The owner of this Porcelain tiled Kitchen floor in Twickenham was struggling to keep it clean and it was now in need of a deep clean. Twickenham famous for being the home of Rugby Union is only 9 miles away from my base in Shepperton, so it wasn’t long before I was able to pop over and survey the floor.
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The tiles were a little grubby, but it was the grout that was most affected; its hard to believe but the now black grout was originally cream in colour and chosen to match to tile. Having visited the client, we discussed what needed to be done to get the floor looking back up to scratch and looking clean again. We agreed a price for the work to be carried out the following week.
Although this wasn’t the case its worth knowing that some types of Porcelain tile on the market today are Micro-Porous and contain small holes in the tile. These tiles need to be sealed to prevent dirt becoming ingrained as this can be very difficult to remove with a mop. Incidentally on the topic of mops I have noticed clients tend to rinse their mop in the same bucket containing the detergent. This results in the detergent being contaminated with dirt and being put back on the floor. If you are going to use this method to clean your floor it is best to have two buckets, one containing your detergent and the second where you rinse your mop.
Deep Cleaning a Porcelain Tile and Grout
To get the tiles clean I used a heavy-duty rotary buffer fitted with a black scrubbing pad and ran that over the floor along with a medium dilution of Tile Doctor Pro-Clean. Tile Doctor Pro-Clean is a versatile tile and grout cleaning product designed for this purpose, so it wasn’t long before the solution went dark as the dirt was released from the tile. The now soiled cleaning solution was then extracted from the tiles using a wet vacuum.
To get the grout lines really clean they had to be hand scrubbed using more Tile Doctor Pro-Clean and a hand-held scrubbing brush. The rotary pads struggle to get into the recesses of the grout lines, so this really is the best method and I find you get a better finish with this extra effort.
After sufficient scrubbing, we were satisfied that all of the soil was broken up, we then machine flushed and vacuumed the cleaning product and dirt away from the floor. As these tiles are factory sealed there is no need to apply a sealant.
One hour later, the floor was ready to be used again.
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Source: Porcelain Tile and Grout and Cleaning Service in Twickenham, Middlesex
Covering Middlesex, Jonathan Oldham is an agent of Tile Doctor, the largest Tile, Stone and Grout restorative cleaning network in the UK who have developed the products and techniques to handle a multitude of issues surrounding tile, stone and grout.