Why cleaning with scouring pads and brushes damages your high-quality porcelain stoneware floor in the long term

Cleaning with scouring pads and brushes attacks the floor - „harder“ does not equal better

Due to the large number of square metres that need to be cleaned daily, the most economical method is usually to clean the floor coverings by machine. The equipment of the cleaning machine makes the difference whether the daily dirt can really be removed during maintenance cleaning. Unfortunately, this often leads to a gradual deterioration of the cleaning result and greying of the floor covering. Regular basic cleaning would then be necessary to achieve an acceptable level of cleanliness.

Unfortunately, as far as the equipment of the machine is concerned, the motto „the harder, the better“ is repeatedly applied and scrubbing pads or brushes are used to clean the floor covering. Scrubbing pads often have abrasive particles incorporated to grind the dirt off the floor covering and at the same time remove a minimal layer from the floor covering itself. Diamond pads also work on this principle – they have tiny diamond particles incorporated into the structure of the pads.

Abrasive particles permanently scratch the surface of porcelain stoneware, creating a vicious circle

However, porcelain stoneware is predominantly used as flooring in food retailing today. Porcelain stoneware has many advantages over other floor coverings – one of them is its special hardness and thus abrasion resistance. At the same time, however, this means that porcelain stoneware cannot be sanded when installed. Porcelain stoneware is available with different surfaces. With matt tiles, the firing skin is still intact – similar to the bread crust when baking bread. During the firing process at approx. 1,200 °C, a particularly hard, dense and closed layer forms over the microporous base body. Often, a micro-glaze is also applied during the firing process to further close the surface. Porcelain stoneware is also available with a polished surface. In this case, the porcelain stoneware tiles are polished to a high gloss after firing on polishing lines with dozens of diamond heads.

With both matt and polished porcelain stoneware, pads and brushes with abrasive particles cause the surface to become scratched and thus matt in the long run. Dirt can embed itself much better in the finest scratches and then adheres more strongly to the surface. The result: the floor coverings become dirtier and dirtier more quickly. More and more aggressive cleaning pads and chemicals are then used – a vicious circle forms, at the end of which a floor covering that is hardly cleanable any more is the result.

Pads and brushes without abrasive content do not achieve the desired cleaning result and are inefficient

There are also pads and brushes without abrasives. But even with these, a good cleaning result is only possible with a very high expenditure of time and with regular special cleaning actions. The fibres of the pads and the bristles of the brush are simply much too coarse and do not reach the fine and finest structures of the surface. In a way, they only scrub around on the highest levels and thus have no „deep action“.

A good dirt-removing effect is also very important in that the dirt itself has an abrasive effect. Put simply, the cleaner the porcelain stoneware tiles are kept, the longer the original look of the floor can be maintained – porcelain stoneware can retain an attractive look and its slip resistance for 20 years or more despite intensive use.

The haid-tec cleaning pads clean efficiently without damaging the surface of the porcelain stoneware

haid-tec offers a unique combination of pads with the PolyPlusPads and MelaminPlusPads. The PolypPlusPads consist of the finest fibres (many times finer than human hair). This allows them to reach dirt even in microscopically small depressions. They therefore remove dirt much better than a brush or scrubbing pad. Unlike microfibres, such as those used for mop covers, they do not absorb the dirt and thus do not clog, but only loosen it so that it can be sucked up with the dirty water by the scrubbing machine.

MelaminPlusPad

PolyPlusPad

The haid-tec MelaminPlusPads convince with their mechanical cleaning effect and ensure the preservation of your high-quality porcelain stoneware floor.

MelaminPlusPads go one step further in terms of mechanical cleaning effect. They are made of melamine resin foam. As a solid material, melamine is a very hard plastic – which is why it is used, for example, for camping tableware.

The advantages of our MelaminPlusPads

• When foamed, a flexible spatial structure of extremely fine razor-sharp ridges is created. These very fine ridges act like millions of microscopic razor blades that scrape out dirt even in the smallest and finest microscopic depressions of the surfaces.
• The mechanical cleaning effect of melamine resin foam is so amazing that it is often called the „miracle or magic sponge“ in the household sector.
• During use, the melamine resin foam slowly consumes itself – so that there is always a cleaning-active surface. That is why it is sometimes called a dirt eraser.
• To prevent the foam from being used up too quickly, we have specially developed our MelaminePlusPads to have a much longer service life (5-10 times) – and so they can be used economically for both basic cleaning and intensive maintenance cleaning.

Melamine resin foam under the microscope, Source wfk/haid-tec research project

Melamine resin foam under the microscope, Source wfk/haid-tec research project