Floor care is an essential aspect of cleanliness and neatness. A clean, well-scrubbed floor has the power to make the space look organised and neat even when the objects in that area are not organised in order.

Choosing the correct cleaning methods with the best suitable cleaning equipment is the first important step for a clean, well-scrubbed floor, the other being the cleaning method and routine. Two of the most critical factors in floor care are the “2 S’s – surface and situation while choosing the right brush and pads for the industrial floor scrubber. Determining the floor surface and cleaning situation is essential to make the correct selection before choosing the floor brush and pads.

The floor cleaning exercise consists of three procedures: polishing, stripping, and general cleaning. The quality and success of the job depend on the correct pad or brush employed for every procedure.

Selecting suitable pads and brushes

Knowing your brushes and pads makes a difference in the quality of cleaning. For example, buffing the floor is impossible with the horse hair brush, just as a scrubbing pad for a concrete floor is the wrong choice.

Floor Cleaning

Different kinds of floor cleaners and scrubber brushes are available, so understanding their applicability is necessary to get your hard work and money’s worth.

Brushes are made of varying materials or fibre bristles and are chosen following the surface and cleaning situation.

• Nylon: The best material for floor cleaner brushes for even floors is nylon. It is very durable, abrasion resistant, and with more flexible bristles. Nylon brushes also have better chemical resistance. The quality and durability justify its cost.
• Nylon-grit floor scrubber brush is best suited for uneven floors. A firm brush is made of nylon and carbide grit entangled with the nylon. This brush is also used for stripping the floor and is aggressively strong enough to lift floor wax and coating off the floor without causing any damage.
• Horsehair: A polishing brush made of horse hair used to be the popular choice for buffing the floor, which a pad has replaced chiefly.
• Bassine: A natural organic fibre that is more economical for general scrubbing with high-quality coarse bristles. Bassine is less versatile and has limitations than synthetic nylon brushes.
• Polypropylene: A synthetic material that is more durable than natural fibres and less expensive than nylon. It also has high resistance to chemicals, fungi, and the like. This material is perfect for general and wet scrubbing, stripping, and re-coating.
• Steel Wire: Best for harsh stripping rough concrete floors at an economical cost. They cannot be used with flammable substances or chemicals like solvents, thinners, fuels, etc.
• Tampico is a natural material from the agave plant and is used for high-lustre polishing jobs. It is highly resistant to chemicals and solvents and is best suited for floor care and maintenance.
• Union: As the name suggests, these bristles combine Tampico and Palmyra and are used for general floor buffing and polishing.

Brushes need proper and regular maintenance by cleaning them properly after each use. 

While choosing brushes, keep two things in mind:

1. Bristle Stiffness

2. Grit

Understanding the exact purpose of floor cleaning pads

The cleaning pads are differently coloured, with each colour signifying its purpose, based on their aggressiveness and strength to fulfil and endure heavy-duty cleaning.

• Pads of lighter colours like beige or off-white are thinner and less aggressive and are used for lighter job loads like light cleaning and burnishing the floor.
• Tougher cleaning is done with blue, green, pink, and red coloured pads, the colours graded as per the pad’s toughness and the cleaning’s aggressiveness. The blue and green colour pads are primarily used for everyday cleaning, and the red and pink colour pads are used for buffing floors at low speed—the more aggressive the brush, the lower the speed to avoid damage to the floor.
• Stripping floors is done by solid and coarse black coloured pads and a much lower speed. The speed is calculated by the number of rotations per minute of the industrial floor scrubber machine used for cleaning floors.

The right cleaning equipment and its correct application, usage, and maintenance will last a long time.