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Travertine Polishing Appointments Unscheduled Travertine Polishing Travertine Restoration - Grinding and Honing Travertine Polishing for Orange County and Los Angeles County Travertine Floor Maintenance Cleaning Restoration Why Travertine Shines Travertine's History

Three Types of Travertine Polishing -- Replace polish with shine for numbers 2 and 3.

1. A diamond pad polishing follows floor grinding with manufactured diamonds embedded in a metal disc. Usually thee to six metal discs fit onto a travertine floor polishing machine's bottom plate. When these discs are no longer needed, then honing begins with diamond pads manufactured with resins and manufactured diamonds. After going through five to eight steps, depending on a travertine floor's needs, a burnisher may be used to polish after the last diamond pads complete their magical work.
2. Crystallizing maintenance polishing uses a liquid to create a dense surface structure to a travertine floor polishing effort. Between steel wool and your travertine, heat builds, which causes pours to tighten while scratches fad. As an outcome a brilliant shine develops. Some people have claimed that crystallizing creates long-term damage during travertine polishing. If this were true today, many travertine and marble floors would have suffered undue damage many years ago. Crystallizing polishing proved itself long ago in gambling casinos across the country. Some of these floors receive a crystallizing cleaning and polishing one and even twice a week. So we hear some complaints about crystallizing travertine floors, but we do not find picture or descriptions of this alleged crystallizing fault. If ever I come. Crystallizing travertine polishing remains the least expensive form of travertine polishing. It takes less time and requires less material. It apparently produces a beautiful shine often enough to please many travertine floor owners. They keep coming back for the service time-after-time. It's because it's a stand-alone polishing technique that makes it affordable for most travertine owners.
3. Powder polishing, another stand-alone travertine polishing technique also uses a chemical basis, rather than the mechanical bases used in number 1 above. They type of maintenance polishing a applies powder shine. It takes longer because water and powder break down into a chemically charged acid for taking out travertine stone's dirt and altering its surface structure. Because of its acidity, it must receive water with an alkaline neutralizer to protect polishing efforts. Naturally powder polishing costs more more than crystallizing polishing, but tons less than mechanical polishing. Whichever polishing process you choose, just be sure that you get crystallizing polishing as the least expensive type of travertine polishing.

 Travertine restoration may involve deep cleaning or or an aggressive technique like mechanical polishing. A travertine floor suffers abuse over time. Depending on the type of environment it serves, a travertine's polished shine will serve as long as it's well maintenanced. Daily dusting or sweeping pays great dividends. Placing floor mats at each door's entrance helps greatly. When a travertine cleaning requires restoration it means a floor went too long without maintenance polish; it went too long between dusting and sweeping, and it went too long gathering sand, dirt, and typical street grime.

Sometimes we find deep scratches along with sand and dirt embedded in them. This tells us that a floor became a playground, which seems natural enough for homes with children. What else do floors exist for besides kid traffic?

With a restoration cleaning honing and polishing follow. This process costs a lot because 50 grit, 200, 400, and 800 grit diamonds need to redefine a floor's surface, light reflection. Sometimes when vandalism occurs it pays to check with your homeowner's insurance.

Expect to pay much more for restoration than typical polishing. It doesn't matter if you live in Cypress or Rancho Palos Verdes. Do not expect to pay for grinding in most cases, except installation polishing (mechanical, diamond pad shining) and vandalism.

Once restored by a travertine polishing company, travertine typically has a different polished shine. Its original luster changes to a duller, but deeper shine; no longer brilliant like a mirrored reflection, but organic in appearance rather than manufactured; less artificial and more natural. This has to do with optics, not the skills, abilities, or knowledge of a travertine polisher.

Restoring travertine tiles to a flat surface follows poorly installed new tiles. Here three big steps take place: grinding, honing, and polishing Travertine.

