Diamond Devil® Allowed Tyrone Schools To Restore 60-year-old Floors To Original Vibrancy—and Freed Up Critical Resources
Goals
- Identify alternative to stripping and waxing for long-term maintenance of terrazzo floors
- Eliminate time-consuming hallway-related projects
- Implement a “greener” polishing and maintenance option
- Prevent slips and falls due to annual floor maintenance
Solutions
- Three distinct tools to polish and shine terrazzo floors: Hone, Polish, and Shine
- Use only water; eliminate harsh (and costly) chemicals
- Environmentally friendly alternative to stripping and waxing
- Works on existing floor equipment
- Hallways can be polished, shined and maintained in a fraction of the time
- Increased safety by eliminating slip-and-fall risks for students and staff
- Prevent situations where winter salt would destroy floors
- One-time investment in The Diamond Devil® System vs costly annual expenses
- Terrazzo remains shiny and reflective at the end of the school year—even after heavy traffic
After Stripping Their 60-year-old Floors Down To “nothing,” Employees Saw The Full Potential Hidden Beneath All That Wax. They Leveraged The Diamond Devil® Terrazzo Restoration & Polishing System To Return The Floors To Their Original Glory
Tyrone Area School District has facilities in Blair, Huntingdon, and Centre counties in Pennsylvania. The high school was built in 1961 and still has all its original terrazzo flooring.
For years, the staff at Tyrone Area Schools had been maintaining terrazzo floors the old-fashioned way – by stripping and waxing them every summer. When they found The Diamond Devil® Terrazzo Restoration & Polishing System everything changed overnight.
“It frees up time and money for people to do projects that are more important than stripping and waxing the floor,” said Jordan Good, director of physical plant. “Out of all the things we’ve done since I’ve been here, it was probably our biggest time and money saver yet.”
Good rated The Diamond Devil® System a “5 out of 5 stars” for the ease of use, the floors being restored to their original white finish, the image gloss and clarity, and the future lack of maintenance needed. So happy with the results he has already recommended the system to others.
When Good and his team started looking for a solution to traditional stripping and waxing for their terrazzo floors, they didn’t necessarily set out to save significant amounts of time and money or to improve safety conditions, they just wanted their floors to look better—which they weren’t sure if that was even possible.
An Unexpected Realization Begins The Search For Something New
Nearly four years ago, Good and his team “stripped the floor down to nothing.” In his estimation, there may have been as much as 10 years of wax on it. For the first time in quite a while, the terrazzo had a nice white finish and had been restored to its original state.
They were so impressed by the floor appearance that they were willing to invest time to do a complete strip down on a regular basis. Each summer the team spent roughly a month on this process across its various locations. But then the district did what it always had: added two coats of wax and the floor quickly discolored again, within the year.
After seeing what their floors could look like under the right circumstances, there was no going back. Good and others at Tyrone searched for an alternative that would give them the long-term results they wanted.
Traditional Terrazzo Maintenance: How Some Lessons Are Learned “the Hard Way”
Good said that “we were waxing, which we found out is not recommended for terrazzo flooring. But it was just something that happened over the years here at the school.”
To that end, he’s correct. Terrazzo is a naturally porous material, which means once the wax is applied it reduces the natural slip resistance of the floor. This is an issue because the district offers a wide variety of activities and sports including baseball, basketball, golf, soccer, swimming, wrestling, and tennis at virtually all grade levels, so the floors experience heavy traffic and the risk of slips and falls increases.
Further, summertime logistical challenges are a foregone conclusion – teachers can only set up their rooms around very rigid schedules during floor maintenance. Parts of the building aren’t accessible for summer activities, etc. And, by the end of the school year, the floor begins to develop a yellowish haze. This is commonly due to sun damage along with heavy traffic.
Despite acknowledging the fact that traditional stripping and waxing was hardly the best way to maintain terrazzo floors, Good and his team began to worry that there just wasn’t a viable alternative.
Good had heard about a different system that claimed it would eliminate the need to wax the floors. He said, “There were a couple of local school districts that tried that and after a few years it didn’t quite live up to their claim, so we didn’t pursue that and that’s when we started exploring this, The Diamond Devil® System.”
The Flexibility And The Possibility Of The Diamond Devil® System
Good and his team had seen first-hand the potential that was still just beneath the surface of their floors. So, when their Janitor Supply sales representative mentioned Diamond Devil® they were open to set up a free on-site product demonstration.
They learned that The Diamond Devil® System offered a lot of benefits:
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- Using only water was immediately appealing because it eliminated the need to purchase gallons of floor stripper and wax annually
- Work can be completed whenever needed because the floors can be walked on immediately after each step
- Works with most standard floor equipment
A Solution In A League Of Its Own
When we did the demo, we did it in the stairwell, which had a lot of traffic…,” Good said. The floor looked great the entire time even though they didn’t ‘hit it again’ until they purchased The Diamond Devil® System about six months later.
