Sealing and Cleaning Your Granite

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All you need to know

There are only two required procedures to take care of your granite countertops. If you do these properly, you will enjoy the natural beauty of your granite for a lifetime.

Procedure 1 - Sealing your granite
How do sealers work? Granite sealer are high viscosity so that they sink into the pores of the granite and seal off the granite, thus repelling contaminates such as juice and oil from imbedding themselves into the granite.

All granite should be sealed. Although granites are relatively the same hardness, they have different levels of porosity. A general rule is that the lighter the color of your granite, the more porous it is. Follow the sealer instructions to property apply the correct amount of sealer to your granite. Most importantly, do not let the sealer dry on the granite. Let it absorb and then wipe the excess off.

Use a granite sealer that is recommended by your granite installer. There are also premium brands on the internet and at your local home improvement store. Personally I recommend a sealer sold by HomeGranite on Ebay because is provides anti-microbial protection. It fights germs 24-hours a day. I don't see why every sealer does not have this important ingredient for family health protection. However, there are other good products made by Miracle Sealants and Prosoco as well.

Procedure 2 - Cleaning your granite
In my opinion, it would be better to never clean your granite than to use the wrong cleaning product. There are many brand name cleaning products that say, “ok for granite”, but they are not. Why would they say this? Consider that the companies that make these products also make the same product for cleaning glass, plastic and vinyl. Many of these companies put 'ok for granite' on the bottle in order to capture a big market share.

While these products will indeed clean your granite, but they will also gradually remove the sealer from your granite as well. You don't want this to happen because the sealer is your protection against contaminates penetrating and staining your granite. Again, these cleaners will not harm your granite so they feel it is acceptable to put 'ok for granite' on the bottle, but they are not addressing the longevity of sealer product that you applied.

One of the best ways to clean your granite is to use warm water with a small amount of mild liquid dishwashing soap. That is it! Other than this, I recommend buying granite cleaner that states that it rejuvenates the sealer that you applied.

Routing sealing
There is no rule as to how long to wait until you reseal your granite. I recommend 'the water glass test'. Since water is the most common liquid in a kitchen, once you notice that your water glass leaves a water ring after sitting on the granite for a while, then simple wait for it to dry and reseal the countertops.

Stains
If you get a stain do not despair. Write to me in this case. My only recommendation is that you deal with it in a timely manner to minimize the removal effort.