Floor Buffing (also called burnishing) is the process used to enhance the appearance of your floor.  Generally the buffing process takes place during a routine floor maintenance or after a strip and wax.  In this article I will go over a few tips we use at Reflective Images to enhance our buffing process to bring out the best shine to a floor.

Equipment used:

• High Speed Propane Buffer
• Hogs Hair & Beige  buffing pads

Our double buffing technique!

Hogs Hair Pad

A very common process we use after we have finished waxing a floor is we double buff it. First and foremost, make sure the floor finish is dry! A tacky or sticky floor can swirl if not properly dried. Once the floor is dry, we use a natural Hogs Hair buffing pad and burnish the floor.  This give us a smooth, hard foundation as we transition into the polishing stage. A sweeping of the floor is also done to remove any debris and dust.

Our next step is the polishing stage. At this point the floor should already have a nice shine to it. Now its time to bring out the showroom look!

We change the buff pad to a High Speed Polishing Pad. Generally a Beige or Aqua color.  We then proceed to buff the floor slowly to bring out the ultimate shine. This process is a bit more time consuming then the normal single buffing of a floor, but the results are seen in the finished product.

Other Floor Buffing Tips:

• Always make sure your floor pads are clean and free of debris
• Use the proper colored pads for the right finish
• Always keep your buffer moving to avoid burning the floor finish
• Be very careful of loose or broken tiles
• Walking slower with your burnisher will enhance the shine
• Always do a final sweep to remove any dust the buffer leave behind

So what is the process that goes into floor stripping? I will go over a few simple steps that are required in  the floor stripping procedure.

Have all your supplies

First thing you must do is have all your supplies ready to go. Here is a list of what you will need before beginning:

1. Wet floor signs
2. 2 bucket/mops
3. Floor stripper
4. Razor poll scraper
5. doodle pad
6. 175 rpm floor machine
7. Black Stripping pads (High pro)
8. Wet vac or auto scrubber
9. Floor squeegee
10. Rags

Now its time to get started!

Take your 2 mop buckets and fill one with clean water. You can add a little neutral cleaner to the water if you like as this will be used for the rinsing process. Take your other bucket and mix your floor stripper. The normal mixture is a 4 part water to 1 part stripper ratio. You can adjust your stripping solution as needed.

Next take the floor stripper and lay it very liberally on the floor. You do not want the stripper to dry so only lay it in small sections at a time. Let your solution dwell for between 5-10 minutes so that it begins to break down the old floor finish. PLEASE NOTE: At this time the floor will get extremely slippery!

Take your poll scraper and scrape all the edged and corners, removing all wax that your floor machine can not get. You can also use a doodle pad for this process, but I personally like the scrapers over the doodle pad.

Once all edges and corners have been done, take you 175 rpm floor machine and slowly begin to remove the wax from the floor. Generally you will make a few passes over the area to ensure the wax has been completely removed. Always check your stripping pad to make sure it hasn’t become clogged. Flip the pad as needed.

If your stripper starts to dry do not panic!

We always have a bucket of water around as we strip, so if your stripper starts to dry do not panic! Just take some clean water, throw it on the floor and go over it with your floor machine. You are back in business, its as simple as that!

Now that you have finished removing all the wax from the floor, take your floor squeegee and pull all the “slurry” to an area and suck it up with a wet vac. You can also use an auto scrubber or a wet vac with a mounted squeegee for this process. If none of these are available to you, your last resort is to manually mop up all the stripper.

Always rinse your floor!

Your final step is to clean rinse your floor. You want to ensure that you have a clean, uncontaminated floor when you are finished. Even tho many floor stripper claim they are “no rinse” , a final rinse is required!  Use your clean water and mop your floor removing anything that might have been missed from the stripper pick-up process. IMPORTANT NOTE: Always mop the baseboards and check the walls for any splash! Keep a rag handy and wipe anything your machine might have kicked up.

Let your floor dry, and now you should have a completely stripped floor ready for the floor finish. If you see any wax left on the floor, just throw a little stripper on the spot, and hit it with the machine.

This is just a basic overview of a common floor stripping process.