Maintenance products

STEP 1 :

Cleaning and drying (applies to all tile floors);
After the floor has been laid and washed in, the joint is hard enough after ± 2 days to be walked on and cleaned. You do this with Achterhuis soil cleaner. Never cover floors with plastic or stucco.
If there is still cement residue on the tiles, try to remove it first. Always do this with an acid-free cement residue remover. First read the instructions carefully.

When it is completely clean the drying process starts.
The thicker the (porous) tile, the longer the drying time. Count on 6 weeks drying time for porous tiles. Hard tiles (such as Belgian bluestone or marble) hardly need to dry.
You can walk on the floor during the drying period, but you must be careful and avoid stains. Do not cover! Do put a thin sheet on the floor where you stand for example to cook.
You can easily test whether the floor is dry yourself: lay a piece of plastic on the floor for 6 hours. If there is any condensation underneath, the floor will still be wet. When the plastic is dry you can start treating it.
First you can vacuum the floor again and remove stains locally, but don’t make the tiles too wet.

STEP 2:

Impregnating or saturating porous tiles (old tiles, Burgundy dalles);
When the floor is dry you can start treating with Achterhuis Superfix. This should be applied purely to the dry, thoroughly cleaned floor. The best result is obtained by spraying it evenly with a pump spray. It is best to apply the first layer in the morning, which is absorbed immediately, and a second layer in the evening, which needs more time to be absorbed. The next day the floor is ready for use.
Very sometimes a 3rd layer needs to be applied. Unless you were advised to apply PN before the Superfix. This is pre-treatment for extremely thick or porous tiles.

STEP 3:

Maintenance of porous tiles;
Vacuum treated tile floor weekly. Then scrub or mop with soapy water from an ordinary all-purpose cleaner. To protect the floor, after cleaning, you can put a splash of Achterhuis Superfix through the mopping or wiping water once in a while. Superfix gives the floor a new silky shine, even where it has been worn down through more intensive use.

STEP 4:

Stripping porous tiles;
You can ‘strip’ the floor at any time with soil cleaner when it has become very dirty. Experience shows that this is once every 10 to 20 years. Stripping is very intensive scrubbing with a lot of soil cleaner and hot water, sometimes pure, which removes the old layers of wax. After that you can reapply the treatment as described above.

STEP 2+3:

Hard tiles;
These should not be impregnated. As soon as the joint is hard and the tiles are clean you can just mop them with Achterhuis Trapp soap. This will protect and clean the tiles. You use it diluted in the mopping water.