Slippery floors

[Ramr]

Very new to candle making, using a double boiler set up on the kitchen stove and have noticed, as has my falling husband, that our floors are suddenly deadly slippery! The kitchen chairs just whiz out like hockey pucks on ice when you pull them out to sit down and you have to keep a grip on them to keep them from scooting out from under your butt as you sit! I am wondering, does hot wax become microscopically airborne and am I coating the interior of my home with wax? Even the vacuum, as I clean the kitchen floor, just glides along like nothing.

I find this alarming and wonder if should move this candle business to the basement, where concrete floors will be even more deadly if they're slippery!! (bad plan now that I see it in writing). If this is to be an ongoing hobby for me I might have to buy an old camper or travel trailer to set up and go cook candles out there. To keep the interior of my home from getting coated in wax! To prevent those household falls that turn candle makers into statistics!

 

This killer slipperiness happened when I started making candles. There has GOT to be a connection. I think?

 

 

[pughaus]

something else is going on there.  The wax is not traveling throughout your house.

[TallTayl]

I agree with pug house. My candle set up is subterranean. After having made it literally tons of candles it’s not slippery unless I spill oil on the floor.

 

It could be that the moisture from your double boiler is activating some old cooking oil deposits on the floor. I would go through with a good degreaser for starters.

[pughaus]

What tries to kill me every time I use it is my stainless steel appliance cleaner- that stuff seems to be made of a WD40 and silicon and no matter how careful I am, some always ends up on my floor just waiting for me to walk across the kitchen and slide on my butt.   It's like a banana peel in a can!

Edited September 1, 2018 by pughaus

[TallTayl]

Some room air freshener sprays do that to me!

[Ramr]

Tonight after dinner, carrying plates to the sink, Hub went down like a ton of bricks. Both legs flew out sideways from under him. Thank god he wasn't hurt because he landed HARD. We're not young and bouncy like we used to be. Something is up here. And it is related to candle making. If I was more of a scientist I could figure it out, but I can hardly figure out what to make for dinner, let alone what is going on in my kitchen to make it deadly. So for any sleuths out there, maybe a bit more info might help.

 

All my supplies, including the wax and scents, came to be by default. There was a full box of wax marked IGI 1245. 60 pounds. I have found out that this is a paraffin that has been discontinued. The melting pot is a large aluminum pitcher which sits, tilted precariously, in a battered stock pot that acts as the double boiler. I could see that the interior of the water pot had wax in it, it was stuck to the sides like a bathtub ring. I have attempted to remove this but not yet finding the correct solvent, it remains there and when I boil the water there is always a slight amount of wax present in the water. I toss it out and put fresh water in each time yet a sticky scum of wax remains in the boiling pot. Can this wax, mingled with the boiling water, be atomizing into the air?

 

There was a bag of waxy, white pellets with the label Polybar. Reading up I found that this is a good additive for paraffin so I add a little less than a  TBSP to each pound of melted wax. I do not know the chemical compound of Polybar. Can it be rising up out of the melted wax and circulating through my house to make my floors a law suit waiting to happen? Can some of this Polybar stuff be blended in the wax in the boiling pot and is in contact with the boiling water, this making it airborne?

 

Talltayl suggested maybe the humidity has activated old kitchen grease on the floor. 1st, to have kitchen grease, I'd have to cook and who wants to use their stove for that when there are candles to be made? 2nd, my encounters in housekeeping have shown kitchen grease to be thick, sticky, gummy, tenacious stuff that clings to the top of the cupboards and fridge, trapping small flies and anything else that lands in it. It is not slippery or slick. It is thick and sludgy. Whatever is on my floors is like ice. My floors are mopped frequently as we live with a hairy, dirty dog. This is not kitchen grease otherwise the humidity of canning fruit and making jelly would also make the floors slick, which has never happened.

 

It occurs to me that only two other times has something similar happened. Once, we sprayed the dog with a horse product to try and make burrs and such less likely to stick to him. What it did was make us less likely to stick to the floor and we almost died then too. Then friends gave us slippers for Christmas, the grip on the bottom provided by some squeezed on silicone caulking and those slippers left a residue that would KILL people in socks! Both times, with the slippers and with the dog spray, SILICONE was the offending agent. Silicone on linoleum will kill you!

