Wood floors give a home a classic, elegant look that people love. And, they’re easy to keep clean, right?

Well, there are dozens of recommended cleaning methods out there, but how effective are they? Sweeping or vacuuming at least weekly is an important step to keep granular soil from accumulating and scratching the finish, but as with carpets, vacuuming won’t get all the soil. Most floor maintenance programs also recommend a monthly “deep clean.” The suggested processes range from damp mopping to spray cleaners to oil soap. While each of these methods will remove some soil, most of it just gets moved around because there isn’t an extraction step involved. Think about it - how much soil does the bottom of a rag or a mop really pick up? Waxing a floor creates a whole different set of problems because it prevents future cleanings from being able to reach the floors actual finish.

So I think we can safely say that even the most well-maintained wood floors are actually teeming cesspools of bacteria, lol!

Fortunately, we offer a great solution; a true deep cleaning that doesn’t involve the mess and expense of sanding and refinishing. It involves three full cleaning steps, with an optional application of preservation finish. We:

• Use a backpack vacuum to fully remove all granular soil from the areas to be cleaned.
• Perform two cleanings using a special wood floor cleaning machine that carefully applies a water-based cleaning agent, agitates it on the floor with soft brushes, then immediately extracts it with squeegee vacuums.
  • The first cleaning uses an alkaline solution (since most soiling is acidic) to dissolve and remove ground in soil.
  • The second cleaning picks up any residual detergent, neutralizes the floor’s pH and prepares the existing finish to accept our (optional) preservation finish.
• (Optionally) Apply a preservation finish that bonds with the existing finish, strengthening it and extending its life.

This process will remove huge amounts of soil that are otherwise trapped in your floors (see the video of emptying our canister after cleaning a floor that was vacuumed regularly and cleaned with oil soap), and give them a richer, more robust feel. Having this cleaning done once a year, and the preservation finish applied every 3-5 years will help keep your wood floors looking their best for a long, long time.