These three steps must be taken to smooth and polish (shine) poorly installed floor tiles. A Travertine company must make each step to reach a polished shine. They must charge a lot of money. We know this:

• Grinding removes imperfections in Travertine slabs and Travertine floor tiles. Expect grinding to create dust or slurry. Slurry amounts to a dark mud. It becomes lighter as grinding continues. Expect grinding to produce a lot of noise. As an outcome, grinding leaves Travertine with a dull appearance. Scratches etched into Travertine stone cloud the stone's shine.
• Honing begins leveling and removal of lipage (obtrusion at tile borders). Other obtruding areas found in Travertine slabs or tiles succumb to honing. Honing also creates dust or a slurry. As in grinding, slurry becomes lighter as honing continues. Honing will not produce a shine, but it does give the appearance of a smoother surface than left by grinding. Some people prefer a honed to a polished Travertine floor.
• Polishing following honing usually begins with what we call a "50 grit diamond pad." Once a set of these pads smoothes out honed areas, Travertine slabs and tiles begin to look smooth. Following 50 grit polishing, 220 grit or 400 grit begins to "pop" a shine. Usually, except for black and green Travertine, an 800 grit polishing brings a well polished shine to Travertine slabs and tiles. Black and green (serpentine) Travertine slabs and floor tiles often go as high as 3000 grit.

Maintenance Polishing - Two Types: 1. Crystallization and 2. Powder Polish

Once a Travertine slab or tiles have their restoration polish, they're expected to keep a nice shine for an extended period of time. Foot traffic, sand, cleaning, and other elements play into how long a Travertine floor keeps its polished shine. When due for a maintenance polish, either a crystallization shining process or a powder process returns a Travertine floor's polished shine.

1. Crystallization takes place as a Travertine polishing technician applies a sprayed chemical to a Travertine floor. Upon this moist spray, a heavy rotary machine with one to three rotating heads turns. Below its rotating head, a layer of steel wool turns. Steel wool's turning under the machine's weight causes heat from friction. As a consequence, the sprayed solution heats along with the Travertine. This heat and pressure and chemistry smooth offending scratches. Results usually produce a beautiful Travertine finish.

2. Powder polishing requires a chemical powder, water, and a strong cleaning pad. In this case the powder and water interact and create a chemistry under a rotating pad (usually "hogs hair).. As a consequence the floor's shine increases dramatically as chemicals smoothes Travertine's scratches.

Both of the maintenance polishing processes clean Travertine floors as polishing takes place. We need to stop for a moment and qualify "clean." Some residential and business floor do not qualify for a maintenance polish. This may be an area in which consumers believe they're being "cheat."

 

Restoration Cleaning

Not so uncommon to business Travertine floors, restoration cleaning must occur before either type of Travertine polishing takes place. Carpet glue, gum, and other adhesives may soil a floor. Whatever, such floors cannot react properly to maintenance polishing. They require restoration cleaning. Restoration cleaning may require honing and then polishing with diamonds. It my require a simple scrub and rinse with appropriate chemicals. Years of Travertine polishing experience and testing qualify a floor's restoration cleaning needs. An error in judgment ought to come at your polisher's expense, not yours.

crystallizing costs the least and creates an enduring shine, but not as enduring as a powder polish. Powder polishing takes longer and subsequently costs more in labor and materials. Expect to pay $0.50 to $1.50 more per square foot of Travertine polishing for powder polishing.

Even if they wanted to, Travertine polishing companies have few ways to avert their Travertine restoration duties to save money while defrauding Travertine consumers. Because Travertine restoration requires grinding, honing, and polishing, in most cases, it's nearly impossible for an unethical company to skip steps without someone knowing quickly.

Most Travertine restoration jobs require honing and polishing, shining, with diamond pads. This saves time, money,and material.

Fortunately, Travertine companies have a vested interest to ensure they produce their best product possible. A happy consumer returns for Travertine polishing and maintenance. An unhappy consumer finds a new Travertine polishing company. (See the Orange County Consumer Fraud web site for county employee defrauding behavior.)

If fraud does occur in the Travertine business, it will occur during installation because of hurry or poor craftsmanship. This becomes a problem for a Travertine floor owner. Now they must hire a Travertine company to restore their floor, which actually never met merchantability requirements in the first place. So, "restore" has an ambiguous meaning in this sense. "Who should pay?" for Travertine restoration and Travertine polishing becomes the big question.

