Some get through winter and immediately extract carpet or restore their floors in the spring. This is costly and unnecessary if you use smart strategies to maximize the life of your floor surfaces. 4 points will help reduce seasonal damage to your beautiful floors:
1) Floormat program in place: Disinfecting Floor Mats; Sticky Mats; Shoe Cover Machines are like insurance for a cleaner entrance; it is similar to having a janitor in the front entrance collecting dirty from the bottom of the feet of all who enter. For the winter months you should especially use good quality matting system.
2) Care and cleaning of entrance mats: You should have a schedule for cleaning to care for the mats and the floor area around the mats depending on the traffic in home or office.
3) Many areas use a Rock Salt product or something similar. The regular cleaning products that you may use may not work against the residues that Rock Salt or equivalent can leave behind.
Most Rock Salt or Rock Salt type products can have various effects on floor finish and the tile itself.
Do not overuse Rock Salt type products; using more is not better; remember to use wisely.
The most common substances are Sodium Chloride and Calcium Chloride. Both are designed to melt ice. Both can have different effects on different surfaces.
Sodium Chloride can affect wood and stain carpeting.
Calcium Chloride can leave a film that attracts dirt and can leave the floor slippery.
To combat the residues from these products, use a floor neutralizer that will remove these films without affecting the floor appearance of most floor such as stone, wood, ceramic, carpet, vct).
Most hardware or big box stores will carry neutralizer that measures slightly higher on the acid side (Safe for cleaning) or uses Chelation technology that suspends the residue molecules and washes them away during cleaning.