Protect Your Floors With The Bona Traffic HD
Protect Your Floors With The Bona Traffic HD
With the beauty, warmth and value that wood floors bring to the interior space, it’s not difficult to see why they are so popular. Wood actually never goes out of style, blending in with the different interior decor themes that one sets out to have over the years. Moreover, there are numerous wood species that one can have installed, plus different wood stain treatments and lacquers used to suit your individual taste, all through to the finish coats that are applied to enhance the gloss of the surface. Since the surface of the wood does not accumulate loads of soiling – compared to flooring materials like carpets, it makes them easier to clean and maintain. It even adds to the value of the property, by building on the resale value of the residential and commercial space. More buyers and tenants are keen on getting spaces that have wood floors as realtors can attest to, and when properly installed they also provide better acoustics since there won’t be hollow sounds or vibrations being heard as people walk up and about the premises. Moreover, you get multiple chances to revitalise the wood floor and restore its new look, from using freshening up treatments to carrying out a complete floor sanding and refinishing. The longevity of the wood floor is directly tied to how well it is maintained. This involves the routine vacuuming and mopping, to the finish coats that are applied on the surface. In this review, we will look at the Bona Traffic HD, and the value that it brings on board.
Why Wood Floors Lose Their Charm Over Time
Different factors contribute to the gradual wearing down of the wood floor over time. While they are a given reality that one needs to contend with, maintenance measures such as applying protective coats like the Bona Traffic HD will ward off the damage, enabling the wood floor to last for longer. Here are some of the main threats facing the floor installation:
- Foot traffic
The simple action of people walking around the premises is one of the main contributors of wear, due to the friction that occurs between the soles of their shoes, and the surface of the floor. This wear is exacerbated by the type of shoes being worn, as well as the presence of dirt on the floor. Footwear like spiked shoes and high heeled stilettos add to the pressure that the floor comes under. For instance, a 100lb person in high heels exerts over 1,500psi on the floor compared to the 75psi that is exerted by a 6,000lb elephant. It all comes down to the force per area, since the weight with the heels is exerted through a smaller area as they typically have around 1/16 of a square inch expanse, compared to the wide surface area under the elephant’s feet.
When it comes to the soiling, those dirt particles are abrasive. They are grinded against the surface of the floor as people walk on them, acting like tiny bits of sandpaper. This gradually wears down the floor. You will notice that frequently walked-on areas such as the hallways develop traffic lanes. Even those sections of the living room and dining rooms that see more traffic end up fading faster compared to the floor areas under the furniture. Lacquers like the Bona Traffic HD have been developed to minimise the impact that foot traffic has on the floor, in order to protect its beauty and structural integrity.
- Spills
They can happen at any time, and their effects can be disastrous on the floor. The risks increase the longer that the spills are allowed to remain on the floor. The wood tissue absorbs the liquid, leading to swelling and a strain on the floor boards, increasing the risks of water damage. There can also be discolouration or staining, depending on the chemical makeup of the particular spill. Beverages like coffee and tea, those wine spills during dinner dates and raunchy nights, kids who can’t seem to down some milk or yoghurt without sending contents of it spilling over, ink and nail polish – they all negatively affect the floor.
- Pets
Do you have a cat or dog in the premises? The furry little guys are part of the family – but they can be a threat to the beauty of the floor. This is primarily due to the scratches they leave behind as they move up and about. For instance, while running across the different rooms, they have their claws drawn out, in order to have more traction. These claws dig into the floor, creating unsightly scratches. The higher the number of pets, the greater the rate of scratches, which ruin the appeal of the installation.
- Kids
From boldly walking into the house with their clothes drenched from playing in the rain, to making the floor their racing ground for their toy cars, there are plenty of ways that kids’ actions can be detrimental to the wood floor. Toy train tracks being set up on the floor are also an issue and this can lead to scratches. However, one can’t exactly ban the kids from having a good time – and you also don’t want to keep having to worry about the condition of the floor as your kids go about their games. Turning to protective finishes like the Bona Traffic HD that are formulated to withstand such busy households will enable you to relax and let the little ones have their fun.
- User Error
These are blunders made during the day-to-day life and work activities that result in premature damage to the wood floor. Here you have issues like:
- Cleaning with abrasive tools and products
Working on the floor with substances like baking soda or items like scrub pads – which are effective in getting rid of the grease on cooking utensils and BBQ grills, will scratch and damage the wood floor.
