Benefits of a Floor Polisher
If you have tile or laminate floors, you know that they get dull over time even with regular cleaning. The dull appearance is usually caused by small scratches in the surface and from wax build-up. Traditionally, you have to either get on your hands and knees and strip and buff the floor by hand or you could rent a commercial floor polisher. If you have ever tried a commercial polisher, you know just how dangerous these can be. Luckily, there are now a number of companies offering floor polishers that are made for the home. They are smaller and, generally, have two rotating heads that make them a lot easier to use than their big commercial brothers.
A home floor polisher can save your back and a ton of your time!
I recently was helping an old friend clean up an apartment that he was trying to rent and he had a Koblenz floor polisher. Always excited to try a new device, I jumped at the idea to strip and polish the kitchen floor. Luckily, he knew what to do. Before you start spraying striper around your floor, really clean the surface. Any dirt or debris that you leave behind is going to get ground in if you just jump right in to stripping. Once you have the surface clean, start in the back of your work around, so that you don’t trap yourself, and pouring a small amount of stripper work in small areas. Try to keep changing the direction of the polisher. Once you have stripped the entire floor, follow the directions on the stripper bottle and don’t just jump into polishing. When polishing, again keep changing directions and work small areas at a time. Once you get started, you will start to see results right away. It makes a huge difference in the appearance of your floor. In fact, the floor we worked on looked brand new when we were done.
Even a powerful floor polisher like the Koblenz that I used has its limitations. You are not going to strip and polish a thousand square foot room in a day, but you can probably do all of the tile and laminate floors in your home in one day. Because of the speed of the heads on these polishers, it really does go quick and the results are amazing. I did a little on-line research and looked up the prices on the different models of floor polishers and they retail from about $100 - $200 dollars and most come with different heads for different surfaces. A few even claim that they are great for deep cleaning carpets, but I’ll leave that for another day.