a cold floor finish to a warm floor (or vice versa) challenges the floor finish to form a proper film. This can cause lack of gloss, and the floor finish could easily powder causing durability issues. Your floor finish should be 55°F. To measure the floor temperature, place a thermometer on the floor and cover the bulb with a Styrofoam cup. After about 30 minutes, read the thermometer.

The Buckeye Hard Floor Care Program includes a comprehensive training for your staff to ensure that products are being used correctly and efficiently. This program is dedicated to providing the most extensive customer support that can help solve flooring issues even when the cause isn’t obvious. With Buckeye’s Hard Floor Care Program, you can customize the most successful floor care program for your facility. Contact us today to learn more.

Winter weather brings many concerns, including slippery floors. Most people put down ice melt to keep entrances safer for people to walk, and walk-off mats to trap ice, snow, water, and ice melt so that they do not get onto the hard surface flooring. Unfortunately, these contaminants do find their way into facilities. Fortunately, a thorough wet cleaning procedure can remove these contaminants from the floor and prevent damage!

To start, you need the proper products and procedures to be successful at removing ice melt. You need products that will dissolve and chemically suspend the ice melt salts to keep them from re-depositing onto the floor while mopping or auto-scrubbing. You should avoid natural soap products and some synthetic detergent-based products. They do not contain the chemical ingredients to chemically bind ice melt salts in solution and allow the salts to re-deposit onto the floor during the cleaning operation. Products such as Buckeye Blue All-Purpose Cleaner, Tenacity^® All-Purpose Cleaner, Green Light^™ Super Concentrated Floor Cleaner, True 7^™ pH Neutral Cleaner, Buckeye Eco^® Floor Cleaner E32/S32, and Straight-Up^® Neutral Cleaner all yield excellent results for removing ice melt. These products are designed to chemically suspend and dissolve ice melt salts and keep them in solution. This prevents them from re-depositing back onto the floor. You can learn more about these Buckeye^® products and more here.

Removing ice melt isn’t the only tricky cleaning task that comes along with winter weather. You also need to adjust how you mop or auto-scrub floors. It is best to start away from outside entrances and work towards them. If you are mopping, change the cleaning solution often so as not to overload the cleaning solution with ice melt salts. By following this procedure, you will not spread ice melt residues over floor areas that might have been cleaner before you started. Cleaning during winter weather doesn’t have to be difficult if you have the proper products and procedures. Buckeye’s full line of products can help clean smooth or textured flooring. With Buckeye’s Hard Floor Care Program, you can customize the most successful floor care program for your facility. It helps you maintain your floors by using superior products that require less labor, increase efficiency, and produce excellent results. Contact us today to get started!

Did you know that 90% of a floor maintenance budget is spent on labor? The Buckeye Hard Floor Care Program can help save on total program cost. Buying inexpensive products is not the key to keeping floor care costs down. Cheaper products yellow and powder, and require frequent and expensive strip outs. The best way to maintain your floors is by implementing an effective hard floor care program using superior products that require less labor. The Buckeye Hard Floor Care Program is built on standardized procedures and the highest quality products. A unique feature of the program is that Buckeye not only manufactures its own floor finishes, but engineers the polymers that form the core of the floor finishes. Buckeye also developed patented Liquescent^® technology, which is a water-based technology that strengthens the cleaning power of Buckeye products and replaces hazardous chemical ingredients including solvents, ammonia, butyl, and alcohol bases.

How does the cost of your floor care program compare to the Buckeye Hard Floor Care Program? Contact your Buckeye Representative today to find out how much you can save with a personalized quote. Using the Floor Care Estimator, your Buckeye Representative will help you to compare total product usage and labor requirements, and determine overall savings. Learn more about the complete program here.

Gloss retention is reliant on the equipment being used. The operation of the autoscrubber and burnisher, the dust mop, and the selection of the proper cleaner, can all impact the longevity of a floor care program. An important factor to consider is the variables between staff and the technique used to apply floor finishes.

