Natural stone cleaning and sealing in South Scottsdale

South of Thomas, around Miller and the older grid · built 1950s and 1960s

Whether it is worth doing at all

We have this conversation more here than anywhere else in the city, so it belongs on the page rather than in a footnote.

Cleaning and sealing addresses soil and protection. It does not address wear. If a stone floor has been walked on for sixty years and the surface has abraded in the traffic lanes, cleaning brings back everything except the finish that has gone.

On a floor in that state the honest answer is sometimes that you want a refinisher rather than us, and sometimes that cleaning and sealing is a perfectly sensible way to get several more good years out of it without spending refinishing money. Which one depends on your floor and what you want from it.

We will tell you plainly which we think it is, and that conversation belongs before you pay rather than after.

Saltillo and unglazed clay

Common in the older south Scottsdale houses and genuinely different from the stone the rest of this site is about.

Saltillo is soft, porous, unglazed clay rather than quarried stone. It absorbs readily, it scratches, and it is almost always finished with a topical coating that yellows and wears unevenly over the years.

Cleaning saltillo is a different job, and stripping and refinishing it is different again. Mention it when you ring so we can plan properly rather than arrive expecting travertine.

Smaller areas and the minimum

Practical note, since houses here have less stone than the newer neighborhoods.

The $150 minimum works out to roughly 118 sqft at the discounted cleaning rate. A single entry will not reach it. An entry plus a kitchen usually will.

If you have a small area, the sensible move is combining it with something else rather than paying a minimum for sixty square feet. We would rather tell you that on the phone than take the booking and let you work it out afterward.

pH-neutral products, and no acid on stone ever

The single most important thing on this site, and the reason a stone floor needs a different company from a tile floor.

Acid etches marble, travertine and limestone on contact. Not over time, not with repeated exposure. On contact. It dissolves the calcium carbonate the stone is made of, and what you are left with is a dull patch where the surface used to be.

That damage does not undo. Cleaning will not lift it, sealer will not hide it, and the only route back is honing and polishing with diamond pads, which is refinishing work.

We use pH-neutral, stone-safe products. There is no version of this job where an acidic cleaner touches your floor.

It is worth asking anybody you get a quote from what they use, and treating vagueness as an answer. A great deal of the etching we find on Scottsdale stone was put there by somebody who cleaned it.

What cleaning and sealing cannot fix

Being straight about this up front matters more on stone than on anything else, because the damage is permanent and expensive.

Etching is the dull spot where something acidic ate into the surface. Wine, citrus, vinegar, and a great many store-bought cleaners all cause it. It is damage to the stone rather than a stain sitting on it, so cleaning does not lift it and sealer does not conceal it.

Scratches and worn finish in traffic lanes are the same category. The surface itself has changed.

Fixing either means honing and polishing with diamond pads, which is refinishing work and not something we offer. We clean and seal. When what your floor actually needs is a refinisher, we will tell you that instead of taking the job. Full explanation here.

How we do it

1. Identify the stone and check the existing sealer. Travertine, marble, limestone and slate all behave differently, and the product that suits one can damage another. We also establish whether there is a sealer on there already and what condition it is in.
2. Clean with solutions matched to that stone. pH-neutral throughout, lifting embedded soil and mineral out of both the stone and the grout without touching the surface itself.
3. Seal, if you have chosen to. Clear to protect what is there, or color enhancing to deepen the natural color, plus grout color seal on the lines if you want that.
4. Walk it together. We look at the finished floor with you before anything gets loaded out.

Cleaning always comes first. Sealing over soil traps it under the coating rather than protecting anything, which is exactly why these are priced as tiers rather than sealing offered on its own.

How often to reseal

Reseal every one to two years depending on the sealer and how much traffic the area takes.

There is a test that settles it without anybody's opinion. Put a few drops of water on the stone and wait five minutes. If it beads and sits there, the seal is working. If it soaks in and darkens the stone, the seal has worn through and the stone is absorbing everything else too.

Unsealed stone in this climate is the thing to avoid. Hard water leaves mineral that bonds into a porous surface, desert dust settles into it, and both get harder to remove the longer they sit.

Questions from South Scottsdale

Elsewhere in Scottsdale

DC Ranch and Silverleaf · Troon and far north Scottsdale · McCormick Ranch and Gainey Ranch · Old Town Scottsdale · Grayhawk and Kierland