The photographs below are from the Lyle Kirk Church of Scotland in Greenock where we asked to clean the Quarry tiles in the main entrance of the church. As you can imagine the floor is very busy and is constantly in use from parishioners and had now become very unappealing from ingrained dirt and was proving impossible to clean effectively.
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Cleaning Old Quarry Tiles
With such an old floor we had to take a lot of care and so using a buffer machine to speed up the process was out of the question. As a result so we cleaned the whole tiled floor including the grout by hand using various strength dilutions of Tile Doctor Remove and Go and then Pro-Clean to remove the years of wax and coatings from the tiles, both products I should mention are safe to use on tile, stone and grout. It was arduous and slow work taking us four days to complete and the floor was given a thorough wash down once clean to remove any trace of cleaning product before sealing.
Dealing with Efflorescence
Whilst cleaning the floor we noticed some signs of efflorescence which is where salts from the ground below evaporate up through the pores in the tile and leave white deposits on the surface of the tile above. The efflorescence was removed easily using Tile Doctor Grout Clean-Up but it alerted us to the fact that normally old floors were traditionally laid directly on compacted earth with no damp proof course and that damp could be an issue that could affect the sealer.
Sealing an old Quarry Tiled Floor
We left the floor to dry off and when we returned being cognizant of the damp issue we chose Tile Doctor Seal and Go Extra to seal the floor, this a new sealing product which is highly breathable and ideal for sealing external tiles or internal tiles where there is a damp problem. Four coats were sufficient and once done the floor looked completely transformed.
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Source: Professional Tile, Stone and Grout restoration service in Glasgow
