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The birds are chirping, the snow has melted and the first buds have bloomed. At last, spring is here! Although the great outdoors are finally looking bright and cheery, a building's interior may be looking a bit drab if you haven't caught up on spring cleaning yet.

Salt, snow, heavy foot traffic and other winter elements play a hefty role in the destruction of Vinyl Composition Tile (VCT) flooring. Certain spots may be such an eyesore that a brand-new finish appears to be the only solution, but floor stripping after each winter is hardly recommended by some jan/san experts. Utilizing a process called scrub and recoat will save you money, manpower and time, and produce results similar to a full-scale floor stripping operation.

Why avoid stripping?

There's more than one reason to stop and think twice before stripping a floor, especially if it's been done in the past two to three years. First and foremost are the risks created to maintenance professionals' health. Floor stripping products are made of chemicals that are high in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). VOCs decrease indoor air quality, trigger asthma and are generally harmful to one's health.

Mike Sawchuk, vice president and general manager of Enviro-Solutions, a company that produces environmentally sound cleaning products, warns that using traditional floor stripping products can cause both short-term and long-term damage to maintenance personnel.

"If it touches your body, the ingredients will initially irritate the skin," Sawchuk says. "And it can eventually cause respiratory problems and headaches."

Money savings

Saving money is another reason to avoid stripping floors once a year. Roughly 90 cents of each dollar spent on maintenance goes to labor, according to Vince Fagan, vice president of United Supply Service Inc. Alternative stripping methods, such as scrub and recoat, are less labor-intensive, requiring fewer trained professionals, and fewer hours logged on the clock. In addition, facility owners can avoid a complete scheduled maintenance shutdown that is required for floor stripping.

Why scrub and recoat?

Although a full-scale floor stripping shouldn't top the maintenance to-do list at the end of every winter, that doesn't mean dirty floors should be ignored. A shiny finish is just a secondary objective of a topcoat. The main reason a topcoat is applied is to serve as an anti-slip surface, protecting those who travel across the floor from falling.

"The reason we put down floor finish to begin with is to protect the health of the people in the building; it's a safety measure," Fagan says. "The second reason is for appearance."

Winter elements like salt, which contains sodium hydroxide, affect the pH balance of the floor. VCT floors must maintain a neutral pH to avoid becoming sticky or slippery. Daily mopping with a neutralizing floor cleaner will bring the floor back to a pH of 7.0 (neutral).

Bill Bukowski, director of commercial sales and government for Clarke U.S., a manufacturer of floor cleaning products and buffers, insists that regular maintenance is the key to any effective floor care regiment. "If you don't scrub, you actually push the dirt into the finish. You also need to do a deep scrub, or else when you burnish, it will get dull."

The entire scrub and recoat process should take less than a day to complete. Simply, mix 1-gal. of water with about 4 to 6 oz. of a neutralizer solution. This mixture is then shower fed out of an industrial-sized tank with a scrubber pad on the bottom. Once the top layer of dirt and sealer are removed, you rinse the floor with water, bring it to a neutral pH and apply the finish.

Fagan notes that there is no need to apply more than two finishing coats if the floor already has at least the recommended five coats of finish at the start of the process. The scrub should only remove one to one and a half layers of the finish. However, a scrub and recoat is not just an after-winter project. This process should be repeated once every three to four months, or once every season.

A new tool

Clarke U.S. has developed and patented a system that makes the scrub and recoat process even more eco-friendly. The Battery Operated Orbital Scrubber Technology or "Boost" is a deep scrubber that can use water to neutralize the floors instead of chemicals. If needed, the scrubber also works with traditional floor neutralizers. Boost uses 50 to 70 percent less water than other tanks and dries the floors with a vacuum as it scrubs the floors.

Boost is possibly one of the most innovative ideas the floor care industry has seen in the past 50 years. "The automatic floor cleaner was invented in 1954," says Bukowski, commenting on the novelty of Boost. "Maybe we've added a chemical injection process or some foam, but basically the action on the floor hasn't changed until this new technology."

According to Bukowski, the Boost process has many benefits. "You decrease the potential for slips and falls from the stripper solution, you don't need as many people to run the equipment, and you're removing the finish and picking up the solution all in a single pass with the machine."

Spring cleaning doesn't have to be as torturous for maintenance professionals this year. Those who once dreaded doing yearly floor stripping can now utilize safer, more eco-friendly methods such as scrub and recoat, saving them time and money.