For example, let’s say that there are three different cleaning staff members applying the same floor finish. The first one applies the coats very thin. At the end of the day there are only two coats, instead of six coats applied. Each of the coats covered at 6,000 square feet per gallon, producing a very thin coat. The second person applies medium coats, each at 1,500 – 2,000 square feet per gallon. This results in better looking floors for a longer amount of time. The third person applies heavy coats, each at 800 – 1,000 square feet per gallon. Since the coats are so heavy they take a very long time to dry tack-free. The residual moisture and solvents in floor finishes can take months to fully evaporate out of the film. This extremely long time to cure means an unusually soft coating that doesn’t wear well.

Even though each person used the same floor finish, they each ended up getting different results. The Buckeye^® Floor Care Program includes a comprehensive training program for your staff to ensure the products are being used correctly and efficiently. The program can be tailored to meet your specific needs and Buckeye is dedicated to providing the most extensive customer support.

Facilities often have trouble keeping textured floors clean. First, it’s important to know how floor types and floor finishes work together to provide clean and attractive floors. To start you need to ask yourself, why apply floor finish?

The answer is not simply to make floors shiny and pretty. Some facilities, such as hardware stores, may not care if the floor is pretty. The coating of a floor finish creates a protective layer on your floor, preventing heavy traffic patterns from wearing it down quickly. Floor finish also makes cleaning much easier. A smooth surface is easier to clean than a dull, coarse, or textured floor.

However, smooth and shiny floors are slippery when wet. That is why you will typically see textured flooring where water is present, such as the entrance to a public building. Have you ever ran into a building on a rainy day and slid as soon as you stepped inside on the shiny flooring? Unfortunately, slips and falls can happen, but there are ways to manage them. One option is to put walk-off mats in place, or use temporary walk-off mats when it is raining or snowing. Some stores even have 40-50 feet of walk-off matting before you step on regular flooring to prevent falls. Another way to help prevent slips and falls is to post wet floor signs. Either way, management must exercise proper care to provide a safe walking surface for the general public. If management doesn’t want to take chances on slips and falls, installing textured flooring can be a solution.

If you have textured flooring, fine bristle brushes on auto-scrubbers or swing machines can help get the dirt out of low spots. Another option is to use a pressure washer or orbital scrubbing machine. These machines clean not just the high spots, but can get into the low spots unlike spinning brushes, which move so fast they only clean from high spot to high spot and do not get down in between. A good floor finish to use on textured floors is Clarion® 25 Floor Finish because it doesn’t need burnishing. Applying a few coats will make the next deep clean easier to do and the coating underneath might act as a release agent if you use a strong, hot solution like Buckeye Blue® All-Purpose Cleaner. Buckeye’s full line of products can help clean smooth or textured flooring. You can be certain that all of Buckeye’s floor care products are compatible. With Buckeye’s Hard Floor Care Program, you can customize the most successful floor care program for your facility. Contact us today for more information.

It can be challenging to keep any floor surface clean, and doing so without removing floor finish can be extra difficult. Floor pads can help keep any floor surface clean and last longer. There are many factors to consider when using floor pads such as types of floor pads, choosing the right floor pad for your facility, proper floor pad maintenance, and how to use them correctly.

There are different types of pads to fit your needs such as burnishing pads, polishing and cleaning pads, stripping pads, and specialty pads. Some burnishing pads can be used for burnishing multiple times per week, even nightly, and can provide a “wet look.” Other burnishing pads should be used when the finish is freshly applied, helping the finish to cure while increasing the gloss and reducing black marks. A strip pad is for wet stripping with the properly diluted floor stripper. A heavy-duty strip pad is an aggressive, open weave constructed pad that will not clog up and should also be used with the properly diluted floor stripper.

