Vinyl floors have specific needs and to understand the usage of sealants and sealers, note the following advice from Polyflor’s Sandy McLardy.

Q: When do you use a sealant or sealer and why is this important to understand?
Sandy: Sealants are not used with vinyl floors. A sealer is only used on a vinyl floor that has no factory applied polyurethane sealer. The best way to determine this is to obtain the maintenance regime from the manufacturer.

Q: Are their specific application methods?
Sandy: It is vital to read the full maintenance document. If it states that a sealer should be applied regularly, then the next step would be to determine if the area handles high traffic or not. If it is a high traffic area, then it would be advisable to strip and seal every six months. If not a heavy traffic area, then once a year would suffice.

The vinyl will show where the sealer is wearing in traffic areas, giving an answer to when to re-strip or not.

Q: Are their hard and fast rules for flooring products on vinyl floors?
Sandy: Never strip a polyurethane factory-applied sealer.

Q: What is the best vinyl floor sealer?
Sandy: We have a few manufacturers in South Africa. They all supply acrylic water-based sealers.

Q: What other specialist advice or knowledge can you share with our audience please?
Sandy: The best and only way to maintain your vinyl floor is regular sweeping and mopping as per the maintenance regime.

Our sincere thanks and appreciation to www.polyflor.co.za for the use of the information contained in this article.

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