Quarry tile floor care for commercial kitchens: life, uses and schedule

What quarry tile is and what keeps it working

Quarry tile is an unglazed floor tile made from clay and shale. The mix is pushed through a die the way brick is made, cut to size and fired in a kiln at very high heat, which leaves a dense body with its color running all the way through. Shale-rich batches come out red or brown, and clay-rich ones fire grey or buff. Kitchen tile is commonly about half an inch thick, set in mortar over the slab, with grout joints between the tiles and a coved tile base turning up the wall.

There is no film of floor finish on top doing the protecting, as there is on VCT. The fired tile is the wear surface. Metropolitan Ceramics rates its quarry tile at under 3 percent water absorption, which places it in the vitreous class under ASTM C373, so grease and water sit on the face rather than soaking in. Many kitchen tiles add abrasive grit fired into the face, or a ribbed pattern, to hold a shoe on a wet floor.

Care for this floor therefore protects three things: the open texture of the face, the grout in the joints and, where one is used, a penetrating sealer in the pores. Makers of quarry tile are blunt about it: wax and topcoats stay off, and the only sealer they approve is the penetrating kind. Epoxy grout needs no sealer at all, which is one reason county food-facility guidance recommends it for kitchens.

Where quarry tile is used

Quarry tile is the default floor wherever food is cooked in volume. Metropolitan Ceramics points its tile at the floor around ovens, under fryers and inside walk-in freezers, and California counties list it, with a coved base, among the materials that meet the food code for kitchen floors, as the guide to food facility floors under the California Retail Food Code explains.

• Restaurants and commercial kitchens: the cook line, prep stations, dish pit, walk-in coolers and freezers, the back corridor and the receiving door, covered on the restaurant and food-service floor care page.
• Schools: cafeteria serving lines, scullery rooms and district central kitchens, part of school floor care.
• Hospitals and senior living: patient food service kitchens, tray lines and cafeteria back rooms, alongside the medical facility floor care program.
• Hotels and managed properties: banquet kitchens, room-service prep and staff dining, handled with hotel and managed property floor care.
• Event venues and churches: catering kitchens behind ballrooms and fellowship hall kitchens, through event venue floor care and church and religious facility floor care.
• Retail and food courts: food court back-of-house, grocery bakery and deli rooms, part of shopping center and retail floor care.
• Food processing and commissaries: wash-down rooms and packing areas inside plants, served by industrial and warehouse floor care.

Outside the kitchen the same tile shows up in locker rooms and showers at gyms and fitness centers, at pool surrounds, in transit buildings and on covered walkways and patios. Some auto dealerships lay it in showrooms and service write-up lanes, where its dense body stands up to tire traffic.

The quarry tile care schedule

The intervals below fit a full-service restaurant kitchen running lunch and dinner with a fryer or two on the line. The kitchen crew owns the daily tasks; machine scrubbing and the deeper intervals are where a floor care contractor comes in.

Daily, at every close

• Scrape up grease and food solids and sweep or dry-vacuum before any water goes down, so debris does not turn to paste or go down the drains.
• Pick up spills during service as they happen, with a wet-floor sign until the spot is dry.
• Mop with hot water and a neutral cleaner, changing the water often and rinsing the mop in clean water, as quarry tile makers recommend. Use a degreaser in front of the fryers and griddle at the dilution on its label.
• Squeegee the floor to the drains, rinse with clear water and squeegee again, so no cleaner dries on the tile.
• Check the back-door mats and lift debris out of the drain grates.

Weekly

• Scrub the whole floor with a stiff deck brush or a brush machine, neutral cleaner and hot water, then squeegee, rinse and squeegee again. This is the weekly step quarry tile makers call for.
• Roll out equipment on casters and scrub beneath it, along the toe-kick and up the cove base by hand.
• Brush the floor around floor sinks, the dish machine and the walk-in threshold, the three places soil gathers first.

Monthly

• Machine scrub every zone with brushes rather than pads, so the bristles reach into the grit and the joints, and recover the solution with a wet vacuum or auto-scrubber.
• Degrease the grout lines along the cook line and dish return as a separate pass.
• Walk the floor dry and note dark joints, cracked grout and any tile that sounds hollow underfoot.

Quarterly or twice a year

• A full deep cleaning by a floor care contractor: degreasing, rotary brush agitation, and steam or hot-water extraction, the periodic methods tile makers list as safe for quarry tile.
• Grout brought back to an even color, with the cove base and the floor under fixed equipment on legs included.
• A water-drop test on cement grout: drops that darken the joint mean the penetrating sealer has worn off and a tile specialist should renew it.

Yearly or restorative

• A restoration night with every movable piece of equipment out of the room, every joint and cove brushed, and all drains and floor sinks cleaned around.
• A written list of cracked, missing or eroded grout and loose tiles for a tile contractor, who handles regrouting, tile replacement and any new sealer. The cleaning goes first so the contractor sees the true condition.

Volume and menu move every line. A high-volume kitchen with several fryers, a charbroiler and three services a day scrubs with brushes every night instead of weekly and books deep cleaning every quarter. A school kitchen or a café that mostly bakes and assembles holds the weekly scrub as written and deep cleans twice a year. Walk-ins, dry storage and receiving rooms see far less grease and need a machine scrub only once a month.

Signs the floor needs more than the nightly mop

• Shoes stick to the floor right after it has been mopped, or slide near the fryers once it is dry.
• Grout has gone brown or black and stays dark after scrubbing.
• Joints have washed out below the tile edges, so a coin fits into them.
• A grease ring sits around drain grates and floor sinks, and the drains smell.
• Water pools in places that used to run to the drain.
• Tiles sound hollow, rock underfoot or show cracked and chipped edges.
• A health inspector has written up the floor, the cove base or the area under equipment.

The first four call for a deep cleaning. The last three are repair signs for a tile contractor, best caught right after a deep cleaning when every joint is visible.