A wax-free polished natural stone/terrazzo floor provides the following:
- Eliminates the need for purchasing and using hard surface waxes/finishes and strippers for general floor care.
- Reduces long term maintenance costs and has one of the lowest lifetime costs of any floor.
- Has a lifetime maintenance cost that will save your institution $1.85/sqft per year ($37,000/yr on 20,000sqft)
- Improves the indoor air quality by eliminating a major source of indoor volatile organic compounds and contaminants, therefore helping to protect building occupants’ health and safety.
- Eliminates the detrimental environmental impact of dumping used harmful chemicals down the drain.
- Maintains a shine and appearance much longer than any floor coated with waxes/finish.
- Allows floor to “breath” which allows water moisture to evaporate from under the floor which minimizes the posibility of having moisture problems in the future.
Wax-n-strip maintenance requires the application of a surface coating/finish to the floor. As the coating wears away with normal foot traffic, recoats of the finish are required.
This type of natural stone and terrazzo floor maintenance is detrimental in the following ways:
- Indoor Air Quality: The Chemical wax/finish used to coat the floor is applied as a liquid and allowed to dry. As the chemical
dries, approximately 20-30 percent is left behind on the floor which means 70-80% of the chemicals evaporate into the indoor environment. Indoor air quality is affected by emissions from
surface coatings and maintenance materials that emit volatile organic compounds. VOC’s contribute to a full range of health effects such as triggering asthma attacks, and contributing to the
development of asthma in someone who doesn’t have it.
- Dangerous chemical use around building occupants. The chemicals in the strippers that are used to remove the floor wax/finish contain
some of the most dangerous chemical products that janitors use. Butoxyethanol, Monoethanolamine, Sodium Hydroxide, Sodium Metasilicate, and Zinc are just a few of these harmful chemicals, all
of these chemicals represent a danger to the user, building occupants, or the environment.
- Chemical disposal to the environment. The most common disposal method for these chemicals in schools and universities is down the
drain. This introduces these chemicals to the environment and water treatment facilities that may not be equipped to handle or treat them.
- Cost. The initial cost of choosing a wax-n-strip maintenance method is low, but the long term costs are very high. The labor cost
combined with the never ending chemical finish and stripper purchases results in very high lifetime cost.
- Appearance. The appearance of a waxed floor may initially look great, but the appearance fades quickly with very high traffic. The
labor required for upkeep of the appearance results in additional man-hour labor costs.
