Travertine is a form of limestone deposited by mineral springs, especially hot springs. Travertine often has a fibrous or concentric appearance and exists in white, tan, and cream-colored varieties. It is formed by a process of rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, often at the mouth of a hot spring or in a limestone cave. In the latter, it can form stalactites, stalagmites, and other speleothems. It is frequently used in Italy and elsewhere as a building material.
Travertine is a unique stone that comes in many different finishes. Travertine comes in what is known as filled and unfilled. What this means is that travertine naturally has holes that run throughout the stone.
The filled travertine is exactly what it says— the holes are filled giving the stone a smooth finish.
Travertine comes in a honed (matte finish) and a polished finish. These finishes need to be cared for and will from time to time need honing to remove scratches and etching or it will need to be re-polished and sealed. Hamilton’s Stone and Tile Care offers services that will keep your travertine looking like new. We can clean, hone or polish and seal your travertine. If you desire we can custom finish your travertine to the finish of your choice. From time to time holes will become exposed in the filled travertine and we can repair these holes and make your travertine look new again.
All tile and stone cleaning is carried out using a full water capture system
WHAT IS FULL WATER CAPTURE?
Quite simply it means that we can rinse your floors or walls either interiors or exterior and capture all residue and excess which is then filtered and deposited into waste tanks in our trucks.. This performs a number of functions. Firstly we are litrally removing all debris from the floor with the vacuum. We can use a combination of water pressure ( not too high on a natural stone -as we don’t want to bruise the stone surface , and very high pressre on say a concrete driveway ) and water temperature ( nice and hot for dirty grout and tiles on a kitchen floor). Full water capture cleaning is very environmentally friendly as we are not simply balsting residue and debris into the surrounding environment.
How do we clean stone or tilea and grout?
This really depends on the surface we are cleaning.Common Cermaic or Porcelain tiles in say a kitchen or living area can be some of the easier tiles to clean as they are very durable and therefore we can use a variety of products such as alkalines , acids and detergents to aid the cleaning process.
Stone tiles are a very different prospect inasmuch as we are resricted in the products we can use. Marbles , travertines , terrazzo and other calcite stones are very sensitive to acids and alkalies and therefore must be cleaned using other techniqes