- Using the wrong cleaning agents
While mixing vinegar and water makes a popular DIY solution for dealing with stubborn spots on hard surfaces around the household, using the same on the hardwood floor dulls the finish, causing it to lose its charm. Harsh chemicals including ammonia-based solutions are a threat to the wood floor, corroding the finish and wood tissue.
- Dragging furniture across the floor
It’s always “Lift and carry”, not drag the sofas, tables and other furniture items over the floor. These easily gouge out the finish, and leave deep scratches on the surface.
Value That You Get From The Bona Traffic HD
- Built For Tough
Bona Traffic HD is all about giving your floors long-lasting production. As you can tell from its name, it is formulated for withstanding the wear that comes with high levels of foot traffic. This makes it an ideal choice for commercial environment, public spaces, even modern-day busy homes. The 2-component waterborne polyurethane Bona Traffic HD topcoat will have the durability needed to withstand the barrage of abuse that the floor receives around the clock. The focus here is protecting the underlying wood from the abrasive effects witnessed in day-to-day life, enabling the installation to last for longer, for you to enjoy it all through. This also translates in reduced maintenance costs over time as opposed to conventional products that force you to frequently do renovations.
You want your wood floor to look good too – and the clear Bona Traffic HD enables its natural characteristics to be showcased more prominently. From the colour of the wood species that you have installed in your building, to the grain patterns and unique markings that came with the timber itself – these will still get to feature through the lacquer, ensuring that you retain that natural look and feel in the space. As such, you get to ensure that your wood floor is protected, while retaining its aesthetic appeal.
Moreover, the Bona Traffic HD is a non-yellowing formulation. This means that you don’t have to worry about that dreaded hue that forms with conventional lacquers due to the effect of the sun’s radiation. Here, the clear coat remains all through, enabling you to enjoy the beauty of your wood floors.
- Safe application
When treating wood floors, their impact on the indoor environment is a key factor that comes under scrutiny. After all, you don’t want to expose your family members at home or the employees and customers in your business premises to toxic chemicals. This has seen the push for safer treatments to be used in the industry, and the Bona Traffic HD is one of the most popular in this line as well.
For starters, the formulation comes with very low VOC content – clocking under 5%, which is far less than competing products in the market. It has also attained the EC1RPlus classification for very low emissions. This is actually one of the most stringent standards around that look into indoor emissions.
You will also notice the “GREENGUARD Gold” certification on the Bona Traffic HD. This is further testament to its safety for indoor use. GREENGUARD is a voluntary third-party program where products are tested for their VOC emissions levels. The products are placed in dynamic environmental chambers, polished stainless-steel compartments where humidity and temperature are controlled – which range in size, some being like small ovens, and others being as large as full-size rooms. Here, different items ranging from flooring materials, insulation, furniture, electronics and heaters are analysed for the volatile organic compounds that are gassed out of their materials. There are over 10,000 individual VOCs that are tested for. The items are held in these chambers from anywhere between a single day and multiple weeks, where chemical analysts look at the different substances coming out of the product. For instance, furniture can be kept in the chamber for two weeks. While they emit most of the chemicals on the first day, the levels slowly decay over time, and require a few weeks to get to a steady rate of emissions. Electronics typically stay in these chambers for a day. The certification program takes between one and six months, and this varies depending on the particular product being tested. Once the product has obtained the GREENGUARD certification, it will still need to undergo annual tests for the new versions of the product being released into the market.
The GREENGUARD program has hundreds of manufacturers that have voluntarily signed up for it, and there are over 200,000 individual products that are taken through the testing. All this is handled by the Greenguard Environmental Institute (GEI), which is a non-profit industry-independent organization, set up by Air Quality Sciences, Inc in 2001, before being acquired by UL Environment in 2011. This certification program is globally recognized and is part of sustainable construction and building codes. The GREENGUARD Gold certification of the Bona Traffic HD lacquer is a stricter standard, which focuses on the safety of products used in day-cares, schools and healthcare facilities, where the occupants of these buildings are more sensitive. The certification was formerly called GREENGUARD Children and Schools Certification Program, and the standards set here were made after the evaluation of chemical sensitivities of kids as well as the unique building characteristics of the schools, and is actually a stringent criteria for low-emitting materials. With Bona Traffic HD having achieved the certification, this makes it one of the formulations that can be safely used in schooling environments, healthcare centres and nurseries. The personnel carrying out the application also get to do so in a safer environment improving the working conditions.
Bona Traffic HD is also DIBt approved. Situated in Berlin, DIBt (Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik) is part of the European Organisation for Technical Approvals (EOTA). The authority’s main purpose is enforcing health requirements and promoting the usage of safe and innovative construction products. It enforces some of the strictest legislation standards regarding emissions to ensure good indoor air quality. This is to decrease indoor pollutants, focusing on the health of the building’s occupants who will end up using the floor. Having been certified by DIBt, it’s further testament to the safety that you get when treating your floor with the Bona Traffic HD.
