Buying an Industrial Floor Polisher / Scrubbing Machine

I am writing this short guide to assist in the purchase of used and new Industrial Floor Polishing and Floor Scrubbing machines from Ebay.

In so many instances the sellers of these machines have know idea what they are selling or what their particular machine is suitable for.

In choosing a floor machine the first priority must be to determine the speed of the machine that you require. Machines are manufactured in roughly the following speeds:

Low Speed : Between 120 and 200 rpm

Medium Speed : Between 200 and 270 rpm

High Speed : Between 270 and 400 rpm

Ultra High Speed : Between 900 and 2000 rpm

The low and medium speed machines are idealy suited to scrubbing floors, stripping floors of old polish and carpet shampooing.They will also polish floors but it can take some time!

Medium speed machines can be used for scrubbing and stripping floors, carpet cleaning with a bonnet mop or carpet padand are a little quicker to achieve results when polishing or 'Spray Cleaning' floors.

High speed machines are used mainly for polishing and spray cleaning floors. If you try to scrub with these machines, the water tends to fly around quite a bit and the results can be poor to average.

Ultra high speed machines are only used for polishing or burnishing floors (the friction heats the surface polish and hardens it).

So you have determined what speed or machine best suits you particular aplication, now decide what size of machine you require. The size of the machine is normally given as the diameter of the pad or brush used by the unit ie: from 11" up to 21" (there are some larger machines but these are normally propane powered, are used in hypermarkets/superstoresand are rare on Ebay).

Finally, its good to check what attachements will be supplied with the machine. A solution tanks will be useful when scrubbing and stripping floors and essential when scrubbing carpets.

A pad drive board is normally essential. It fits to the base of the machine with a twist action and is spiked. This unit is used to hold floor pads which are available in many colours to do different jobs ie white pads for buffing, black pads for scrubbing and stripping. As a rough guide to pad selection, the darker the colour, the coarser and the lighter the colour the finer/softer the pad.

If the pad drive is not supplied with the machine, a new replacement could be anything from 50 to 150, and a scrubbing tank between 50 and 100, so beware.

Health and Safety. Industrial floor polishers should idealy be used by persons who have either had some training or at least have been shown how they operate. Most of the main manufacturershave instruction manuals that can be downloaded from their websites,so if you are a novice, I would strongly advise you do this and read thoroughly before attempting to operate the machine.

Finally, used floor machines appear regularly on Ebay and aswe would expect them to have a useful life of between 15 and 25 years, theycan be a great buy.

I hope that this guide will be of assistance.