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Cleaning Hardwood Floors: Caution #1
Cleaning hardwood floors with a polyurethane finish requires the use of specific hardwood floor cleaners and cautionary measures so as not to damage the protective coating or raw wood beneath.
No OIL, SOAP or WAX Hardwood Floor Cleaners
There are many misleading retail floor cleaning products that claim to be "safe for wood floors" or "safe for all hard floor surfaces", leaving the consumer to believe that includes cleaning hardwood floors. But you aren't cleaning wood. You are cleaning the polyurethane coating that protects the wood.
The chemicals in these products quite frequently leave a residue that is unsightly, leaves footprints, dulls the finish, can sometimes be sticky and is extremely difficult to remove, if not impossible without resanding and refinishing the floor.
These chemicals react with the polyurethane, and build up over time, so as to make a touch up in five to ten years (a buff and recoat) fail. The new coat of polyurethane will not stick to the floor surface properly, at which time an expensive sand and refinish is necessary.
The use of products not recommended by the manufacturer for cleaning hardwood floors - such as oil, soap and wax - may ruin your floor and result in the loss of your manufacturer warranty.
There is a lot of debate over this issue. A common controversary is the use of Murphy Oil Soap™ when cleaning hardwood floors. An internet search of this topic will reveal many, many distraught hardwood floor owners who seem to have ruined their floor with this product. While there are those who will defend Murphy Oil Soap™ as safe for polyurethane coated flooring, including the makers of this product.
However, none of the hardwood floor craftsman who support and participate in this website will comfortably recommend this product. They've seen too many recoat nightmares and damaged wood flooring. The National Wood Flooring Association does not recommend this or similar types of cleaners for hardwood floors. Nor do hardwood flooring manufacturers.
It may be that cleaning products like this are not being used according to label directions. It may be that cleaning products used prior to the use of a product such as Murphy Oil Soap™, for example, did some damage or left a residue.
But regardless, soap of any kind, as well as oils and waxes, leave behind solids - just as soap leaves a residue on your skin and shampoo leaves build-up in your hair - even after rinsing. The effect on polyurethane-coated floors is that new layers of polyurethane - needed for care and maintenance of hardwood floors every several years - will no longer adhere to the floor's surface due to these build-ups. And the only solution is to completely remove all previous polyurethane coatings by sanding the floor down to bare wood and applying fresh layers of finish. A very expensive, time-consuming and avoidable predictament.
Our recommendation? Better safe than sorry. Your hardwood flooring, with proper care and maintenance, should last more than 600 years and still look as beautiful as the day it was installed!
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