Floor Care: Acheive High Levels Of Floor Cleaning

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Question: When it comes to cleaning hard floor surfaces, how do you achieve higher quality results, increased productivity and improved efficiency while lowering your costs?

The answer: Think green. Think Autoscrubbers®.

Floor care is no longer a matter of simply sweeping and mopping. Today it comes down to time, money and efficiency. Years ago, if you wanted to get more done, you would simply use more people to do the job. But times have changed. Budgets and staffs have gotten tighter, and time has become even more valuable. The only way to get more productivity was to automate and. autoscrubbers were developed to clean the largest areas efficiently. Obviously, they do a much better job than a mop and broom.

Going Green
Facility owners and managers today, however, require autoscrubbers to do an even better cleaning job that’s both quicker and safer. And in keeping with a heightened awareness of protecting our environment, they want that cleaning process to be green. That process must result in clean, durable floors that are safe to walk on and are attractive looking, too. In short, they desire a better, safer and greener environment. Facilities will be able to afford to clean more and better if they implement green practices.

Going green can create a healthier and happier environment. Building occupants, and their janitorial staff members, as well as building visitors experience fewer incidents of allergies, headaches and nausea in sites that implement green cleaning practices. Healthier employees mean increased productivity and profitability. More and more, green cleaning results in effective and efficient cleaning.

Autoscrubbers--Reduced Labor, Increased Productivity
Labor represents up to 95 percent of the cost to clean, and autoscrubbers, an important element of an effective green strategy, provide a reduction of labor but with increased productivity.

The best of today’s floor scrubbers have green cleaning aspects that feature low noise levels and ergonomically designed controls that are easy to operate. They’re durable and reliable. They feature hygienic, high capacity anti-corrosion tanks, larger battery compartments, and steel bodies. They provide significant increases in battery runtime and in pad life. They reduce the number of trips for dumps and fills. They also feature on-board chargers and breakaway squeegees.

Clarke believes that reducing the impact on environment and health and safety should be a key goal of any company’s green strategy. The company knows that sustainable practices protect facilities along with the environment. Therefore, Clarke focuses its product development on increasing productivity and reducing labor.

BOOST Technology
With this important concept driving its actions, Clarke developed BOOST® (Battery Operated Orbital Scrubbing Technology) several years ago. Designed with specific features and benefits to fit green cleaning programs, Clarke’s Focus II® and BOOST® compact and rider floor scrubbing machine models utilize up to 70 percent fewer chemicals and water. That’s because their scrub decks enable them to scrub and clean floors in one pass. By utilizing orbital motion and pulse-modulated solution control, these scrubbers conserve cleaning solution within the scrub path.

Unique Rectangular Pad
The unique BOOST pad is rectangular and provides consistent contact across the cleaning path, contrasted with two round pads on other disc machines that provide less contact area in the center and on the edges. BOOST’s lighter pad pressure, caused by its orbital motion spinning at 2250 RPM, helps the company’s autoscrubbers achieve exceptional cleaning results. It allows for close-edge cleaning without overspray. BOOST Technology cleans at orbits 10 times that of a conventional disc scrubber and attacks the dirt from multiple directions.

With BOOST, the combination of high RPM orbital action at reduced pad pressure can extend the life of floor pads by up to 40 percent. This means a significant savings in a floor care budget and another important step forward in environmental waste reduction.

Chemical Free Stripping
BOOST Technology also allows users to strip floors without the use of chemicals. This not only saves chemical costs, but also dramatically reduces the chance for any slip and fall hazards and the significant costs associated with these accidents.

Increased efficiency is another benefit of BOOST Technology. An operator, using traditional disc floor scrubbers, can spend as much as 30 percent of his or her time emptying the recovery tank and refilling the solution tank. BOOST, however, allows the operator to stay productive longer with fewer stops to the drain and fill station.

BOOST achieves a 15-20 minute labor savings for each dump and refill that’s eliminated.

