Our office sits on River Exchange Drive, so we get asked about floors here more than anywhere else, usually in a hallway with somebody pointing at a dull patch. Fair enough. Here is the fastest way we know to start settling stripping vs burnishing Norcross. Put a drop of water on the floor and watch it. Finish that is intact will hold that drop up in a neat bead for a while. Finish that is worn thin will let it spread and go cloudy against the tile fast. It takes ten seconds, it costs nothing, and it tells you more than most proposals do.

The water drop test takes ten seconds

Drop water on a quiet corner and again in the middle of the busiest lane. Watch how each one behaves. A tight bead that sits there means coating. A drop that spreads and dulls the surface underneath means the coating is thin or gone.

Two drops, two results, and you have a wear comparison for that room. Do it in three or four spots and you have a survey.

Two corridors, two answers on stripping vs burnishing Norcross

Historic downtown around Lillian Webb Park and Thrasher Park has older buildings with tight back-of-house and small subdivided suites. Those floors often carry many years of built-up finish in the corners and almost none in the doorways.

Flex space along Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Beaver Ruin Road and Peachtree Industrial is the opposite. Wide open runs, forklifts, dock doors and grit. Same city, and the right method in one is the wrong method in the other.

A scrape and a scratch check finish the diagnosis

After the water test, drag a scraper at a low angle to see whether film lifts. Then look at the lane in raking light for white scratch lines showing tile color. Three checks, and the decision usually makes itself.

IICRC cleaning standards publish how hard surface care should be carried out, and the sequence there is the same one we follow. Assess the surface, identify the condition, then select the method that suits it.

The usual industry model is a rate on a page and a crew assigned by availability, which is why the same recommendation lands on every floor in a corridor. We stand on the floor, run the checks with you watching, and write the method from what we both saw.

Most commercial cleaning gets sold on price per square foot, then quietly handed to whoever was cheapest and free that night. That’s why quality slides after month two — the scope was never real to begin with. We build yours from an actual walkthrough of your actual building, on your actual hours. Then we send the same crew who learned it. Boring? Completely. It’s also the only thing that makes month five look like month one.

DBS Cleaning Services Group

Downtime in a flex building is a dock problem

A warehouse aisle cannot be closed while pallets are moving, and a dock apron cannot be closed at all during receiving hours. That constraint drives the sequence more than the floor condition does.

So we plan around the schedule: aisles in sections, offices on a separate night, the dock area on a cycle of its own. The scope names the access window and the return-to-traffic time for each part.

Frequently asked questions