Carpet Care: Low-moisture Carpet Cleaning A Life-Saver At Regina Medical Center

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With four main buildings totaling nearly 380,000-square feet including a hospital, a nursing home, an assisted living facility and a healthcare clinic, Regina Medical Center (RMC) in Hastings, Minn., surely has its share of life-saving equipment. According to Bob Koller, manager of environmental services for RMC, his favorite is the Tennant® 1610 dual technology carpet cleaner with ReadySpace.

“ReadySpace is a life-saver,” he said. “Not only does ReadySpace allow us to quickly and thoroughly clean the carpets in all four facilities, but because ReadySpace leaves our carpets dry in about 30 minutes, it eliminates the problems we had been having with resoiling.”

According to Koller, Minnesota’s snowy, damp winters made maintaining the roughly 135,000-square feet of carpeting throughout the four buildings virtually impossible.

“Between the snow being dragged in and our frequent extractions, the carpet was basically wet all the time. The resoiling problem was extremely difficult to control.”

That’s when Koller realized he had to find a solution to his resoiling problem. So he invited several cleaning equipment manufacturers in to demonstrate their products. “Tennant was the hands-down winner based on the demonstrations. They actually left the machine on-site so my staff could try it. After just a few days, we knew the Tennant 1610 dual technology carpet cleaner with ReadySpace was just the product we’d been waiting for.”

ReadySpace is Tennant Company’s patented soil transfer technology that offers anytime cleaning of carpeted spaces. Unlike traditional carpet extraction, soil-transfer extraction relies on sprayer units that apply water to two counter-rotating, specially designed fabric rollers that pick up — or transfer — the soil from the carpet. As the rollers turn, they are rinsed with a solution spray, and built in vacuums extract the soil from the rollers. Because very little water actually reaches the carpet — and because it uses 80 percent less water to clean and leaves up to 90 percent less water behind than traditional extraction — ReadySpace leaves carpets dry in minutes and helps increase environmental health, cleanliness and safety.

In addition to resolving his resoiling problems, Koller is realizing additional benefits with the Tennant 1610 as well.

“With ReadySpace, we’ve greatly improved safety in the facilities — for everyone from patients to employees to visitors to my cleaning staff. Because the carpet dries so quickly with ReadySpace, there’s minimal risk of slipping and falling when people walk from the carpet to the hard floor. In addition, my staff no longer has to worry about handling and measuring the cleaning solution. That improves safety while also reducing solution costs.”

Koller added that he is so impressed with Tennant’s ReadySpace technology that he is moving forward with purchasing another Tennant technology — FaST®, the company’s patented Foam-activated Scrubbing Technology that increases a facility’s safety by using NFSI-certified FaST foam, which not only cleans existing soil but removes old detergent residues to increase traction up to 21 percent and, thereby, reduce the risk of slips and falls.

“I’ve been so impressed with the benefits of ReadySpace, I’m in the process of replacing my old Tennant 5700 autoscrubber with the Tennant T5 with FaST,” he said. “I wish I had it today!”

by Diane Simek, senior product manager for Tennant Company.