Somehow, something I am doing is releasing silicone(?) or something like it into the air. It's either an additive already in the wax, or it's residue in the boiling pot, or it is a main constituent in Polybar. This is a mystery. I have mopped with a degreaser and keeping a close eye on Hub who says he isn't hurt but ..... I'm not so sure.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Ramr

[birdcharm]

Maybe it's your heating method that you should take a look at ... a double boiler typically has a lower pot w/ water with the upper pot fitting snuggly upon.  It sounds as though what you have going is permitting for too much steam.  Perhaps you could get a Presto Pot or a hot plate for your melting pot instead.  Regarding the wax build up inside your melting pot, it should simply melt down -- if it doesn't do this when you heat your pot, you can also use a heat gun and go along the outside of the pot and it should melt into the pot.  Anyway, I personally don't think it's your wax or any additive, I think it has to do with your melting pot/large pot system.

 

 

[Ramr]

Birdcharm, I have to agree. My melting set up looks a bit rickety. The big water pot is huge, a pasta pot or big soup pot. The melting pitcher sits inside but tips over sideways. So it leans over the whole time. Which is okay since I never have more than a pound of wax in there but if I did it might be a catastrophe. There is nothing snug fitting about this at all !  Boiling water flies up out of the side. Heck, I could hard boil half a dozen eggs in there with the melting pot, that's how big the outer water pot is in comparison. If I continue on with this I'll have to make some changes. But so far, I have made some pretty crappy candles. Well, crappy by the standards here. By my own never-before-made-a-candle-standard, I'm like, wow, a candle!! (even though it looks terrible!)

 

 

[TallTayl]

Well that set up explains a lot. If there’s wax getting in the water and water getting in the wax then definitely oil and water are mixing and splashing out and also becoming airborne. 

 

Water and wax should never meet. 

 

You’ll need to degrease well as it is like cooking with oil and water. Ammonia takes up a lot of waxes. 

[Kerven]

AFAIK, silicone is heat resistant up to 500F. Its use in wax might prove a bit problematic, so I'm confident that's not the case.

 

Polybar is another term for vybar, I believe. Vybar is a polymer.

 

If it is wax on the floor, there are several methods of removal around the internet. There's the vinegar method. The ammonia method. There may even be a few commercial cleaners at the grocery, home improvement, or hardware stores that can remove paraffin. One thing to note is that linoleum floors do require waxing. Every once in a while, after several layers of wax, they also need to be stripped and a new coat of wax applied to remove discoloration, embedded dust and dirt, and to restore shine. Some people use liquid acrylic floor polishes instead of wax... but I can't speak on that since I've never used/seen the polish on linoleum. Nevertheless, be careful trying to remove any paraffin that might be on the floor because you might end up removing the protective coating of wax... unless you used the acrylic polish, in which case it should be fine.

[birdcharm]

This topic just reminded me of something ... when I was a teen, I often took care of my younger brother after school.  One day, he got home before me and when I walked in, the kitchen/dining room flooring was extremely shiny.  I knew better than to step on it and could tell something wasn't quite right, so I asked him what was going on with the floor and discovered that he thought he was "helping" -- used a paneling polish called "Liquid Gold" on it.  He really didn't help much!

 

[Ramr]

Well. I have not poured a candle for quite a while now. Packed all that stuff up and lugged it to the basement for a break. The kitchen floor continued to be killer slippery until I mopped the beejeebers out of it with Vim (which is an abrasive liquid cleaner that you scrub tubs and toilets with). That removed the slipperiness and possibly the top layer of vinyl too! No matter! I am having my floors throughout the house replaced this Monday (they are 26 years old and after raising a family and several dogs, they are toast).

 

This will be the test! If I get my NEW flooring in (more sheet vinyl, nothing fancy) and it is fine to walk on, and then I make candles and the floor turns deadly, I WILL KNOW it's something in the candle making process that is vaporizing, floating up into the atmosphere of my house and landing with a thud on my kitchen floor. To kill me.

