Sealing Marble

[lynnbilodeau]

Not a garage question, but figured any flooring pros would know.

Any floor pros out there?

We just installed a honed marble floor in our kitchen.

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=281719&page=2

I know I need to seal it, and according to what I have read, an impregnating sealer is the best.

Dupont makes one that lasts 5 years up to 15 years.

What say the floor pros?

 

[duneslider]

I am a big fan of the dupont sealers, good stuff. Nothing lasts as long as the small print reads in my experience.

I also really really like the products from mystonecare.com. If I were you I would look into their stuff, they also used to offer a "Marble Care Guide" with your purchase and it is invaluable for keeping your stone looking nice. The sealers they offer are excellent also.

 

[Dakota00]

Lynn, Check your PM...

 

[lynnbilodeau]

Looking at the Dupont Stone Tech BulletProof stone sealer.
$146 gallon at Amazon.

 

[Dakota00]

A quart should be enough to do your floor.

 

[lynnbilodeau]

Thanks.

 

[bdamico]

I like drytreat, which gets good reviews. bulletproof is good too

 

[duneslider]

There are like a billion great sealers out there. The more expensive it is the better it will be. A polished stone isn't going to accept very much sealer and the pores are mostly closed anyway. Use a good sealer and find a good safe cleaner for your stone (stone specific cleaner) and take care of it and you will be happy.

I recommend vacuuming or using a good quality dust mop before doing anything that is wet. This will get up the majority of the dirt. Then use your preferred cleaner.

Don't use the pine-sol, tilex, multi-purpose cleaners, etc on your tile and stone.

 

[bdamico]

For cleaning, check out viper stone cleaner. It's made my floor maintenance much more manageable

 

[duneslider]

For cleaning, check out viper stone cleaner. It's made my floor maintenance much more manageable

I am not familiar with the Viper Stone Cleaner. I tried googling it and don't come up with a Stone cleaner? You have a link to it by chance? I am always looking for good stuff.

 

[bdamico]

I am not familiar with the Viper Stone Cleaner. I tried googling it and don't come up with a Stone cleaner? You have a link to it by chance? I am always looking for good stuff.

http://www.jondon.com/viper-venom-3.html

Viper makes floor machines and surface cleaners etc. I use this on my jerusalem stone for several yrs now. You dilute it according to whether maintenance or heavy cleaning etc. My maintenance now consists of using it a sprayer -- I spray an area and let it dwell for a few minutes and then follow with a hoover floor machine loaded with just plain water to rinse and then **** up dirty water -- but it would work with mopping or a swing machine. I did a lot of research in restoring/maintaining my 4000 ft of stone floors that were a mess when i bought my house. I think I came across this on johnbridge or another stone forum. Before this, I was using a high end steam machine -- this works much better. I've also used all the other cleaners and **** from mbstone etc.

I've been through the ringer with these floors. Now I am slowly making my way through each room, refilling the holes with tenax, and grinding/polishing again. What a pain in the ***.

 

[duneslider]

Venom is a heavy duty Alkaline based cleaner (pH12). It would work great on heavily soiled floors but it will also strip sealers. I wouldn't use it as a regular cleaner, for general cleaning you are better off with a pH Neutral (pH7) cleaner. If you are using it regularly, even diluted, you are washing away your sealer. So, if that is the route you want to go it may not be worth sealing.

Alkaline cleaners are excellent for really dirty floors and floors that have been neglected and need to be restored to their original beauty.
Steam cleaning is generally bad for grout and stone, it will actually drive the dirt and grime down deeper into the material.

Jerusalem stone is pretty, its the rich man's travertine.

 

[bdamico]

Venom is a heavy duty Alkaline based cleaner (pH12). It would work great on heavily soiled floors but it will also strip sealers. I wouldn't use it as a regular cleaner, for general cleaning you are better off with a pH Neutral (pH7) cleaner. If you are using it regularly, even diluted, you are washing away your sealer. So, if that is the route you want to go it may not be worth sealing.

Alkaline cleaners are excellent for really dirty floors and floors that have been neglected and need to be restored to their original beauty.
Steam cleaning is generally bad for grout and stone, it will actually drive the dirt and grime down deeper into the material.

Jerusalem stone is pretty, its the rich man's travertine.

You're clearly right about venom but none of the ph neutral I tried did squat on my floors (maybe too many dogs and kids in my house) and the venom is diluted down 1/32 and I'm not worried about sealers since refinishing them all--but good info. What neutral cleaner do you like?

 

[duneslider]

IF your floor is really bad, the neutral cleaner won't lift the heavy deposits. The idea is to keep it clean all the time, not just when it gets dirty. This is not always easy to do though in busy houses.

I use Sunglow http://www.mystonecare.com/SunGlow_Concentrated_Wood_Cleaner_p/msc-sunglow-wood.htm

But I have a wood/tile/stone mix and this works great on my wood which was the main surface I bought it for but I don't have complaints with it on my other surfaces. I do a heavy cleaning on the tile/stone once or twice year with the heavy duty alkaline based cleaners but I also haven't sealed most of my stone and grout.

Stone requires a lot more continuous care than a ceramic product in order to keep it looking great. That is why the porcelains looking just like stone have become so popular. Back in the day, only the rich had stone because they could afford to have full-time house keepers keeping it all clean.

 

[lynnbilodeau]

A quart probably would have sufficed, but I was afraid of coming up short and ordered a gallon. Hard to tell if I used more than a quart, but may have.
We sealed the floor Friday night before going to bed. Partly because the floor is honed, and not polished, it soaked up two applications. Job went fairly quick. I spread with a roller and Sherri followed behind with terry cloth towels. There were a couple of places that dried a little too much, but re-application of the product and it came right off.

Floor feels smoother than before the sealer. It darkened up just a little bit, but after a couple days now, has faded back to the same color before application.