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Service #2:

DUSTLESS SANDING... no clean up needed!

Ok, first things first… you’re probably wondering how on earth is it possible to offer a 100% dustless hardwood floor sanding system. Even 99% sounds crazy – but 100%??? I don’t blame you for being skeptical and before we get into some of the details of our system, I’ll give you the quick answer right now.

Belt Sander attached to Vacuum
The dustless belt sander set-up attached to the vacuum
Sanding a Floor in Naperville with Dustless Equipment
The TRIO hooked up to the high-powered vacuum system

QUICK ANSWER: The answer is actually pretty simple – we just have to make sure your home is cleaner when we leave than when we arrived. And doing that isn’t as hard as you would think. Most people have to remove furniture, area rugs, picture frames and even carpet before we can have clear access to their floors. As you know, hiding under these is usually a lot of dust bunnies and other fun stuff.

So with our dustless hardwood floor sanding system, not only will we clean-up the dust we generate from our sanding machines, we’ll also clean-up any existing prior dust which is usually much more than 1% of what we generate. We’ll get into how we do that in a minute, first…

3 Reasons Why Dust Is a Concern...

When most people think of having their floors sanded the first thing that comes to their mind is all the dust. No doubt you’ve heard all the horror stories of people cleaning dust out of their homes weeks after the restoration has been finished.

REASON 1: The Mess

If not properly contained, super fine dust from the sanding machines can literally get everywhere – in your cupboards, light fixtures, ceiling fans, embedded into your curtains, all over your walls and into your ducting. Anything and anywhere that hasn’t been properly sealed off or covered will have a layer of dust all over it. How would you like to clean a mess like that up?

Full bin of dust from sanding a floor
Dust after a few of hours of sanding... this could be all through your home!

REASON 2: It’s Really Toxic

Another issue to be concerned about is the hazardous nature of wood floor dust. The first cut of the sanding process removes the existing finish. Most of these finishes have been applied decades ago and are very toxic. If you have an older house, who knows what chemicals are in that finish. Without proper dust containment, you, your family and your pets will be breathing all of those dangerous substances in.

Hazard Warning Sign

REASON 3: Contaminants in Finish

The final issue with dust is the quality of the last coat of finish. If your home is full of dust it’s guaranteed some of it WILL end up in the finish. That’s acceptable for the first few coats as it will be buffed out, but you don’t want in the final coat. Nothing is more annoying than paying thousands of dollars to restore your floors and then seeing and feeling lumps, bumps and debris on it.

Contaminates in Finish
Contaminants in finish due to poor dust containment

Dust has been a big problem in our industry for many, many years.

But recently, a number of huge advancements have been made in the dust containment field and we’ve been right there staying on top of them. Ever since we started this company in 2002, we’ve been studying, testing, researching and tinkering with all kinds of dust containment systems. Some have been ok and some not.

Our requirements for the perfect dustless system:

What we wanted was simple... it had to be portable, quiet, clean and effective.

Who wants a huge trailer parked out the front with a generator driven monster of a motor spewing out fumes and annoying all the neighbors?

Not only that, but in bad weather, you now would have to drag wet, muddy hoses from the driveway or curb all through your home making a huge mess over your floors and walls – plus keep the door or windows open letting out all your warm air. We didn’t want that and I’m sure you don’t either.

We wanted something that we could set-up in a small, safe spot that could be inside, or in a covered spot just outside if needed, so it could be used in all types of weather. It had to be environmentally friendly as well as noise friendly.

After much searching, we finally found a great system that covered all of those areas and allows us to contain very close to 97–98% of the dust generated by our machines.

It uses cyclone technology (sounds cool hey?) to collect the dust from the machines which is fed by hoses into a sealed drum. The cyclones collect and separate the dust very effectively which makes it much more efficient and quieter than most other systems.

We retrofitted all our machines – the belt sander, edgers, TRIO, buffer and other smaller sanders – with special skirts and /or cyclones to stop almost all the dust from becoming airborne during the sanding process. It gets contained within the machine then sucked up never to be seen again.

There is absolutely no comparison with using our dustless hardwood floor sanding system compared to sanding the old – but still very commonly used – way of just using cloth bags. Cloth bags allow a huge amount of dust to become airborne. Then when they’re emptied and shaken out the situation gets even worse!

You’ll be amazed when you see how effective our dust containment system is. We’re very proud of the results we can achieve with it.

We love it and we know you will too!

This system, combined with taping off areas not being refinished with industrial plastic and covering heating vents and cupboards etc. gives us close to a 98-99% dust free environment.

Unloading dustless floor refinishing equipment
Unloading one of the vacuums we use. This one connects to the big belt sander.
Buffer with dustless skirt
All our sanding machines are retro-fitted with dust skirts to stop dust from becoming airborne.
Dustless cyclone attached to our belt sander
And our belt sanders have cyclones attached to help separate the dust more efficiently.

Ok, but how do you get to 100% dust free?

Unfortunately, there isn’t any mechanical system available that can suck up every single speck of dust from floor sanding… it’s impossible. Even if it was somehow possible, there are many areas that need to be hand sanded and scraped to make a floor perfect and there’s no way that can be completely contained.

This annoyed us to no end until we had a huge brain flash. As we talked about at the start of this page, to offer 100% dust free we have to make sure your home is cleaner when we leave than it is when we arrived.

So that's what we do. After the floors are sanded and refinished, dried and the tools all packed away, we give every single surface a thorough cleaning.

Your walls, countertops, light fixtures, doors, heating ducts, windows, window ledges, sills, mantles, light switches… the complete works!

Your walls, countertops, light fixtures, doors, heating ducts, windows, mantles, light switches… the complete works!

Between our dustless hardwood floor sanding system and our cleaning system, we guarantee the areas we work in will be cleaner than when we first showed up (with the dust bunnies and other things floating around that came from removing your furniture, carpet, picture frames, area rugs etc.)

Simple… yes! Effective… very!

In fact, we’re so confident...

...about the effectiveness of our 100% Dustless Hardwood Sanding System we’re proud to offer an amazing risk free guarantee if you feel it hasn’t lived up to our claims. We guarantee you won’t have to clean-up any dust at all after we’re both finished. If you’re not happy, we’ll come in to clean again until you are.

No-one else is going to offer you a deal like that.

We’ll be happy to explain more about our system when we come over to evaluate your floors for you in person if you like. On our Photos page you can read some of the feedback our clients have given us after they’ve used this system.

PDFs to download...

5 Questions PDF

5 Important Questions that Need to be Asked Before You Start

These 5 questions could be the difference between a great project and a disaster. Question 1 deals especially with the issue of dust…

pdf Download PDF Article

PHOTOS from past projects

HAPPY CLIENT feedback

We recently had our floors refinished by Tadas and his team. He was professional, responsive, and a pleasure to work with. The floors look amazing and I was extremely impressed by the lack of dust. I would recommend him to anyone looking to have their floors refinished! Sharon M | Naperville, IL
5.0
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