[Andy Graves]

Check out this article at this website called Infection Control Today. Maybe it would be a good idea to add this link to your site. This is the kind of article that could kick start the solid surface industry. Check it Out

[Tom M]

Andy,
would you prefer the comments at the other part of the site, or here?
Tom

[Andy Graves]

Tom M wrote

Andy,
would you prefer the comments at the other part of the site, or here?
Tom

Here is good.

[Karl Crooks]

I have been thinking about germs a lot lately, as we recently moved into a older home with Granite kitchen counter tops. This is the first time that I have lived with Granite, mostly we have had Solid Surface tops. In the past we have had the general habit of preparing food right on our Solid Surface counter tops, but now I have to tell you with the Granite tops this worries me. I have no ideal if these tops have ever been sealed, when they may have been sealed last, or what kind of germs the Granite is harboring. Many people, even Fabricators, talk about Solid Surface and stains. I look at it like this, things with voids stain, wood, concrete, tile grout, granite, marble and so on, will all stain and should be sealed. Solid Surface will not stain, as it does not have any voids, and does not need to be sealed. Any so called “stain” on a Solid Surface counter is really just a spill on the surface that has not yet been clean off properly.

[Rob Parker]

YES…YES.. HENCE THE TERM ” SOLID…SURFACE! Only stain Ive seen that was of any issue was from pure laziness.

[Shane Barker]

That is one of the problems when you move into a used house, you never really know how clean things are. Carpet is one that always bugged me, have you ever ripped out old carpet and saw what was under it? Nasty!! In countertops you can run into the same thing, we moved into a house about a year ago and it has tile and I never set food right on the counter…who knows what is living in the grout. Solid Surface is the ONLY product that you can clean and even sand out if needed and you know it is CLEAN, back to as good as new or back to perfection as some would say. No other product can do that.

Thanks Karl, you just gave me an idea for my next news letter.

Shane

[Andy Graves]

The article was interesting in that it talked about sealers only working for moisture penetration and not bacterial prevention. I would love to take an old granite counter out of a random house and cut it into piece and send it to a lab. Don’t introduce any new bacteria to the piece.

Then have it check to see what is growing inside.

[Ognian Pavlov]

I have seen granite tops with mold growing underneath around the sink. The home owner usually flips out when I show it to them.

Also, in 2004, I was at a home and garden show and quoted a top for a builder. He said he had a new home owner in one of his homes. They lived there for three weeks and the daughter got food poisioning. They suspected the school cafeteria but it turned up clean. The health dept checked the few resturants that the young lady had eaten at recently, but they also had no problems with this particular bug. Then the inspector visited the new home, took one look at the granite counter tops and started swabbing samples for the lab.

The builder then said the health dept condemed the entire counter top, and the builder had to remove it and replace it. He told me it was sitting in his garage and needed a quick turn around on a counter top. We lost the job to a shop that wasn’t busy, and to this day I think about it and kick myself for not finding the time to do the job so I could document the entire episode.

There is an interesting post on findstone.com , I have it printed out and kept in a folder at the shop to show customers that insist on granite. The post is from a granite fabricator talking about his wife being “germ-a-phonbic” and insisting on sanitizing their granite counter top daily. It ate up the sealer and now the counter top stains easily. He says that any chemical strong enough to sanitize WILL strip any sealer on the top, so choose your poision, germs or stains.

[Author]

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