QUESTION

I have a ceramic tile that someone sealed with dirt on the tile. It may have been done over 5 years ago. The new home owner asked me to clean his kitchen tile floor. I went to look at it and told him that someone had sealed the floor when it was dirty and that is why 3 other cleaners were unable to clean his floor. I used a generic stripper, but it only improved the floor by 10%. I want to fix this guys problem and get his tile clean. What should I do?

ANSWER

ANSWER - If the tile floor was sealed when dirty then the only way to clean it is to remove the sealer.

To determine which stripper to use to remove a sealer you need to know what sealer was used.

If you don't know which sealer was used then you have to experiment with different strippers.  Aqua Mix and Miracle Sealants has strippers as well as other manufacturers of cleaners and strippers.

There are generic strippers like goof-off and some paint strippers that will remove some sealers.  If it were practical you could have a testing laboratory test the coating that was scrapped from the tile to determine what it is and what solvent will remove it.