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The self help Do’s and Don’t are

Self Care
Dust Mop or Vacuum.
One of the most important things you can do to protect your floor is to dust mop or vacuum daily.
Especially on the high gloss, softer stones like Marble, Travertine and limestone. The reason for this is that small stones, sand and grit carried in on shoes typically have a hardness  on the Mohr hardness scale of 7. To put this in perspective, Diamonds are the hardest mineral at 10 on the scale.Thankfully (or not!) diamonds are very rare, however the second most abundant mineral in the Earth’s crust is silica in the form of quartz. Quartz is everywhere and is one of the main constituents of sand. If you have even the smallest particles of quartz and other hard minerals on your floor then it does not take much foot traffic to grind these into the softer surface of the stone. Scratching will occur, the shine will disappear and the opulent look of the stone with it.
The common Marbles, travertines and Limestones incidentally are often only 3 on the hardness scale. They are comparatively very soft. You can scratch some limestones with your nail….which is one good reason not to specify limestone for your hall floor!
So, regular dust mopping or vacuuming is a must. Domestically we would recommend something with good suction and a soft bottom on brush head. The Miele ‘Cat and Dog’ TT5000 is quite powerful at up to 2200 watts, but more importantly it has a soft rubber roller at the rear which rides nicely on tiled floors.
Beware of brushing, even this can rub hard grits across a polished floor and cause scratching.
Good grit catchers externally are a great idea……heavy door mats, grills etc will all help.

Cleaning Chemicals
As has been mentioned, a regular problem we are called out to is acid etched stone where customers or cleaning companies have inadvertently used normal household cleaning products on their floors. This has left the floor acid etched, ie dull and flat.
Sometimes abrasive (and acidic) cleaning agents have been used, like Jif Cleaning creams etc. These are not only no good for cleaning some stones.
It is important to use the appropriate stone soap for your floor. You can ask your tile supplier about what they stock or you can contact us for more information. We are planning to become stockists of of our own range of stonecare products in 2010. But essentially, calcerous stones like marble, travertine and limestone need neutral ph cleaners.
The dilution instructions are on the containers. Your mop should be wet, but not so much so that it leaves great pools of water everywhere. Just lightly mop the floor , rinsing as you go. A really good idea are these two compartment mop buckets which allow you to rinse in one side then get clean un-contaminated solution from the other compartment.

Spills
It is important to get spills up quickly, even the harder granites can stain with coffee and some fats.
So, blot up rather than wipe up spills.

Sealers
There are a different families of sealers and many different types of sealers within each family. The correct sealer to be used depends on several variables: internal/external, type of stone, heaviness of foot traffic, type of finish required. Sealer selection in, our opinion needs to be made after all the above have been considered.
If you choose the wrong sealer, eg a topical solvent based sealer on a marble floor, then removing it properly afterwards is a messy, labour intensive job. It is made even more difficult because as the chemical strippers used dissolve and take into solution the solvent sealer….it has to be removed completely and quickly or it starts to re-absorb even deeper into the grout.
These are jobs we will take on, but restoring the grout to its original state after this process cannot always be guaranteed. Sometimes grout re-colouring is the only option.
Far better to choose the correct sealer in the first instance!