Many cleaners are formulated to leave behind waxes and oils on the surface, in an attempt to take advantage of the very-American notion that “shiny” is synonymous with clean, and therefore clean-and-shiny is cleaner that just “clean.” (Europeans with their century old buildings are more accepting of clean being the absence of dirt.) The truth is the healthiest surface is simply clean – meaning it is free foreign surfaces including dirt, oil, fats, greases and waxes.
As such, we have cleaners that deposit waxes on the surface to leave an additional sheen. Of course, your marble and granite are substantially harder than a wax. They create shine by having been polished to such a fine flatness that light bounced off the surface true. Wax will do the same…until due to its softness it either is smudged or altered by dirt or oil. No matter, we can reclean, well really we are re-melting and smoothing the new wax surface we have just installed. This happens with Glass Cleaner and Wood Cleaners when used on stone. You see a wood floor or an exterior glass window NEED wax to fill in micro-scratches in the wood coating and in the glass caused by windblown sand. These situation do NOT exist for tile floors, marble floors or stone counters. The wax simply piles up, attracting dirt, encapsulating dirt, until it has created a dull film. You are still encouraged to use more, but the cleaner is not designed to remove the excess wax (In fact, many of these companies recommend MARBLELIFE to remove this build-up when they get a complaint or inquiry). Literally, the use of these oil and wax laden products results in more frequent cleaning with ever building frustration. It is at this stage, that MARBLELIFE is called to “restore” the surface. We can do so, but the expense is far greater than all the cleaners that have ever been used on that surface.
You would think that a cleaner would JUST clean. If cleaning is removing dirt, oil and other foreign contaminants from one’s counters, floors and other hard surfaces, why would a cleaner WANT to leave something behind. Yes, WANT to leave something behind. That kind of defeats the purpose of cleaning…unless the cleaner believes it creates a benefit, but for whom? You see, once on the wax band wagon it encourages you to use more. If an area loses its wax it looks dull, got to use it again, even though in reality its just that the wax layer is no longer smooth and even. You need the solvent in the cleaner to help flow the wax. But wait, solvent? Yes, waxes will need a little solvent to get them to flow. If oil based, oils evaporate and with that evaporation goes that shine you liked, until you reapply, or the oil smudges creating. Truth is, your marble, tile and grout needs neither wax or oil to shine, they just need to be clean.
MARBLELIFE is unique in the cleaning industry, as the only cleaner formulator/manufacturer who has designed their cleaners based on the problems are called out daily to fix. You see we restore over a 500 floors and counters a month. 20% of these are the result of someone using an inappropriate cleaner on the floor and damaging either the floor material or the grout. Yet, the majority of these situation are created using a product that was recommended for use on their surface.
THE TRUTH is that many cleaners in their efforts to try and find a way of standing out, or adding a feature, fail to account for the longterm effect of that “new” additive or feature, because they do not care or are truly unaware of the deleterious effects years of use can create.
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