You may have to use specialty pads to remove all of the dirty finish down to the base coats and for wood floor prep. Several brands of auto-scrubbers and burnishers have operator-adjustable pad pressure. It is easy to grind off your finish by dialing up too much pad pressure. If you have a young finish and a machine with pre-set pad pressure, the use of softer pads is the better choice. This means you could use either a white or high-speed buffing pad. When a floor finish is cured and harder, use a red pad. You may be able to use a red pad when the finish is young, applying modest pressure. Then, as the floor finish becomes harder and more cured, use a red pad, applying more pad pressure. The best philosophy to practice is this: if you aren’t intending to apply a fresh coat of finish and don’t want your auto-scrubber dulling out the floors, use softer pads and less pad pressure.

If you are using a plug-in electric machine and you are early on in the floor buffing stages, a gorilla light pad is recommended. Later, you can switch to a more aggressive full hair pad, especially if you have deep scratches. Aggressive pads do a better job repairing floors while softer pads produce better shine. If you are using a propane machine early on in the floor buffing stages, a white pad is recommended. And later you can switch to a more aggressive gorilla light or moderate pad such as blue ice or beige. If a floor needs serious repair but you also want the best shine, buff floors once with aggressive pads for repair. Then buff again with a soft pad to remove the buff haze that happens with more aggressive pads.

You can use floor pads in conjunction with the Buckeye Hard Floor Care program. Buckeye floor finishes are formulated with proprietary technology that never yellows or powders, and the butyl-free floor strippers remove floor finish in one application without harsh odor. Buckeye’s quality products prove to customers that safety and improved product performance can coincide. Buckeye offers an extensive branded line of cleaning and maintenance products that work together to create a customized program for your facility. Each product is designed with quality, innovation, and integrity in mind. Check out more about the Buckeye Hard Floor Care Program here.

Gloss retention troubles on hard floors are a common issue in many facilities. Floor equipment can easily help gloss retention, but can have the opposite effect when used incorrectly. Several brands of auto-scrubbers and burnishers have operator adjustable pad pressure. It’s easy to grind off your finish by dialing up too much pad pressure. Walking slowly generates more friction for the floor than moving faster. For machines that have pre-set pad pressure, we recommend using a softer pad when floor finish is young and not yet cured. When the floor finish hardens daily cleaning with moderate pads won’t necessarily dull a floor finish.

If you plan on applying a fresh coat of floor finish, you want to see the floor fairly dulled by the auto-scrubber before applying finish. Move slowly, use aggressive pads, and apply more pad pressure. If you’re not planning to apply a fresh coat of floor finish, you don’t want the auto-scrubber to dull the floor. Move more quickly, use softer pads, and apply less pad pressure.

Be sure that no equipment is dragging on the floor such as metal, which can abrade the floor finish. A clogged vacuum motor that leaves dirty water on the floor can even hurt a floor’s finish. Try having designated auto-scrubbers for the “problem” floors. You can also damage floor finish by using dirty, used floor pads. Change floor pads as needed. Make sure your floor equipment helps your floor program be as efficient as possible, leaving your floors with high gloss retention.

For further help with floor finishes or to find a new floor finish program, contact Buckeye International today!

What types of flooring do you have in your facility? Whether your facility has hardwood, concrete, laminate, tile, or any other type of flooring, it is crucial to value floor care. There are many benefits to following an effective floor care program at your facility: improved appearance, durability to hold up to heavy traffic, safety, the list goes on. Your floor care needs are specific to you because no floors are exactly alike.

Floor care doesn’t stop at having a good cleaner. You need a program that also includes floor finish and floor stripper – you will extend the life of your floors and people will notice. Buckeye International has developed cleaning/maintenance products that make caring about floor care easier. Any flooring is in investment that should be taken care of for years to come. No matter what your floor care needs are, Buckeye will customize the most successful and efficient program for you.

Click here to learn more about the Buckeye Hard Floor Care Program.