What is floor stripping and when does a floor need it?

What stripping removes, and how

Floor stripping takes a resilient floor — vinyl, vinyl composition tile, linoleum — back to its bare surface by dissolving and removing every coat of polish, sealer and finish on it. It is not a heavy scrub. Scrubbing cleans the top of a finish and leaves the film intact; stripping removes the film itself, and the floor is bare and unprotected when it is done. That is why stripping is always the first half of a job whose second half is recoating.

The sequence is fixed and skipping steps is what produces poor results. The area is cordoned and signed, loose soil is dry-vacuumed or swept, and stripping solution is applied generously to a section small enough to be worked before it dries. It is left to dwell for the period the chemical's label states — the chemical does the softening, not the machine. A low-speed rotary then works the section with a stripping pad or an abrasive brush: POLIVAC's C27 turns a 40 cm pad at 188 RPM, and for heavy cutback work the gas-powered ST2100 turns a 53 cm Tynex abrasive brush at a variable 350 to 700 RPM behind a 13 hp Honda engine. The slurry is then picked up wet, the floor is rinsed — often twice — and neutralised, and it must be completely dry before the first coat of new finish goes on.

Why it is done rarely

Stripping is the most disruptive, most labour-intensive and most damaging thing done to a floor in normal maintenance. The aim of every other procedure — scrubbing, spray buffing, burnishing — is to postpone it. A floor is stripped when the finish has worn through in the traffic lanes, when repeated recoating has built up an uneven yellowed film, or when so many coats have accumulated that a new coat will not bond properly to what is underneath.

That means stripping is scheduled by the condition of the finish rather than by the calendar. Two identical floors in the same building can need stripping years apart depending on traffic, entry matting and how well the interim maintenance was done. A site being stripped on a fixed annual cycle is usually either stripping floors that did not need it, or leaving floors too long.

When it matters

Strip when the finish is failing, not merely dull. A dull floor with a sound, continuous finish is a spray-buffing or burnishing job, and stripping it wastes a day of labour and a floor's worth of polish to achieve what a pad would have done in an hour. Check whether the gloss comes back under a pad before committing to a strip.

Treat the safety risks as real, because all of them are. Stripper is strongly alkaline and it is applied wet, so the floor is a serious slip hazard for the entire job — the area must be barricaded and signed for the duration, not only while someone is machining, and grip footwear is ordinary practice rather than a precaution. Gloves and eye protection are required, and the product's safety data sheet governs: read it, because it also states whether that particular chemical needs ventilation. Where the stripping machine is petrol or LPG powered, ventilation is not optional at all — it is a carbon monoxide control, and such a machine belongs outdoors or in a large, actively ventilated space unless it carries emissions control rated for indoor use and the site is monitoring for it.

The surface-damage risks are equally real. Stripper left to dry re-deposits the polish it dissolved and forces a second application. Too aggressive a pad, or too much ballast weight on the machine, will scour vinyl and dull it permanently — damage no amount of new finish will hide. Linoleum is not vinyl: a high-pH stripper can attack its linseed-oil binder and discolour or embrittle the floor, so linoleum needs a product specified for it. Timber, cork, unsealed stone and most polished concrete should not be stripped with a resilient-floor stripper at all. When you are unsure what the floor is, or what is on it, test a small area out of sight and wait long enough to see what it does.