Cleaning and Maintenance of Polished Concrete Floors

To maintain anything to standards requires maintenance. Finished Concrete Floors are no exception. However, if maintained properly will result in lower maintenance costs than most other floor finishes. A number of factors effect floor finish performance.

Polished concrete floors are not completely maintenance free however they are easier and more economical to clean and maintain than most other floor covering solutions on the market. In saying this they require regular attention in terms of routine cleaning schedule…

Depending on the style and location of your polished concrete floor be it in a home with only walking traffic, pets and children’s toys, an office fitout with swivel chairs, tables and furniture through to a multi-distribution warehouse or freight facility each floor requirements maintenance to varying degree.

Finished Concrete Floors contain reactive sites where calcium hydroxide has been exposed even after the initial finishing. Calcium hydroxide is produced during the concrete hydration process and migrates to the surface of the slab throughout its life. The calcium hydroxide, if not treated, reacts with carbon dioxide to chemically form calcium carbonate, dust, even after densifying and finishing the floor.

New sites are exposed through abrasion normal foot traffic from rocks embedded in shoes, scraping, dropping hard materials, scratching, etc. on the finished concrete floor surface. These new reactive sites need to be treated.

Concrete throughout its life has a pH range of 10–12. Most cleaners on the market are considered neutral, which means they are in the 6-8 pH range. This is considered acidic when the surface has a higher pH range. We recommend a cleaner that includes silicates to react with those sites. C2 MaintenanceTM was developed with a lithium silicate along with neutral pH of 10 to address both situations.

Visually, you cannot see what is happening on the floor. Concrete floors provide numerous advantages, but to maximize the benefit an understanding of the substrate and what it takes is the best way to start.

First of all, when a finished concrete surface was decided to be used it provided an immediate savings over the use of floor coverings, not only from a installed cost perspective, but environmental value.