Karndean Flooring - maintenance

almacmil

We've had our house fitted out with Karndean flooring (no carpets anywhere - you'd be surprised how often we sweep and therefore how much crap carpets hide).

Does anybody know any little tricks about maintenance and upkeep? i know there is a special Karndean Maintenace pack available but, hey, I wouldn't be on this site if I wanted to pay for that!!

PS - For all those who are looking at laminate you might want to have a look at this type of floor - none of that clippy-clop noise and you can create patterns too.

freestyle_3

Wow.

Did it cost a lot of money ? I never really found anywhere to buy this stuff off the shelf?

robowen

If you pm me..I could give you a email address of a place that sells a similar product for £8sq/m in bradford. But it is collect only. I'm not sure they will deliver it unless you order a large amount or they're working nearby.

innovate

I agree, almacmil, the mind boggles what is hiding in carpets!

I've got wood and tiles throughout the house, plus some Amtico in the bathroom. All floors get cleaned with vaccum cleaner (to get rid of the dust) and a mop with a microfibre cloth (from e-cloth). Occasionally, I add a drop of the manufacturer's recommended cleaner to the water [for the shine], but usually it's just water for the mop. The mop gets totally filthy every time but after a machine wash at 60 degrees looks brand-spanking new.

almacmil

Hi freestyle - we were building a new house so it was no more expensive than decent carpet. We hit lucky on a sale that was going on in Glasgow for the Van Gogh range (£17m2 - ish) and we bought a whole pallet of the Renoir range so got a decent price. We did want Amtico 'cos it's a little classier (snobs that we are!) but building house and budgets meant that went west We nearly bought through "flooring supplies" on the net (Leeds I think) by setting up a trade acount to get trade prices ( ) but then we were buying around 200m2 in total. We went for this type of flooring because we wanted underfloor heating and this works really well with it - it also looks superb.

Thanks innovate - we use a microfibre mop (dry) and it works day to day. We could sweep twice a day and get a good pile every time. No dust mites in this house :T Just three kids two cats and a dog :rolleyes:

We've only just found out that we are supposed to strip and re-polish every so often and I was after tips, hints and less expensive materials.

robowen

The floor tiles at 8sq/m are Marley and are a bit better quality than Karndean, but a bit less than amtico.

They usually retail at around £28-£35sq/m.

The reason they are so cheap is that marley have been bought out by another company and all the marley named range was sold off job lot. The supplier put in a ridiculously small bid ..not expecting to get the stuff. No-one else bid. The supplier regularly advertises on ebay..this is where we found it.
I think there are only about 5 or 6 different wood effect colours

I think all 3 would do the same job in a house. But the difference in quality only shows in public areas.

rob

robowen

almacmil wrote:

We've only just found out that we are supposed to strip and re-polish every so often and I was after tips, hints and less expensive materials.

We had polish on our floor, but you can easily leave marks in the polish. We got fed up of stripping and polishing. We just have ours unpolished now.

rob

innovate

almacmil wrote:

We've only just found out that we are supposed to strip and re-polish every so often and I was after tips, hints and less expensive materials.

I don't know the Karndean range and their care recommendations, but my Amtico does come with 'strip and re-polish' maintenance recommendations. They say once every 6 months - - I've just done it for the first time in 5 years. I wouldn't dream of 'attacking' my Amtico with chemicals they don't endorse, so I bought their stripper and re-polisher [£13], and I must say it was absolutely worth it to restore the floor to its original glory. Though once every 5 years rather than once every 6 months seems perfectly sufficient. Mind you, we don't have 3 kids and an animal farm......just two adults but lots of party guests ;-), so on more heavily used floors you may have to do it more often.

For my wood [Kaehrs] and tiles [glazed] floors, I don't need to do any stripping, just dusting [micofibre/vacuum cleaning] and the odd wet wipe [microfibre]. A heck of a lot easier than keeping a carpet clean [or supposedly clean!].


Good quality mats outside every entrance to the house will make a difference - the less grime and grit you carry in from outside the longer your floor lasts - I suppose that's self-evident, and you already have that, almacmil. Also, since you have underfloor heating, you could think of a 'shoes off' policy - socks and bare feet cause much less damage to any floor than shoes.

But I don't think you can/should avoid the occasional strip/restore with the recommended products

DSmiffy

Hi, we sell Karndean and I have it all over the house. I vacuum it or use one of those really big flat swivel head dry mop brush things, then I wet mop it with water with a squirt of Fairy liquid and a drop of Flash liquid. Have done the same for years, and it still looks great.
Of course they will recommend that you use their specialist cleaning products rather than soap and water, how do you think they make their big fat profits !!!?

Party_Animal

I've got Karndean in the bathroom. kitchen, hallway and conservatory. Its a superb product and neither I nor my reconised installer think its second to Marley. Alright Amtica is the bees knees but you pay for it. The thing to remember is that a lot of these products are designed for heavy traffic. I don't think there's much chance of me and the missus wearing the Karndean out and it does look good when its fit right.

innovate

I had my Amtico installer round today, to re-fit a couple of strips that had to be taken up (not a problem with the floor, loooong other story!). He - somewhat surprisingly - told me to just ignore the Amtico recommendation for regular stripping & re-dressing!

He said stripping approx every 6-8 years (!) is more than enough for even the most heavily used floors, and that vacuuming/dusting as well as wet-wiping the floor regularly (weekly for normal use) just with water [using my e-cloth mop] is perfectly sufficient. He did, however, recommend to use the Amtico floor dressing whenever the floor gets dull (once a year, he reckons). As and when the floor dressing doesn't bring the floor back to its orginal glory, then there's too much dressing on it, and a stripping-treatment will be advisable.

He doesn't have practical experience with Karndean but said he'd be rather surprised if the maintenance 'regime' would need to be much different.

I **LOVE** this chap - he is saving my quite a few of those £8-a-go stripper bottles (plus the hassle...)!! And if Amtico knew what he told me, they'd love him too, no doubt - just slightly differently :rotfl: