People often ask us, how do you maintain epoxy floors or how hard is it to maintain the epoxy floor? It’s actually really easy. In this article we detail a fast, easy, and economical way to clean your coated garage floor.
The polyaspartic epoxy flake floor coatings installed by Renu, LLC will resist fading from UV exposure that occurs with traditional epoxy floor coatings. The finish is skid resistant because the flake provides some texture to the floor. Though the floor has some texture, which makes it a lot safer than a completely smooth floor coating, the epoxy floor hold up really well to any kind of mess and regular use and is very easy to keep clean.
How often does an epoxy garage floor need to be cleaned?
It’s best to need to clean a couple of times a year. At the end of the summer and then again, once we get through winter and spring is here. This is the perfect time to clean out all the road salt, the grit, the grime and the leaves off the garage floor. Where we are in Ocean County, New Jersey, we tend to have a lot of trees on our residential properties. This means that many of us get a lot of leaves that come in with us when we drive into our garages. If you have some water dripping off your car, you might be wondering how to deal with floor stains that come from the leaves.
This is easily manageable when you have an Epoxy floor coating in your garage. Here are a few situations where you might be wondering how to handle specific kinds of cleanup in order to keep your Epoxy floor looking great for a long time.
Spot Clean Your Epoxy Floor With A Wet Mop
Your floor may need some cleaning more than twice a year. You can spot clean any spills or dirt any time using a shaggy mop. These are inexpensive and can easily be found at most big box stores. Just go over all the dirty areas and simply rub them out. The same can be done for any dirty water or soil that drips off your vehicles onto the Epoxy floor.
When it rains you simply mop the areas. Keep in mind that it’s not something that needs to be done immediately. You may need to put a bit more effort into mopping up a mess if it’s been there for a few weeks, or allow the wet mop to rest on the spot for a few seconds before you wipe it away.
This can be done for trouble spots without having to wash the entire floor each time you want to clean something up or anywhere it seems dirty. You’ll be happy to know that this method works very well.
Deep Clean Epoxy Floor Maintenance
If you like to keep your garage looking good and take pride in the way your garage looks, you need to get rid of dirty floors. Depending on how you use your garage, periodically you may want to do a really thorough deep cleaning. Soft tires can leave marks on an epoxy floor and you may bring in some grime and oil from what you pick up on the streets that will get deposited. Dirty puddles form from rain dripping off the vehicles. Here’s how to keep your epoxy floor clean.
Using the recommended cleaning method for a garage floor that’s approximately twenty-two by twenty-four should take about 40 minutes to clean the entire floor, depending on how dirty it is. That includes moving some large items around and getting underneath things that can’t be easily moved.
Remove any lose particles and dirt with a leaf blower or a broom
When your garage has a lot of leaves in it, use either a leaf blower or a broom. If you are using a leaf blower, put on some protective eyewear to protect your eyes. Start at one end and blow everything out of your garage. Be careful not to rev up your leaf blower to full throttle. Just let it idle and go nice and easy otherwise it blows a lot of dust all around your garage.
Get a stiff bristled brush and sweep out anything that was left behind by the leaf blower. Do not scrub very hard as you wouldn’t want to scratch up the surface of your coating. Sweep the whole floor lightly at this stage.
Once you get all the heavy debris out of your garage with whatever method you’re using, clean your epoxy garage floor with a few simple products that are readily available from stores like Loews and Home Depot.
Basic simple green
Basic Simple Green is the best and safest soap to use on an epoxy floor coating. The standard ratio to mix this is normally one to ten. For especially dirty floors, an effective solution is five to one. For regular cleaning, in a bucket, mix a half a cup of simple green to one gallon of hot tap water from your faucet.
The apply it to the floor and spread it all around the garage floor with a stiff bristled broom or brush. Be careful not to splash dirty water up onto your wall so take it easy around the perimeter of the room and try to be precise along those edges.
You can segment the garage into sections. Use half the solution for the back of the garage and half for the front. Starting from the back, scrub each section, pushing the cleaning solution and water across and then out of the garage. You’ll see the suds getting dirty as it’s doing its job and lifting the dirt that’s being suspended in the solution along the way.
Apply the rest of your clean soapy water to the front of the garage and repeat the scrubbing and pushing the dirty water out of that area.
After you are done scrubbing, use a squeegee attached to a pole, swipe the cleaning solution and the dirty water out the garage door. A 24″ squeegee is perfect for this task and can be purchased at your local hardware store.
Fill your bucket again with hot water and rinse the floor, working in sections and directing the water out the garage door.
Follow by going around and drying the floor your baseboards afterward to remove excess moisture with a large old bath towel. Setting up a box fan if you have one will be sure to help evaporate any moisture that’s been left behind.
A few items is all you need to keep your epoxy floor like new
Besides a little bit of elbow grease, all you need is a squeegee, a good stiff bristled brush, some simple green, and some hot water to get your garage floor really clean. The most important thing is using the simple green cleaner. It won’t harm your floor, no matter what kind of floor you have, and it’s non-toxic.
If you are interested in getting your own low maintenance epoxy floor coating installed at your Ocean County, New Jersey property, call us today!