BOOST enhances a reduction in the cost of battery replacement and reduces the environmental impact of battery recycling. BOOST utilizes efficient motors that are quiet and therefore reduce the ambient noise level for the operators. Because of this, worker’s compensation claims are minimized.

Reduced Water Costs
With BOOST, Clarke’s Pulse-Modulated Solution Control introduces cleaning solution in front of the scrubbing pad. The orbital action contains the cleaning solution in the pad and carries it for the full length of the pad. Compared to traditional disc scrubbers that sling water away from the pad, BOOST’s efficient use of the cleaning solution results in a significant water savings. Using less water during a cleaning job keeps the operator working productively rather than in the janitor’s closet emptying and refilling the scrubber tanks. This savings in clean water translates into a 50-to 70-percent reduction in wastewater, which also reduces removal costs of that water and is environmentally friendly.

Reduced Chemical Costs
Using less water means using significantly less cleaning chemical. With BOOST, there’s no need to change an already existing floor care chemical program because the BOOST units do not require a proprietary cleaning chemical.

The efficient orbital action of the BOOST autoscrubbers cleans floors up to six times more effectively. Cleaner floors allow for more effective burnishing. Dirt not removed by traditional disc scrubbers is burnished into the finish, resulting in a yellowing floor. BOOST’s more effective cleaning and burnishing extends the time between labor-intensive strip and recoats, which means less money spent on floor stripper and finish.

As with the savings in clean water, the savings in chemical usage translates into an environmentally-friendly 50-to 70 percent reduction in wastewater, which in turn reduces removal costs.    

What They Are Saying About BOOST
At a large American university, the custodial supervisor responsible for maintaining granite and marble floors was faced with the problem of keeping labor and chemical costs down. In 2006, the university purchased the BOOST model. “Since then, the condition of our floors is better than what we had been getting with our previous autoscrubbers,” the supervisor said. “With those conventional disc scrubbers we had to spend extra time cleaning the corners and edges of the floors. And we had to make a lot of dump and fills. With the BOOST, our workers spend about 50-to 70-percent less time emptying the recover tank and refilling the solution tank. The machine’s handy controls are another labor-reducing quality. We can adjust the machine speed easily with the controls.” The supervisor said BOOST technology has worked so well for them that they have since purchased two more Clarke scrubbers.

“It’s the Only Way to Go”
The manager of environmental services at a large medical center recently purchased a Clarke Focus II model and believes that “it’s the only way to go” for medical centers and places where people have allergies to stripper chemicals. His department had previously been hindered in the proper upkeep of hard floors throughout the hospital because of people who were affected by the odors of floor strippers and wax. “With the purchase of the Focus II, we now have the ability to strip floors with just water. One person can strip floors during the day, and the night person can come in and just wax. There’s a 70-percent savings in manpower alone, along with a 60-percent savings in chemical use,” he said.

“A One Man Operation”
In early 2008, a large public school system with 9,000 students walking the floors of 19 buildings purchased a 20-inch BOOST walk-behind floor machine. Several months later, they purchased a 32-inch BOOST rider. “These machines get a lot of wax off the floors at one time. In my case, you could call it a deep scrubber,” said the manager of custodial services. He describes using the BOOST as a one-person operation. “Prior to using the BOOST, it took four or five people to do the job. The Clarke scrubbers give us a strong labor savings benefit. It’s a time saver and a product saver. If we don’t have to use a stripper, that’s a savings too. The Clarke machines are green products by virtue of the fact that they use fewer chemicals, less water, and less electricity That’s a plus for the environment. They’re easy to operate and they have a low noise level.”

In selecting the right autoscrubber for hard-surface floors, take a close look at the machine’s effectiveness, reliability, and ease of use. Consider its green benefits. When you do, you’ll come away with a strong impression from Clarke’s BOOST Technology.

By Jordan Fox, business writer.