Working with the Bona Traffic HD
When treating the floor with this formulation, it is recommended that you only apply two full coats per day, and also ensure that there is proper ventilation in the room for the duration of the process. Let’s delve into how the application is carried out:
Do you want to use the Bona Traffic HD lacquer on untreated wood? These are the likes of new installations, where no product has been used on them. For this, one primer coat is applied, followed by 2 coats of the Bona Traffic HD. For the primer, you can use Bona Primer or the Bona Craft Oil 2K.
For those cases of floor maintenance where you’re treating previously lacquered floors, a deep cleaning and degreasing is needed, followed by light sanding before allowing one or two coats of the Bona Traffic HD.
In both cases, before you spread the product onto the floor, first shake it in its bottle, and add a bottle of the Traffic HD Hardener to it. Shake this mixture for about a minute. You can then proceed to spread the lacquer onto the floor with a Bona Roller.
When applying the Bona Traffic HD lacquer, manoeuvre it the roller with smooth motions, alternating between going across and along with the direction of the wood grain. It’s important to maintain a wet edge here in order to avoid overlaps.
Allow the product to dry before adding an extra coat onto it. In between the subsequent coats of Bona Traffic HD that are to be applied, there will be light intermediate sanding required. This is to smoothen the surface of the previous coat, and it is carried out with fine grits, like working with the Bona Scrad System grit P150.
Extra Tip: Temperature and humidity conditions are a key factor in the drying and curing process. For the Bona Traffic HD, ideal conditions for application are when the temperature is between 18 and 25°C, and when the relative air humidity is at 30-60%. With high temperatures and low humidity, there will be a shorter drying time. The converse is also true, where low temperature levels and high humidity will increase the drying time. Whichever the conditions in the facility, do not apply the product in temperatures below 13°C.
Drying Times
One of the main benefits of the Bona Traffic HD is its fast drying times. In fact, you can go ahead and allow foot traffic back onto the treated floor in as little as 12 hours, while for other floor treatment products you would typically have to wait for at least 24-48 hours.
In case you want to add a second coat onto the floor, you also get to do this in a shorter time frame. Simply wait 2-3 hours after the first coat was applied, then lightly sand the surface and add the second coat. Floor contractors in particular get to benefit here, since it reduces the amount of time that they spend on the projects, while still ensuring that they deliver quality results.
The fast drying nature of the Bona Traffic HD makes it particularly effective for maintaining floors in establishments where minimising downtime is a priority – from restaurants and hotels to airports around the world.
Overcoating Floors With The Bona Traffic HD
With wood floor maintenance, you don’t always have to sand through to the bare wood when you want to give your floor a new look. If the floor is yet to deteriorate drastically, you can simply add a new coat of lacquer to it, which will buy you more time before scheduling for the major renovations down the road. Here, the surface is deep cleaned, light sanding carried out to remove those superficial scuffs and scratches, then the fresh lacquer is applied. Bona Traffic HD comes in here as a handy formulation that allows you to overcoat already lacquered floors.
The success of the overcoating process is directly tied to how well the surface preparation is carried out. This in turn varies with the type of surface in question and its condition. Let’s look at two of the main scenarios where overcoating is carried out.
- New, prefinished installations
Here, you can go ahead with the light sanding without having to first clean the surface since new installations usually don’t have greasy residue. For the sanding, use fine grits like working with the Bona Diamond Abrasives grit 240.
- Note that the floor should be clean. If the floor is contaminated with dirt and grease, then you can first give it a thorough wash using the diluted Bona Deep Clean Solution. For instance, you can add this solution to the tank of the Bona PowerScrubber and carry on with the task. With the cleaning, ensure that there aren’t any puddles that are left behind, and let the floor dry before you continue with the sanding.
After sanding, vacuum away the dust that is generated. You can also wipe the surface with one of the Dusting Pads from Bona, or wash it with the Powerscrubber – this time with plain clean water in the tank.
With the floor ready, apply a thin layer of the Bona Traffic HD onto the surface, and give it half or one hour to dry. After this, add 1-2 layers of the lacquer onto the floor, with a litre of product being used on 8 to 10m² of surface.
- Lacquered wood floors that are already in use
When overcoating the floors that have been in use, the first step will be to degrease the surface. This is done with the diluted Bona Deep Clean Solution, in machines like the Bona PowerScrubber onto which the green or red brushes have been attached.
