Water You Doing? Myths About Cleaning With Water

There are a lot of hard surface cleaning myths floating around the internet, anything from home remedies to “industry secrets.” Unfortunately, some can end up being harmful to your surfaces and the people that come into contact with them, and others simply sound good but are not effective.

Would you wash your dirty dishes with only water? What about when you shower, would you only use water and expect to come out clean? Sure, a water rinse can knock off lose dirt, but how does it do against oils?  The same logic applies to your stone, tile, concrete and terrazzo surfaces.  They require a little more than water can provide, otherwise oil and dirt can and will build up resulting in a stained appearance.

When you think of a dirty surface, what do you think of? Ground-in food particles, grease or oil, residues from other cleaning products are a few that come to mind.  It is oil that generally acts as the adhesive, sticking dirt to your surface, but as we all learned in grade school, water and oil don’t mix well.  Which makes water a tough choice when it comes to removing oils from any surface.

Which leads us to our second point: water doesn’t kill (although we can drown in an excess), you can’t drown bacteria. In fact, if we’re being technical, water is generally perceived to sustain life, not eradicate it. So, if you’re using water to clean a surface where bacteria is living—you’re not killing the bacteria.  More than likely, you’re making it worse by spreading it around to new areas, effectively helping the germs and bacteria to breed. This can quickly become a health hazard if left unchecked.

Even if water could effectively remove oils, it wouldn’t be able to penetrate the natural porosity of the stone, grout, or concrete to flush these narrow pores.  Water would rather bead on top of the surface…until you introduce a small amount of surfactant.

If you’ve been using water to clean because of environmental concerns, you certainly are not going to be comfortable with solvent based cleaners, cleaners that deposit waxes on your surface or cleaners that employ harsh chemicals and acids.  MARBLELIFE developed their proprietary water-base surfactant technology capable of finding, surrounding, emulsifying and lifting oil into water to facilitate water as a cleaner.  Made in America, MARBLELIFE cleaners remove oils and dirt without depositing waxes or introducing harsh chemicals and acids.  For a cleaner clean.

To properly clean natural stone, you need a cleanser that will emulsify—or break down and lift away—any oil particles or residues from both the surface and the pores of the stone. This cleanser, like our MARBLELIFE Marble Counter & Table Top Clean & Care Kit available for purchase in our online store, cleans the stone’s surface and pores allowing the natural beauty of the stone to shine forth.