Astral Hygiene's Red Floor Pad ideal for dry buffing, wet spray buffing and light duty scrubbing. Cleans when damp, buffs when dry. Quickly cleans and removes scuff marks while polishing floor to a high gloss. The typical spray cleaning pad. High consistent performance. These red floor pad is for use with machines operating at speeds of 150 to 750 rpm. Manufactured from 100% virgin polyester and/or 100% virgin nylon fibers, with an open web construction.
See below for a guide to which buffing pads you may need for the job
Black
The standard stripping pad, for heavy duty wet stripping of emulsion polish.
You can't effectively use any other colour for stripping (Expect the Emerald floor Pad) and you must use this wet. If you use this pad dry you will damage floors.
Use with slow speed Scrubbing Machine. 100-200 rpm. (You cannot effectively strip polish with a high speed machine)
Green
Green is the colour for wet scrubbing/cleaning. It can be used to "knock-back" polish before re-coating.
Perfect for deep cleaning, however you mustn't use this dry. Don't use on polished floors, unless you want to remove polish. That said, green is no good for stripping polish, it's not aggressive enough for that.
Ideal for use on a Scrubber Dryer for cleaning a heavily soiled or hard to clean floor
Use with slow speed Scrubbing Machine or Scrubber Dryer. 100-200 rpm.
Blue
Often overlooked, when floor cleaning pads are talked about. Half way between Green and Red it is a Polishing and cleaning pad. A very useful pad.
Perfect for spray cleaning a polished floor with heavy scuff marks. Ideal for school corridors. Also can be used for scrubbing/cleaning delicate floors where you might be nervous of using Green.
Use with slow or high speed Cleaning Machine or Scrubber Dryer 100-400 rpm.
Red
Red is best know as a spray cleaning pad. It polishes and cleans at the same time.
It's a mild floor cleaning pad. Often recommended for use by flooring manufacturers on a Scrubber Dryer as there is no risk of it damaging the floor or coating.
Not aggressive enough for scrubbing.
Use with slow or high speed Cleaning Machine or Scrubber Dryer. 100-500 rpm.
Tan
A mild polishing pad. Generally would be used dry for dry burnishing.
Very mild, won't damage even the softest of dressings. Used for waxed wood floor with a high speed machine. (Not many waxed floor left now)
Use with high speed Buffing Machine. 350-500 rpm.
White
The mildest floor pad. For dry burnishing or buffing of soft floor dressing.
Will burnish a polished floor to a high shine. Only use on a clean floor, this is polishing only. Can be used on a Ultra-High-Speed burnisher as long as you keep moving (Will over-heat the floor if you stay in one spot too long)
Use with high speed Scrubbing Machine. 350-500 rpm
Astral Hygiene's Black Floor Pad is excellent for heavy-duty wet stripping. Produced to give superior performance
Colour coded for easy identification also for use with machines operating at speeds of 150 to 750 rpm with 100% virgin polyester and/or 100% virgin nylon fibres, Open web construction and pads are usable on both sides coded for easy identification.
Astral Hygiene's Brown Floor Pad is fast stripping and cuts away wax and old floor finish. Brown is for scrubbing - Hard aggressive scrubbing wet or dry, with strippers. Prepares the floor for new emulsion floor polishes. For machines operating up to 600rpm. 85mm push out centre hole prevents the floor pad from overheating. Pads hug uneven floors and can be used on both sides with no loss
Astral Hygiene's Blue Floor Pad is excellent for moderate scrubbing or heavy spray cleaning. Colour of Pad & Use BLACK = Wet Stripping of polish or seal. GREEN = Wet scrubbing of sealed floors. BLUE = Spray Cleaning and efficient black mark removal. RED = Spray buffing of sealed floors. BEIGE = Ultra high speed burnishing. TAN = Dry buffing of polished floors. WHITE = Dry buffing for the ultimate shine. High Speed BLUE = Ultra high speed burnishing.
Astral Hygiene's Emerald Floor Pad is excellent for heavy-duty wet stripping. Removes surface coat, ground in dirt and scuff marks. Produced to give superior performance. Durable and tough for maximum stripping power. Removes the heaviest finish / dirt build-up. For use with machines operating at speeds of 150 to 750 rpm. 100% virgin polyester and/or 100% virgin nylon fibres. Open web construction. Pads are usable on both sides. Five pads per box. Emerald Pads - Stripping - Superior open web highly abrasive, tear resistant for increased efficiency Colour coded for easy identification.
When cleaning a hard floor, there are lots of options in terms of how you can go about cleaning them. Whether you want to strip, clean, buff or polish a floor a floor pad is the way to go about it - especially on wooden floors.
