Recommendations For Maintaining Gym Floors

What pads and/or screens are needed to care for gym floors?

For years, gym floors have been maintained with red buff pads and a medium grit 100-150 screen for top polyurethane removal. Today, more operators are using the Maroon Thinline Pads to achieve maximum effectiveness with a thinner pad. This is especially true when using orbital machines but also has become the standard with round machines as well. Medium grit 100-150 screens remain the most popular.
— Rory Beaudette, VP Sales/COO, ACS Industries, Inc., Lincoln, Rhode Island

Probably the most common mistake cleaning professionals make is that they don’t match the correct pad to the actual results they want to achieve. In fact, there are many variables that impact which material works the best on gym floors, which are typically wood or synthetic rubber surfaces.
For a wooden gym floor, there are several different products and methods that can be utilized. For a deep scrub on a wooden gym floor, we recommend the Maroon EcoPrep “EPP” pad with standard speed machines, which can be used wet or dry. The pad effectively removes top layers of damaged coatings and prepares the floor for re-coating. If you are completely removing urethane coatings on wood gym floor, it is also best practice to use sand screens. Typically multiple grits ranging from heavy, medium to light are used to prepare the wood floor for re-coating.
For daily cleaning a synthetic rubber floor it’s industry standard to use a Red Buff pad. For heavier soil, scrub with a blue cleaning pad. You can polish or burnish using soft pads. Synthetic rubber floors can be damaged by using heavy duty abrasive pads or high alkaline chemicals. It is always a best practice to use the least aggressive pad and neutral cleaning solutions on these floors.
— John Miller, VP of Executive Sales and Marketing, Americo Manufacturing Company, Acworth, Georgia

Sand screens in various grits have historically been used in gym floor restoration. Over the past few years as manufactures have gone to waterbase gym floor finishes, floor pad manufactures have developed a floor pad that is maroon in color, approximately 1/4 inch thick that can be used with waterbase finishes.
— Randall Flowers, Vice President of Corporate Accounts, ETC of Henderson, Inc., Henderson, North Carolina

On gym floors, workers should use a Pad Screen Holder (Thin White Pad or Red buff pad both work well), Sandscreen in 60,80,100,120,150,180, 220 and 400 grit (most popular is 60/80/100 combination), and possible surface prep scuffing type pad (Maroon in color).
— Dennis Knapp, Director of Product Development, Impact Products, Toledo, Ohio