 

In the meantime my house is a disaster as I attempt to lug everything to the basement so the floor layers can get in here to work. Oh the crap I have stuffed in corners and closets!!  I am mortified at myself and I can tell you, lots of it is NOT going to be put away again. Goodbye junk! I will post here next time I make candles... if I don't slip and break my arm on the way to the computer.

[Sarah S]

Oh my! Good luck! With de-cluttering and the floors! 😄

[Trappeur]

I can't imagine that the candle making would be putting grease on your floor what so ever really.

 

I have been making candles in my kitchen which has a linoleum floor for over 12 plus years and have never had any problem what so ever with grease on my floor.

 

Trappeur

[Pam W]

13 hours ago, Trappeur said:

I can't imagine that the candle making would be putting grease on your floor what so ever really.

 

I have been making candles in my kitchen which has a linoleum floor for over 12 plus years and have never had any problem what so ever with grease on my floor.

 

Trappeur

Same here........but that said, I don't know everything.  When I make candles, I make sure that I have a good '''air draft"" while pouring (open front door, open back door and the natural draft carries any FO scents out of the house..........so that I don't have to wear a respirator.  If I were to close up the house when making candles, maybe there would be some issues down the road but I'd think that I'd have to melt a lot of wax to cause my floors to become slippery..........but like I said, I don't know everything  (even tho I pretend I do  😁)

[Ramr]

After I cooked up several batches of candles and did more reading here, I came upon people mentioning wearing respirators. What? You mean all this coughing I've been doing isn't from allergies? I do not even have a rangehood over my stove where I'm melting. Pretty much NO ventilation at all. After reading here at least I crack a few windows as close to where I'm working, which isn't very close. But I do know that I spent a lot of time this summer feeling like I had a sore throat and I suspect it was daily candle making without ventilation.

 

To be clear, I do not believe it is wax that is vaporizing and getting on the floor. Nothing has been spilled on my floor at any point. What I was wondering about was the POLYBAR which is similar to VYBAR, as I understand it. These are polymers. But what is the chemical composition of a polymer? Does it contains silicone? Can it become moisture droplets in the air if it hits boiling water? Silicone is the only thing that has ever made my floor ice slippery. And this was EXACTLY like that. Which made me wonder if silicone and water weren't mixing.

 

Imagine that you have your boiling water and your  pot of melted wax and FO and Vybar, and you pour a little of the liquid wax into the boiling water. (DO NOT DO THIS!!) Now you have wax and FO and Vybar all boiling around in your water. Even when you cool and toss the water, the wax and its components stick to the sides of your boiler. So when you fill it with fresh water and boil again, the wax and  additives come off the sides of the pot to roll around in your boiling water. I am pretty sure the pot I inherited had wax and other stuff in the water boiler. I have since cleaned it up with solvents and abrasives. However, before cleaning it up, I made lots of candles and developed deadly floors. I still think they are connected. Just can't figure out how!

 

[Pam W]

7 minutes ago, Ramr said:

After I cooked up several batches of candles and did more reading here, I came upon people mentioning wearing respirators. What? You mean all this coughing I've been doing isn't from allergies? I do not even have a rangehood over my stove where I'm melting. Pretty much NO ventilation at all. After reading here at least I crack a few windows as close to where I'm working, which isn't very close. But I do know that I spent a lot of time this summer feeling like I had a sore throat and I suspect it was daily candle making without ventilation.

 

 

I have a couple floor box fans that I use when pouring FOs........that is, if I'm doing a lot of them....pouring one or two will not bother me but if I spend a full day mixing and pouring different scents, I'll pay for it later unless I increase the room circulation.

[Gary in Canada]

I know my wife used to spray all the furniture with Pledge, or other furniture polish and a LOT of it would end up on the floor..laminate, carpet didn't matter.  I used to just about kill myself all the time, because its invisible. FINALLY i convinced her to spray it on a cloth over the sink, then wipe the furniture. Problem solved for me. Just a thought. 

 

When I boil water to make spaghetti (this time of year)...the windows, walls, ceiling steam up, because I don't have an overhead fan, and its too darn cold to open a window or door.  When I do the double boiler to make candles, I don't get that, and the floors are certainly not slippery.