cleaning commercial staircases
Terrazzo Staircase
Commercial premises everywhere face a similar issue when it comes to maintaining hard floor surfaces: budget.
In many commercial buildings, the entrance floor is cleaned and maintained to a reasonable standard on a daily or weekly basis. In a vast array of premises that are home to an equally large spread of businesses, the front of house always gets more attention than the rest of the premises.
Areas that suffer from poor maintenance of hard floors are often rear staircases or fire escape staircases.
Commercial Stone Stairwell
Fire escape staircases should be cleaned and maintained to comply with regulations. This is often overlooked, and we find that some really expensive flooring types like Terrazzo and Stone are left year on year, with just the occasional wash-down that only manages to spread dirt and soiling from one level to another.
Budget is often a reason why commercial staircases are neglected. Most people use the main entrance and elevators, so building management tends to focus more money and attention on those areas.
Over time, neglected staircases can become so dirty that only a specialist floor-cleaning company can handle the job, as it is too much for the regular cleaning team.
Deep Cleaning Commercial Flooring
Commercial staircases often have dirt build up in the edges and corners of steps and landings. Even with a cleaning schedule, the hard floor usually gets a quick sweep or mop. Corners and edges are often missed, or worse, dirt is pushed into these areas by a dirty mop and left to dry.
Corners are often neglected.
Stone flooring, or Terrazzo, is a common type of flooring found on commercial staircases. It is used because of its durability and relative ease of maintenance. The issues arise when the floor is left unclean or when harsh chemicals are used on it regularly. The stone will become even more porous, allowing soiling to seep into it. Once this occurs, any amount of regular cleaning will not shift the dirt.
To make the floor look good and work well again, you will need to deep-clean it. For most stone floors, you should also use a sealer to protect the surface. To close the pores and harden the surface, you can use a polishing product or process.
Stone Stairwell Deep Cleaned
Although stone is the most popular floor surface for commercial buildings, vinyl can also be found in many corridors and staircases. Modern buildings using vinyl will normally opt for non slip safety flooring; however the older type sheet vinyl has been installed in many commercial premises and like all other flooring will also require periodic deep cleaning and polishing.