Help me mop my giant textured floor w/o a mop or bucket

January 20, 2009 4:15 PM

Our new theater has a huge, textured, highly-trafficked, sealed concrete floor in the lobby, and I'm really dreading the thought of mopping it. What can I buy to help make the job easier?

Obviously, the easiest route would be to hire a cleaning crew to come in once a week and mop it for me, but I don't mind doing stuff like this myself... I just hate using our old loop mop and giant yellow bucket. I've looked at countless steam / wet / mop / vacuums on Amazon, but everyone seems to be using them on hardwood floors and linoleum. I need something that will work on a highly-textured surface.

I'm willing to spend money on the right solution, so long as it works at least as well as the old mop and bucket solution.

posted by bjork24 to home & garden (6 comments total)

ROBOT!
posted by dersins at 4:23 PM on January 20

I think you might want a floor buffer. I have no idea how textured your floor is, but I've used these things and man, they're faster than mops.

You can theoretically use just a buffer and leave it wet, or get a wet-vac, but that sounds like a huge pain in the ass. You're probably better off dropping the two or three grand on a buffer with a built-in water recovery system.

Seeing how's a cleaning crew would probably cost almost that much over the course of a year, this could pay for itself pretty quickly and might only take an hour or two, depending on just how big this room is.
posted by valkyryn at 4:26 PM on January 20

RE: ROBOT!

I've heard the Scoobas only work well on totally flat surfaces, which I why I discounted them.

RE: Floor buffer

That definitely an idea, but I'd have to find a lot of extra room to store that big mother. Hmm.
posted by bjork24 at 4:56 PM on January 20

I've looked at countless steam / wet / mop / vacuums on Amazon, but everyone seems to be using them on hardwood floors and linoleum. I need something that will work on a highly-textured surface.

I have a hot/wet cleaner, designed for cleaning carpet -- A Hoover SpinScrub -- that I use on a highly textured tile floor. It works very well because the brushes rotate as opposed to being mounted on a beater type arrangement.
posted by SpecialK at 7:24 PM on January 20

I used to clean, polish, and refinish floors, clean carpets in our family business.
I can't remember the name of the machine that I had, but it was just like this one.
It is great for textured surfaces and also amazing on carpet stains. It has two cylindrical brushes and an on board tank. It is compact, but will cover a large area. You can teach someone to use in in a few minutes as opposed to a rotary scrubber.
I'll figure out tomorrow what brand we had and post again, it was available here, I'm in Chicago.
posted by lee at 9:40 PM on January 20

Here it is, and more info. You can probably get a better price if you ask for one.
posted by lee at 1:05 PM on January 21