The quotes are not far apart because one of them is trying it on. They are far apart because nobody agreed what cleaning the floor means, and the word covers at least three different jobs.
Most specifications do not say which one. A lot of the time what lands on our desk has been copied and pasted from a generic specification that has been flitted around for years, and it says clean the floor and very little else.
So here is what you are actually choosing between.
Level one: a scrubber dryer
Putting a scrubber dryer over a warehouse floor is classed as a clean, and that is fair enough. It is a mechanical clean by definition, because there is a pad working on the floor.
What it does is take the top bit of dirt and dust off.
What it does not do is anything at all to a floor with in-ground dirt that has been walked and trampled into it for years. On that floor, a scrubber dryer does absolutely zero. Not very little. Zero.
That is the single most useful thing to understand before you buy a clean, because it is the gap between what people pay for and what they expected to see afterwards.
Level two: a deep clean, or a steam clean
The next level up is what most people mean by a deep clean, and above that you can steam clean.
Both go further than a pad and a detergent. Both are still working on what is sitting on the surface rather than what has gone into it.
Level three: the first stages of a polishing system
This is the one that rarely appears on a specification, and it is what we usually recommend.
Rather than the full system, which runs through densifiers, sealers and polishing up to a medium or high gloss finish, we do just the first few stages of it. Mechanically, that takes out a lot of the in-ground dirt the scrubber dryer could never reach, without committing you to the whole system or its cost.
For a lot of warehouse floors that is the right answer. The floor comes back a long way, and you have not paid for a polished finish you did not ask for.
The part we tell people that does not help us sell it
The process can take the sealer off the floor, so we recommend putting a seal back afterwards.
In practice, when we arrive at a job that has asked for a deep clean, there is usually not much seal left on the floor to begin with. Which is often part of why it looks the way it does.
We would rather set that out at the quote stage than have it come up afterwards. Giving somebody three options and explaining what each one actually entails takes longer than quoting one, and it is the only way the decision is really theirs.
The client who paid for the same floor twice
A client had specified us to do the cleaning work. Then they brought somebody else in, who, in plain terms, put a scrubber dryer over the top of it.
The client walked the floor afterwards and said it had not changed the floor whatsoever.
We were called back in to do the first stages of the polishing system. They liked the result enough that they wanted the full system on it in the end.
That sequence is not unusual, it happens quite regularly, and nobody in it did anything unreasonable. The floor had in-ground dirt and the clean that was bought could not touch it. The money was not wasted on a bad contractor. It was spent on the wrong level of clean.
If you already have polished concrete, this is a different question
Everything above is about a working warehouse slab where somebody wants the dirt out of it.
If what you have is a polished concrete floor that has gone dull and patchy, the question you are actually asking is whether it needs cleaning or restoring, and that is a separate decision with a separate answer.
Buildings that cannot open a door
One thing worth knowing if your building is sealed, conditioned or food-safe.
We run the UK’s first electric ride-on wet polishing system. No fumes and no dust, which is what makes it usable in buildings where a petrol machine simply cannot go. On one food-safe distribution and storage facility of around 6,000m², the doors and windows had to stay shut throughout, so petrol machinery was never an option. We closed off small sections at a time and worked through the building while staff carried on a few metres away.
The site never stopped. In most distribution operations that is the whole question, because the cost of closing the building dwarfs the cost of the floor.
What it costs
It depends which of the three levels the floor actually needs, how much in-ground dirt is in it, and how much of the building has to keep running while we work. That is genuinely not knowable from a photograph, which is why we look at the floor before quoting rather than publishing a rate per square metre.
You get a detailed quote before any work begins, and you get the options rather than one price with no explanation attached to it.
Why it is worth asking what is in the quote
All our machinery is owned and maintained in house, including the electric ride-on system. On this work it matters, because when a section turns out to need more than a clean we change the approach that day rather than waiting on a hire company.
“Because DC Flooring installs every major commercial flooring system, we’re not limited to recommending what we know best. We recommend what’s right for your floor, your environment, and your budget.”
On a dirty floor that cuts both ways. Sometimes the honest answer is that a scrubber dryer is all it needs.
Rated 4.8 stars from 76 verified reviews on Trustist, you can read them on our website before making contact.
DC Flooring is the UK’s specialist in commercial and industrial flooring for warehouses, logistics facilities, food production environments, and automated warehouse systems — with over 20 years of completed projects across the UK and into Europe.
Tell us your floor size and approximate condition — we’ll come back to you with a detailed quote. No obligation, no sales pressure. Just straight answers.
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