1.3 Stripping Floors

• Sweep the floor to remove any rubbish & scrape off any chewing gum and labels.
• Erect ‘wet floor’ signs and barricades to keep people off the floor. To prevent ‘footprints’ over the floor, place a large piece of cardboard on the floor next to the area being stripped. When you walk off the area with stripper on your shoes, step onto the cardboard to dry off your shoes.
• Using a wringer bucket with 12 litres of cold water in it, add 1¼ litres of ULTRASTRIP (5 cups). This is a 1:10 solution. If the floor has a thick coating, use double this amount (1:5 solution).
• Dip a stripper mop (old or used mops are OK) into the bucket of solution. Remove mop from bucket without wringing and let stripper pour all over floor. Repeat this process until the entire area is covered with a thick coating of stripper solution.
• If stripping a large area, divide floor into easy to manage sections and strip one section at a time.
• Leave the stripper on the floor for ten minutes, giving time to attack the sealer. Spread it with the mop if it dries or runs – always keep the floor evenly wet. During this time scrub the feet of shelves and fittings to remove old sealer and dirt.

NEVER ALLOW TO DRY

• When time is up, scrub the floor with a scrubber (turn vacuum off) and black pads. Scrub the whole floor, starting at the point nearest to the power point if using an electric machine. Spend longer scrubbing the edges because the sealer will be thicker there.
• Test the floor by wiping the stripper aside and scraping with a coin to see if all old sealer film has been removed. If not, keep scrubbing.
• Wet vacuum all the stripper slurry up off the floor.
• Pour clean water all over the floor then vacuum this up to rinse the floor.