The holiday season can wreak havoc on floors in commercial facilities, especially retail locations, and make work a lot more difficult for cleaning professionals. 

However, incorporating some preventive measures and taking a few extra steps can help protect a floor’s finish and keep your customers’ floors clean, safe, and shiny. This month’s Powr-Flite Floorcare Troubleshooter offers the following suggestions:

Use neutral floor cleaners. Clean floors daily using neutral floor cleaners. These cleaners can effectively remove most soils without harming the floor’s finish.

Use automatic scrubbers. Mopping can spread soils. An automatic scrubber, on the other hand, lifts and removes soils, salt, and other contaminants that can eat away at a floor’s finish.

Matting inside and outside. Matting should be placed inside and outside building entries. Some experts suggest as much as 15 feet of matting to keep soils, sand, and salt off floors.

Clean and rotate mats.  Moisture and mildew can build up under mats, which can damage floors. For this reason, mats should be picked up regularly and cleaned underneath. And, if possible, change the location of the mats. Floor finish can discolor if the same mat is placed over the same floor area for long periods of time.

Don’t mix brands. Many floorcare products—cleaners, glosses, and finishes—are designed to work together like a system. Using products from the same manufacturer can help ensure the floor’s finish is protected.

“And consider vacuuming dry hard surface floors instead of dust mopping,” says Mike Englund, product manager for Powr-Flite. “A backpack vacuum cleaner should never be used on a wet floor, but on a dry floor it can be very effective at removing sand and soils.”