Cleaning floor tiles

[GreySlippersBobby]

They're foul. The previous inhabitants of the house kept their coal in the porch on a palette so the whole place is ingrained with coal dust. They've had a mop out before the walls were painted but now I want to give them a good scrub.

Any suggestions as to which products to use? I've got access to a steam cleaner, Flash, bleach, sugar soap, Cif, and various other chemicals.

Ahem. Pallet.

I had this issue when I moved in to my house - except it wasn't coal dust it was just 50 years of grime that no one had bothered cleaning. It was the grout more than anything (thought it was black grout when we viewed the house. It was not )

Anyway, I put neat bleach down, left it for 10 mins then scrubbed using one of those old fashioned scrubbing brushes. Came up a treat. But probably only best if light coloured tiles.

To be honest, I'm not sure what colour they're meant to be. It'll be a nice surprise.

We have those tiles on our kitchen floor and when we moved in they were a state. The kitchen fitters cleaned the tiles with an acid wash, which brought then up lovely. It actually left them shiny and they said if we had varnished then they would have stayed beautifully glossy. I really regret not doing it.

Hire/beg/borrow/steal a good quality steam cleaner.

For coal dust, I always use plain soap and plenty of water to rinse, as it can be difficult to shift.

I found that sprinkling bio washing powder on the floor, then scrubbing with hot water and scrubbing brush worked well on ground-in dirt. Read it on here a while ago.

Right I set to work with a steam cleaner today but it just left grimy puddles, so I switched to sugar soap and a scrubbing brush (and some underlay for my poor knees!). After that I bleached them all, twice, and then used the scrubby bits of a Vileda mop head to polish off any remaining grubby corners and spots. Then rinsed with water.

After all that I forgot to take an after photo, so you'll just have to take my word that they look much, much better

Glad you have got it sorted!

I was about to suggest a specialist tile cleaner before I saw that (I have used them in the past and they work extremely well).