There are many kinds of floor machines as well as styles, colors and textures of the pads used to maintain flooring.  The type of machines and pads you use are critical to successfully maintaining the floor.  Using the wrong pad can give the wrong result or even damage a floor surface, so it’s important to get educated about the world of floor pads!

• MACHINES:

o   “Low-speed” machines operate at speeds anywhere from 150 RPM’s to 350 RPM’s.  They are sometimes called “Side-to-Side Machines”, or “Weed-Wacker’s” because of the way you use them, in a side-to-side motion.  They are perfect for scrubbing VCT or concrete floors to remove dirt and grime, and with more aggressive pads, to strip away old floor finish right down to the bare tile or concrete.

o   “High-speed” machines operate anywhere from 1600 to 3000 RPM, with the most common being 1600 RPM and 2000 RPM.  The high RPM actually heats the floor finish and increases the viscosity so that it actually re-levels the finish and in the process removes imperfections bringing the surface to a high gloss.  These machines are operated moving straight forward, like you would use a lawn mower.

o   “Auto-Scrubbers” are best for doing larger square footage sites.  They can be either corded or battery operated, and have water tanks; one for fresh water and another for the water that’s picked up off of the floor.  Typically you use an auto-scrubber for routine maintenance by adding a neutral cleaner to the fresh water tank, which will make the scrubber more effective at removing dirt and grime from the floor. Some people make the mistake of using an auto-scrubber to pick up stripper when stripping old floor finish.  It may work well at first, however the machines are not designed to pick up corrosive chemicals, and very soon you’ll destroy the hoses and gaskets of the machine and void your warranty!  (Instead, use a wet/dry vacuum to pick up the stripper.)

• PADS & BRUSHES

o   “Brush Heads” can be used instead of pads for many applications, and although a brush head is a lot more costly than a floor pad, a typical brush head will outlast 100 or more floor pads before needing to be replaced.  They come in textures anywhere from feather-soft for marble floor polishing, clear up to super-aggressive wire brushes for etching concrete, and everything in-between.  They are especially effective on tile floors that have grout lines, as the brush bristles are able to get down into the grout lines to scrub. They are also excellent if you have a floor that is not level with bumps and dents.  Using a floor pad tends to “burn” the tops of any bumps that stick up on VCT tile, and also are less effective with grout lines.

o   “Floor Pads” are a low-cost and very effective product to accomplish polishing, buffing, scrubbing, and stripping hard surface floors.  The entire floor pad industry has agreed to a color coding system.  The least aggressive pads (very very soft) are white, while the darkest colors are aggressive.  Generally you use black pads for completely stripping floor finish from a floor, however there are also burgundy colored pads called “Dominators” that are super-aggressive if you have a surface that has been neglected for years and needs hard scrubbing.

Generally speaking, there are several dozen pad colors offered, however they fall into these general color groups. You can use each pad color for these processes:

• WHITE:           Polishing
• CREME:          Marble Polishing
• GRAY              Polishing/Stone Conditioning
• BEIGE:            Polishing/Buffing
• TAN:                Burnishing (Hog Hair Blend)
• GREEN:          Scrubbing
• BLUE:              Cleaning
• RED:               Buffing
• BLACK:           Stripping
• BURGUNDY:  Heavy Stripping

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