In another sense, Travertine restoration follows from a floor undergoing years of abuse in a sandy environment; perhaps a floor's surface becomes the scene of a great wax buildup, which could lead to at least a restoration requiring honing if not grinding.

I think the vast majority of Travertine companies put their best work forward and stand behind their product. After all, staying in business almost requires a positive, ethical approach in the natural stone business.

Grinding takes place when a floor must have its surface smoothed out. Perhaps lipage created by two tiles placed unevenly create a "lip" on their adjoining borders. This uneven area may remind readers of tectonic plates crushing against one another. When the pressure created against one another becomes to great, they slip, move, or bounce. This results in what we call an "Earth quake."

Unevenly placed Travertine tiles occur when installers do not take enough time or material to create an evan base upon the floor. Sometimes a concrete floor may need grinding to make it smooth enough for Travertine tiles. In any case, where lipage occurs in two many places on Travertine floors, they must be reduced until the offending tiles are at rest without lipage. Grinding is quite expensive, messy, and time consuming. (return)

Honing follows grinding in many cases. Honing requires a much less aggressive Travertine reducing process. It's quieter, less messy, but still requires considerable expense. (return)

Why Travertine Shines
 Optics

Like other natural stones, Travertine shines when it receives a cultured polishing. Correctly done, travertine reflects light because of its optics orientation. This means that microscopic etches slowly fill in for bigger etches as travertine polishing progresses. Before long tiny etches remain where once larger etches existed. So now light begins to reflect these newer, tinier mirror-like etches. Travertine polishing often concludes after an 800 grit diamond pad polishing. Or, after a crystallizing polishing, which creates friction and heat rather than microscopic scratches. Travertine polishing with powder chemicals and water create a chemically based change to travertine's surface. These floor polish techniques may seem simple, and they are, but they came to us after more than a thousand years of travertine polishing with sand, bricks, and other abrasives. Slave power, of course, made travertine polishing by the super rich, the ruling class..

Travertine floors may become soiled by grease, sand, or oil. As a result a deep cleaning may follow to restore our travertine's polished shine. When oil or scratches go too deep, then travertine restoration must follow. I prefer not to do travertine restoration, but I will do so for a good price. When I do maintenance polishing for a family or business, I'm more receptive to their travertine restoration needs. (return) (menu)

My prices remain the same for both Orange County travertine polishing and Los Angeles travertine polishing.

Travertine's History

Travertine's history belongs to the natural history of other sedimentary rocks. It's primary contents are known as fossilized silt from plants. Fossilized animals may appear in a travertine floor polishing project,. Still, mostly plants, travertine carries a great amount of chemically produced minerals. Over many years sediment builds up as lakes, streams and rivers flow and ebb. One layer over another, season by season, sediment begins to compact that below it. In time it become stone, a soft stone. Crystals grow and feel pores. A combination of elements like quartz crystals, a now cementatious sediment, and compaction leave once slimy sediment rock solid. Travertine polishing could not exist with anything less in the natural history of travertine.

Detrital (pronounced /dɪˈtraɪtəl/) derived sedimentary stone carries a heavy load of particles of rock that come from pre-existing rock. Weathering and erosion create these detrital particles. Consisting of lithic fragments, recognizable rock pieces and monomineralic fragments of mineral grains. By wind and water transportation, these rock pieces

also belong to the sedimentary action of travertine rock layering, but in its formation in riverbeds, lakes or the ocean. Sediments into rock through cementation and lithification. This process we call"diagenetic rock formation." Sandstone, besides travertine, arises in this same manner. Arizona's sandstones appeal to those with a preference for light brown stones with a sandy appearance. These stone become beautiful once placed in a cultured environment.

Over time such stones become weathered and eroded again and again. They become what many consider a second generation of sediment. All these powerful natural forces came to exist in what we now call your "travertine floor," a floor worthy of travertine polishing services. Your Rancho Palos Verdes neighbors stand to be pleasantly surprised.

Here's my travertine polishing glossary. There's much more here than stone care information.