With a buff and coat, the process is much less invasive. Instead of heavy sanding equipment, a floor buffer is used to lightly abrade the surface of the existing floor finish. This process produces a much smaller amount of dust.
Buffing mainly addresses damage and imperfections in the sealant layers protecting your hardwood floors. You may want to buff your floors instead of sanding them if the finish of the floor is looking dull and scratched. You can also buff floors made of other materials, like tile, to bring back their luster.
To minimize dust getting on them, close doors and cover gaps under doorways with towels rolled into snake shapes. Cover doorways that you will need to use with zippered plastic, such as ZipWall ZipDoor Commercial Door Kit for Dust Containment, $36 on Amazon.com. You can also cover individual items with plastic.
There is a clear difference between floor buffing and sanding. Sanding gets rid of damaged polyurethane sealer and part of damaged wood. Sanding involves the restaining of planks and sealing them with a new coat of polyurethane. In contrast, buffing only involves polyurethane sealer and does not touch the wood.
A once a month schedule is ideal, especially if the building always has a lot of people coming and going every day. For low-traffic areas, you can buff the floors about once every 2 months. Aside from aesthetic purposes, buffing your floors can also make them last longer.
Floor polishing or burnishing and buffing are often times used interchangeably, but polishing uses a heavier process to clear away bumps and chips. At an industrial level, both of them get rid of chips and pits, and both require specialized machines and care, especially for floors made of delicate material.
You can use a floor buffer, to do a light sanding pass, when you're refinishing hardwood floors. Leave all heavy sanding for drum sander and floor edger. Use floor buffer to abrade in between coats. This will ensure that you have a good bonding surface, for your new wood floor finish.
Use a clean, soft cloth to rub back and forth over the scratched area, and buff the wax. Buffing the wax will smooth the scratched area, remove excess wax, and restore shine to the floor.
Buffing or Screening
This is a great way to remove surface scratches and dirt from your floors. An application of polyurethane adds a coat of protection and sparkle back to your hardwood floors!
The dust produced by sanding down your floor is never loose in your home, making the entire process of refinishing your hardwood floors safer, cleaner, and faster. Dustless floor refinishing provides a superior finished look - eliminating loose particles ensures that no dust is trapped in the finish on your floor.
Sanding hardwood floors doesn't have to be messy. If you've decided to install sand-on-site hardwood floors in your home, or if you're preparing to re-sand existing hardwood floors, you're undoubtedly excited about how great your new floor is going to look.
After vacuuming, wipe all surfaces with a damp cloth to remove the remaining dust. Again, start at the top and work your way down.To easily remove dust from walls, moisten a soft towel with water and wrap it around the bottom of a broom. Secure with tape if necessary. An alternative is to use a flat sponge mop.
Apply a hardwood floor wax using a corner of a terry cloth towel. Rub the wax firmly into the floor until the liquid turns pasty and then dry. Buff the area to a shine by gathering the terry cloth into a ball shape and briskly moving it back and forth and around the area.
Buffering – Phase 1
Attach a cleaning pad to the buffer and apply a spray of mineral spirits onto it. This moistens the pad and will lessen the friction. Now, apply some mineral sprit to a small area of the floor. If you do too large of an area or the liquid will dry up.
And stains, marks and scratches can be removed easily from waxed floors using Murphy Oil Soap.
A solid hardwood plank at least 3/4 inches thick will likely need to be refinished four to six times during its total lifespan. It's commonly accepted that you refinish every seven to ten years.
Whether you're cleaning one area or all of your flooring, Murphy® Oil Soap is safe to use on hardwood floors.
What color floor pad is used for scrubbing floors? Blue floor pads should be used for heavy-duty scrubbing. Green floor pads should be used for deep-deep scrubbing. Pro Tip: When automatic floor scrubbers are used for scrubbing your facility's floor, a red floor pad is the best and most popular choice.
The finishing touch should be concrete polish. Use with the floor buffer all around the area. This polish seals the wax and creates the layer that you want to protect against dirty shoes and wheels. Apply evenly using the buffer, until you have covered the whole floor.
High speed floor buffers are your machine of choice when buffing and polishing hard floor surfaces. The battery powered floor burnishers and electric floor burnisher buffers are the more popular machines for floor polishing jobs.
The main difference between the vacuum cleaner and floor polisher is that the vacuum cleaner is a fan-type cleaner used to clean the surface floor, mainly the dust and dirt. On the other hand, a floor polisher is a rotatable machine used to clean the dust in carpets, etc.