The next step is sanding the surface. This can be carried out using the 80 grit Bona Diamond Abrasives.
- For the floors where previous maintenance measures involved waxing or polishing them, then this will also need to be sanded off. The polish or wax prevents the lacquer being applied from properly adhering to the wood, which negatively affects the strength and functionality of the coats formed. You can check whether there is wax or polish on the surface by scratching it with a coin. If you notice material being easily removed, then this is an indication that there is still a residual amount remaining on the surface, and the sanding should continue until all the wax or polish has been removed.
After the sanding, clean the floor again with the Bona Deep Clean solution, and wait for the surface to dry.
Another round of sanding is required, but this time with the finer 240 grit Bona Diamond Abrasives. Once this is done, vacuum away the dust, then proceed to apply the Bona Traffic HD layer, allowing the 30 to 60-minute drying time. Add one or two more lacquer layers, spreading them over the floor with a roller.
When overcoating, ensure that the floor installation is in sound condition. In case there are deep scratches, the surface is cupped or warped, or there are large gaps in the installation, these will need to be resolved fast. If the damage is extensive, it is more viable to carry out a full sanding and refinishing with the Bona Traffic HD.
What You Should Consider When Getting A Wood Floor Lacquer
The choice made in the kind of lacquer to use will be largely determined by the level of traffic handled in the facility. There are formulations that particularly target domestic setups and low traffic areas such as the Bona Novia, while those like the Bona Traffic HD are ideal for commercial establishments and busy homes which handle heavy footfall.
Convenience during application also comes into focus. For instance, you don’t want to be in a situation where rooms remain sealed off for days, due to the lacquer taking too long to dry. This also comes into play when there are multiple layers being applied, since if there are long wait times in between the subsequent coats, the floor in question will remain out of commission for a longer duration. Check the product label for the drying times mentioned, as this will be a pointer to the level of disruption that will be expected during the application.
Indoor air safety is critical. Finishing products that release toxic fumes into the air space are an immediate threat to the household occupants. The risks are higher when there are kids and the elderly in the premises. Here, look for the level of VOC emissions that are from the product. Better still, check whether it has certification from leading bodies that are recognised for carrying out tests that ascertain the safety of products for the indoor air space – the likes of UL’s GREENGUARD, or Germany’s DIBt. For these, the testing standards are rigorous, and will be proof that the formulation in question has met their emission’s criteria, which are used as part of sustainable building programs around the world.
Then there is the brand. Which company manufactures the product? What is its track record? Going through its social media platforms for feedback from other clients on the quality and reliability of the products from the brand will be a pointer to what you can expect when going for its products. In that light, let’s delve into the brand behind the Bona Traffic HD.
Proven Reliability
With Bona you get to rely on over a century of proven quality, with a solid track record that has been built over the years of its existence. Bona’s history starts from a Swedish grocery shop in Malmö in 1919. Here, the founder Wilhelm Edner sold different items – coffee being his favourite. He also dealt in bonvax, a product used to polish floors and give them a protective layer. Edner saw the potential that this had, and went forth to start dealing in multiple floor care products with the incorporation of Bona AB. Through the 20th century, Bona has played a significant role in the development of the floor care industry. With a wide range of innovative products, floor owners have been able to renovate and protect their floors without having to go all out and replace the entire floor boards, while still taking sustainability practices into account.
As a brand, Bona has been behind critical innovations. Take waterborne finishes for instance. It was one of the first companies that adopted them, marking a shift from the prevalent solvent-based products that came with health risks to the occupants of the building as well as the personnel treating the floors with them. Bona was also one of the initial companies to insist on the usage of dust containment systems that proved key in removing carcinogenic dust from wood sanding processes.
The value that Bona places on sustainable practices can also be seen with lines like Bona Mega, which leverages on the use of renewable raw materials. Here, the formulation is based on vegetable oils, which when applied onto the floor, interact with oxygen and cross-linking occurs, and the resultant high-performance finish is strong, with a low impact on the environment. The company was also the first in the industry to provide a full line of waterborne finishing products for wood floors.
The diverse range of Bona products is used in residential and commercial establishments alike. From accentuating the natural beauty of floors, changing the hue and colouration to meet the owner’s taste and preferences, adding a protecting coating that enables the underlying floor to withstand the heavy footfall – there are formulations for them all. The popularity of the products is so high that they are sold in over 90 countries all over the world. As such by turning to Bona Traffic HD’s protection for your wood floor, you can rest assured that it will deliver on its mandate and give you a value return for your money.