Cleaning
How do you clean a coated floor?
Most of it is sweeping or a dust mop, and when a coated floor needs more than that it gets cleaned wet rather than scrubbed with anything abrasive.
The short version
- A dust mop or a soft push broom handles most of it.
- Wet cleaning means water on the floor, a soft mop, and the water taken back off.
- Road grit is what wears a coating. Sand under a tire works like sandpaper.
- Nothing abrasive on the surface: no scouring pad, no wire brush, no steel wool.
- Clear View Surface Solutions installs a polyurea basecoat, decorative flake in a color blend you pick, and a polyaspartic UV-stable topcoat over diamond-ground concrete, and that system's own label is the authority on what may go on it.
What the routine is
Most of the work is dry. A dust mop or a soft push broom, run over the floor the way you would run one over a kitchen, takes off the sand and the dirt that came in on shoes and tires. Do that regularly and you have done the important part, because loose grit dulls a coating faster than anything you park on it.
When it needs more than a mop, a coated floor gets cleaned wet. Water on the floor, a soft mop or a squeegee, and then the water comes back off rather than sitting there drying in place. The film is not porous the way bare concrete is, so the dirt is on the surface and it lifts. There is no scrubbing to do.
Anything spilled comes up easier while it is fresh. Most of what lands on a garage floor is off it again with water and a mop if somebody gets to it before it dries down hard. Left to sit, the same spill turns into a mark you have to work at, and that is where a topcoat picks up scratches.
What wears the surface
Grit is the one that matters. A vehicle comes home carrying sand, salt crystals and whatever else was on the road, and it drops all of it in the same few feet inside the door. Then a tire rolls over it. That is sandpaper, held against the floor by the weight of a car, and it is what puts a dull patch where you park.
So sweeping is the maintenance. Get the grit off the floor and the topcoat keeps its gloss. Leave it down through a winter and the traffic lanes go flat first, which is why a floor that looks worn is usually only worn where the wheels run. The rest of it is barely touched.
What may go on it
Skip anything abrasive. A scouring pad, a wire brush, steel wool or a gritty powder scratches a topcoat, and scratches are what turn a gloss finish hazy. The same goes for dragging a steel shelf or a floor jack across the room rather than lifting it. A soft mop, a soft-bristle brush and a shop vacuum cover everything a garage floor needs.
On cleaners, the label for the system you actually have is the authority, and it is the only one. Coating chemistries differ, and something fine on one topcoat marks another. Ask whoever put the floor down which system you have, then read what the maker prints on that label.