Good commented that even though months went by before they had the full Diamond Devil® System at their disposal, there we no issues with the stairwell that had been treated – despite the consistent heavy traffic. “The floors looked better than they ever had,” he said, and The Diamond Devil® System “definitely stood up to what was claimed.”
One can see a “huge difference” when comparing a portion of the terrazzo flooring that had been restored and polished with The Diamond Devil® System to a section that had still only been stripped and waxed from the previous summer.
Fully convinced, the Tyrone Area School District began their project in earnest. Once started, everything was completed in sections. First, they stripped the floor down to the bare terrazzo before starting the restoration process with the Hone Tool and finished with the Polish and Shine Tools. They chose to proceed one hallway at a time – making sure each was fully completed before moving onto the next.
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- Hone Tool is used to prep the floor for polishing
- Polish Tool closes the terrazzo and brings out a clean, even satin/standard polish finish
- Shine Tool elevates the image gloss level and clarity; and is used to maintain the reflective vibrancy
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For context, there are 250,000 square feet of floors in the Tyrone Area High School. Not all of that is terrazzo, but a significant portion is. Once they began to see the results, they elected to use The Diamond Devil® System on every inch of it!
“When you consider the hourly rate of custodians, the time savings alone is worth the investment,” Good commented. Not stripping and waxing terrazzo hallways saves a good month’s worth of labor, time and money. Plus, it’s a greener option. (See above below)
This was also a major shift in perspective from the way floor maintenance was traditionally handled in the district. When stripping and waxing floors via conventional methods, it’s a major inconvenience to do one small section at a time. The preparation required is the same, regardless of whether you’re doing an individual section or an entire hallway.
Thanks to The Diamond Devil® System, Good and his colleagues have the freedom to use the Shine Tool anytime throughout the year, as their ongoing maintenance. It’s a major benefit and is not at all disruptive to the school’s class schedules or other various activities.
Keeping Terrazzo Looking Its Best All Year Long
Good indicated that this new approach to terrazzo maintenance was able to relieve a lot of the routine issues that for years had been written off as “just the way things were.” In the past, if a teacher or other staff member dragged a heavy cart through the wax, it would make an indentation and that imperfection would be visible until the following summer floor project.
The same was true if someone walked across the floor before they were supposed to during the maintenance process. There would be footprints that were essentially permanent until the floors were stripped and waxed again. Good acknowledged, “Wax has a lot of downfalls, quite honestly.”
The Diamond Devil® System also helped relieve the risk of slips and falls, a dangerous situation that is all too common when dealing with floor stripper and wax. “The wax itself is slippery, but the stripper is even worse. Plus, you’re wearing rubber boots, which don’t always have the best traction…To eliminate that is great. All around, everyone is happy,” he said. These days, the situation is significantly better as far as traction is concerned, or simply for having the appropriate amount of grip and slip resistance on the floor when you’re walking.
While Good and his team heard many compliments from staff and other administrators since the project onset, he’s the first to admit that not everyone looks at the floor. It just becomes a part of the environment when you’re in the same place every day. When the floors are looking their best, people don’t typically comment on them. They accept them for what they are.
“But a contractor, who knows what they’re looking at and realizes that the floors are almost 60 years old? They’re the ones who comment all the time,” he said.
Time And Money Savings Create Opportunities For Tyrone Schools
The current terrazzo floor maintenance at the Tyrone Area School District looks quite different than just a few short years ago.
Good said that “we do [maintenance] in between classes, during the day. It doesn’t always happen every day in every part of the school, but we can just run our equipment over the floor.” He followed up by saying that the terrazzo “holds its shine, so every day isn’t necessary because it looks great.”
The ease of use is what impressed him most about The Diamond Devil® System. “Once you’re done with the first two steps, you’re done forever. It’s just a maintenance thing after that and there is very little maintenance,” he said.
By design, the tools are also as easy to use as the floor cleaning equipment with which the employees are already experienced. “It’s as easy [to use] as riding around on a scrubber,” Good said. “You don’t actually have to do anything. It’s probably the easiest thing we do. If they know how to use a scrubber, they know how to use [Diamond Devil®].”
At the Tyrone Area School District, most of the time only water is used to maintain the floors. Depending on the time of year, they may add a neutral cleaner – to deal with the significant amount of salt during unforgiving Pennsylvania winters.
Perhaps the most important advantage of switching to The Diamond Devil® System is the possibilities it unlocked. The schools are almost six decades old – naturally, officials have a long list of renovations they’d like to complete. The money saved from not buying 30 to 40 gallons of wax per school year, coupled with the time saved on behalf of the maintenance team, allow all involved to focus resources on matters that can truly make a lasting impact.
Good said that other school districts should just visit and see for themselves. Seeing is believing. They’d be convinced, “With The Diamond Devil® System, the floors look like they’re back to their original state from when they were put in almost 60 years ago.”
