The tyre marks found on warehouse floors are very difficult to remove and over time can build to create a significant skid risk if the floor is wet and obscure vital safety lines and pedestrian demarcation zones.
Warehouses will predominantly suffer from loose debris such as bits of wood from damaged pallets, cardboard, plastic pallet wrap, damaged products, broken glass and general dust, dirt and debris.
Therefore, a sweeper floor cleaner is much more effective as it will sweep up these large ‘dry’ articles to be removed from the floor…….but they have little or no effect on dirt that is bound deeply into/onto the surface of the warehouse floor such as tyre marks.
A scrubber dryer that is equipped with brushes can apply a floor cleaning solution to the surface and effectively wash the floor, but even with the hardest, stiffest brushes it is very limited in the amount of friction it can create to scrub the surface.
If you are looking to remove tyre marks from the floor you are far better to use a pad based floor scrubber
Which pads should I use for floor scrubbing machine for different applications?
Floor scrubber machines can use different grades of pads dependent on the application. An aggressive rough pad would be best used for stripping and deep cleaning and a soft pad for
polishing.
Black & Brown pads are the most aggressive.
Used to strip flooring and remove all finishes from flooring via wax stripper. They have an open weave to help remove emulsified finish without “clogging”.
Ideal for durable flooring like commercial vinyl, smooth concrete, or industrial flooring.
Black or Brown pads are the most effective for cleaning off rubber tyre marks from warehouse floors.
Green & Blue Scrubber Pads are moderately aggressive, but less so than black and brown pads.
These floor cleaning pads are great for routine cleaning, or for floors with a heavy soil load. They are designed to be as aggressive as possible without removing the finish.
Red & Beige Scrubber Pads
Red scrubber pads are typically used for regular, routine floor cleaning and maintenance. These floor scrubber pads are ideal for flooring with a light soil level.
They are also ideal for using when removing shoe marks off hard floors using EN701 rubber tyre mark remover.
Why are pads rather than brushes better to clean rubber tyre marks?
Rubber is a naturally inert material, developed for its flexibility and hard-wearing capabilities it is a very resilient material. It is not dissolvable in water, nor can a standard floor cleaner surfactant.
This means that the friction or level of scrub pressure needs to be higher to score or breakdown the surface of the rubber.
The best pads to clean rubber tyre marks off concrete warehouse floors are Black and Brown pads are they exert a rough texture to abrade the surface and also allow any specific rubber tyre mark cleaner to access the rubber structure and dissolve the rubber deposits
How do you dissolve rubber tyre marks and make them liquid?
Many methods have been used historically to remove rubber tyre marks and range from the used of solvents to melt the rubber deposits to the more bizarre such as using soft drinks such as coke! (although this could leave a sticky mess and we have not seen this being effective …so it could be a myth!)
Solvent based solutions work by effectively and aggressively melting the rubber residues………….but due to their volatility the liquid solvent has a limited time to be in contact with the rubber before it evaporates.
They have very significant limitations and extreme safety issues.
Solvents are by nature highly volatile chemicals and a lot of their ‘energy’ is devoted to evaporation and therefore the fumes are highly flammable and potentially poisonous and the risk of a spark or ignition is high!
Very rarely will a Health & Safety Manager allow the use of solvents in a warehouse environment due to these risks!
Can rubber tyre marks be cleaned from a concrete warehouse floor?
Yes, there is a tried a tested method of cleaning rubber tyre marks caused by Forklift truck tyres off the warehouse concrete floor.
EN701 is a proprietary formulation from Bio8 Industrial Ltd that used a blend of low hazard components which specifically target rubber deposits.
It uses non-volatile, low hazard, but highly active combination of components to dissolve the rubber deposits and hold them in a liquid state. When the tyre marks are in a liquid state the rubber is in a form that can be effectively cleaned up using a scrubber dryer to leave a clean and safe floor and exposure warehouse floor line and safety markings, making them highly visible.
EN701 is a product that is best used neat and should always be pre-applied to floor surface and left to stay in contact varying from 5-30 minutes and can be agitated and worked into the surface using a scrubber dryer cleaning machine.
