Spring time is when a lot of businesses start to repair the damage that was done to their parking lots over the winter. The best way to fix damaged asphalt is to fill the cracks and reseal the asphalt with a tar coating. People walking across the parking lot can pick up the tar and carry it into your building on the bottom of their shoes. The tar can stick to the floor and be very hard, if not impossible, to remove with regular cleaners. Here is how a janitorial service can remove the tar and restore the finish to a tile floor.

Removing Tar

The janitorial service will first scrape off the tar with a putty knife and dispose of it in a garbage bag.

There will usually be brown stains left over after the tar is scraped off, which will tarnish the appearance of the floor. A tar-removing solvent is typically used to clean the stain away.

The tar-removing solvent is sprayed directly onto the tar stains and agitated with a soft-bristled brush. Rags are used to wipe up the solvent after agitating the stain. Once the stain is removed, clean rags are used to wipe the area down with floor cleaner and water to remove the residue of the solvent. 

Restore Finish

The problem with using solvents is that they will also remove the wax and seal finish on the tile. This will make the spots where the tar was removed look dull and different from the shiny finish on the rest of the floor.

A janitorial service will typically pour some tile sealer into a quart-sized spray bottle and spray the sealer over the area of the floor they cleaned with the solvent. After the sealer has dried, the service will wash the entire floor like normal with a floor washing machine or mop and bucket.

The janitorial service will fill another spray bottle up with floor wax and spray the wax onto the floor as they polish the floor with a floor scrubbing machine. The service will usually have to spray several additional coatings of wax onto the area where the tar was removed until there is enough of a wax buildup to match the finish on the other areas of the floor that were unaffected by the tar. The service will keep on polishing until the entire surface of the floor has a uniform finish.

For more information, contact a janitorial service like A Plus Cleaning Service Inc.