High traffic areas require more attention and need a more hard working floor solution, but finding the right solution can be really challenging for many of our customers.
However, we are here to give advice and support and have a great deal of knowledge and expertise here at Astral Hygiene so if you do have any questions please just give us a ring! Every floor has it's own set of factors and needs specific instructions and specific care.
To get the best results you do need the right floor pad, and the right cleaning product but with the right combination of equipment to achieve the best results.
It's fitting all of this together and making the right selections that make caring for your floor much easier.
From stripping existing floors to spot cleaning, it is vital to consider the type of floor (marble/wood) you are working with to achieve optimum results.
Floor pads can be used for both Scrubber Dryers, and we do sell an awful lot of Numatic Scrubber Dryers here because they are very compact, provide a good level of coverage and the customer service we receive from them is second to none. Usually unless you are trying to scrub a floor that is concrete or another type of hard surface you would use a high speed single disk machine such as a Hurricane which can be used for buffing, stripping, polishing and scrubbing.
There are a range of machines which can be used for a range of purposes, and this blog is not intended to explain that in detail, but to demonstrate you would use theNumatic Scrubber Dryer for places where you would like to introduce water to the surface, perhaps with a little chemical which will break down the dirt without creating too much foam, such asLow Foam Heavy, so you can use the floor pad (probably a red floor pad - but we're coming to that!) to agitate the dirt from the floor without actually damaging the floor at a speed of 150rpm. With a scrubber dryer like this one, you begin pushing your machine along the floor, water/chemical is the automatically introduced, is agitated by your red floor pad lifting the dirt and soil, and is then channeled by the squeegees towards the extractor at the back of the machine - leaving your floor completely clean and dry as you walk behind it! These machines have to be seen in action, so if you'd like a free demonstration, e-mail us at sales@astralhygiene.co.uk and we'll send out an engineer to demonstrate the machine for you.
If you are looking for a machine that will strip your floor polish off and buff your floors to a high shine, then something like the Hurricane HFT15306 would better suit your requirements. These single disc machines operate at a high rpm, which means they will buff to a very high shine.
So in essence, your floor pad needs to be the correct colour which will dictate the texture as each floor pad is engineered for a particular task. Simply guessing which floor pad you need is not the most scientific of methods, and you are unlikely to get the desired result.
Getting a good quality floor pad is important, as you need to make sure your floor pad is uniform in shape and thickness, but will also stand up to the job you need it to do. Getting a good quality floor pad will mean that it will strip your floor much more quickly than other pads.
As a rule of thumb, the darker the colour, the more the pad will agitate, so when using a dark pad (black, brown) you need to keep a close watch on how your pad is performing to make sure you aren't damaging the floor. Day dreamers beware, you need to focus on the task in hand! So lets break down what each of the colours do:
A very dense and heavy duty pad, great for cleaning uneven surfaces and in particular stone floors. This will agite the dirt out of the floor and will begin to lift your floor polish.
A good solid floor pad, strong and mighty enough to remove 2-4 coats of polish, but won't damage your floor when it meets the floor itself. For excessive layers of floor polish, use a black pad to take off the first few layers of polish and then downgrade to the brown to finish the job.
The green pad is a middle of the road pad, a mildly aggressive pad, which will prepare your hard wood floors for re-coating and stripping floors of some polish to allow a quick re-application of polish with a less aggressive pad. The green pad can also be used for daily wet scrubbing of unprotected (non varnished/waxed) floors with a scrubber dryer.
Your blue floor pad is great for regular wet maintenance of unprotected floors, but is also used on a single disc machine for medium soiled floors and dry stripping of soft floors. This pad will easily remove soil, heel marks and ground in dirt.
One of the most commonly used pads in a wet scrubber drier, this pad will bring up unprotected floors surprisingly well due to the speed the ad moves over the floor. This pad will also produce a soft shine to a varnished polished/waxed floor.
The last pad in the arsenal is the white floor pad. Great for everyday maintenance, passed over any floor this one will burnish it up to its former shine, but also superb for putting down another coat of polish prior to those special occasions.
To keep your pads in tip top condition, follow the three golden rules!
Remove the pad you have been using from machine after each use.
Rinse under tap water or spray water, or keep pad soaked in diluted stripping solution, to dissolve caked on finish. Do not let dirty pads dry before washing.
Rinse and hang up for drying.
If you'd like any more information on floor machines and floor pads, give our offices a call.... because if we don't know the answer, we'll find out for you!
This blog was written by Anna Armstrong, Director of Sales and Operations at Astral. Please get in touch if there are any particular topics you would like us to talk about on the blog!
