This 'Mex' machine has got me intrigued.

I have been using a turbo and my T/M for cleaning hard (ceramic) floors and grout.

Mostly, (again), in Defence Force residences, and of late, these are builder's cleans. ie; Brand new homes, after the cleaners have been through, Defence then get me to tidy up the floors.

Many times, I have read about the 'Mex' being used with brushes for this type of cleaning.

My question is:

After scrubbing with the 'Mex', what becomes of the slurry/ dirty water, remaining on top of the tiles and in the grout??

Is it vacuumed away?? Thereby necessitating a second step cleaning process??

If it is allowed to dry and crystalise, would it not leave a fine powder on the floor??

Intrigued once more, put me out of my misery, please.

Cheers,

Shortwun.

Here's a link to an article that I wrote for Cleanfax Magazine on this topic back in April. http://www.cleanfax.com/article.asp?indexid=6634444

BTW, The article obviously could not include brand names of equipment, but as you all know my experience mainly relates to using a Cimex, so that's what I was referring to - and what works best. Lots of scrubbing action going on! This covers the AGITATION step of the TACT formula.

The brushes you'll need for the Cimex are the 4805 brushes. They sell for $180 a set. They're aggressive enough, yet are bendy enough to flow down into the grout lines.

You will need to wet vac the floor to recover the detergent and then rinse the floor. Or you could really score a home-run and use your Turbo to rinse and recover the detergent.




Rick Gelinas

Thanks for that Rick.

Cheers,

Shorty.

Shorty -

Yes, you definitely do have to wet vac or remove the slurry/dirty water. The crystallization we talk about here is the carpet chem, not hard surface.

With ceramic, with porous grout, it's very important not to let that stuff sink back into the grout and dry in place.

If you are doing vinyl floors, then it is not porous, so conceivably if your wet vac broke and the soil load was not outrageous, you COULD just mop it up. I've had to do that on some occasions with vinyl. But it wastes time.

One good combination is the Cimex first and then the hard surface tool for a final agitation/rinse. Add good chems, dwell time and operator care and attention...you can do ceramic miracles. Need a good acid cleaning after the alkaline to really brighten up the grout, too. I'm always interested in a faster way, but with hard surface, doing it better even if it takes longer can be much more important.

You need to pre inspect the condition of the grout. Cimex can almost be too aggressive if the grout is chalky, loose, crumbling or very powdery. Don't do anything before you show that to the customer and explain that if the grout is loose, a toothbrush might be too much agitation and they have a problem you don't wanna buy. If their grout is defective, make sure they understand that you are not causing it. Best is to show them before you begin.

I say nothing further. LOL Good post and right to the point.

Steve Dobson
ProFloor
Custom Cleaning Services

Thanks for that Clay, the globe is getting brighter.

Rick, thanks for the link to the article.

Could you please expound on the chemical names used, especially the impregnator.

If you guys think I'm a pain with questions here, wait 'til Connections.

Cheers,

Shorty.

Hey Shortwun,

Any chanse of slipping a mex or three into your bags on the way back??

Some cases of Releasit??

Maybe an FLIR???

John

John Middleton
Carpet Pro Ltd
Palmerston North
New Zealand

John, I'd like nothing better than that.

Let's see, cruising at 40 thou, 'hey skipper, can you just swing a little bit left while I drop this out the door'

No problem, 'cept, I'm coming back through Guam.

A diversion of that magnitude may be hard to explain.

Cheers,

Shortwun.