Solving Common Facility Odor Issues

Key Takeaways:
• Odors can come from porous grout, drains, contaminated tools, plumbing issues, or other maintenance problems.
• Incorrect dilution, insufficient dwell time, or inconsistent procedures can make effective products fail.
• Training, documented SOPs, routine maintenance, and follow-up verification help prevent recurring odors rather than simply treating them after they appear.

---

When an employee, customer, or visitor walks into a building and encounters an unpleasant smell, the reaction is immediate. Fair or not, that odor becomes a reflection of the overall cleanliness of a facility.

Though frustrating for facility cleaning managers and building service contractors (BSCs), odor complaints create opportunities for jan/san distributors to save the day for their customers. Knowledgeable distributors can help customers identify what is causing the odor, evaluate existing cleaning practices, and determine whether the solution requires chemistry, equipment, training, maintenance, or a combination of all four.

The first step is resisting the urge to mask the problem, warns Dale Franke, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Acme Paper & Supply Co., Inc. Fragrance should enhance, not replace, a clean environment.

“The goal shouldn’t be to make a facility smell clean,” he says. “The goal is to make it clean and then let the fragrance support that experience.”

Keith Schneringer, Senior Director of Merchandising and Sustainability for Imperial Brady, shares that a common mistake many end users make is treating all odors the same.

Jan/san distributors should ensure customers know their first task after an odor complaint is to categorize the smell as residual or transient. Residual odors remain in surfaces or building components, including grout, floors, walls, partitions, and drains. Transient odors are temporary odors created by normal activity, such as restroom use.

That distinction affects the recommended solution. A transient odor may call for an odor counteractant or passive air-care system, while a residual odor requires the distributor and customer to determine what material or condition is generating the smell.

For residual odors, Franke recommends a straightforward process: “Identify. Investigate. Correct. Train. Verify.”

This sequence starts by asking the following questions: Where is the odor? When is it strongest? Is it constant or intermittent? Which surfaces are impacted? What cleaning products are being used? Are employees following the correct dilution and dwell times? How frequently is the area cleaned? Are drains involved? Could the cleaning tools themselves be contaminated?

And whenever possible, the investigation should include a walkthrough of the facility.

“You can’t diagnose an odor problem from a product catalog,” Franke says. “You need to see the environment, understand the cleaning process, ask questions, and follow your nose.”

Check and See

Restrooms provide a useful example of these issues because several common odor sources can exist in the same small space.

Joel Craddock, a cleaning consultant and President of Doc’s Facilities Solutions, estimates that the average person uses a restroom about 3.5 times during an eight-hour workday. In a building with 100 occupants, that can translate to roughly 350 restroom uses a day and about 91,000 uses over the course of a year.

Craddock says those numbers demonstrate why daily surface cleaning alone may not be enough to control the smell in high-traffic restrooms. Identifying where odors are coming from, he maintains, is as important as cleaning.

Grout is one of the first areas to inspect as a cause of odor in restroom spaces. Because grout is porous, urine and other organic soils can migrate below the surface. Contaminated mop water can also settle into grout lines, leaving behind material that becomes an ongoing odor source.

Addressing grout odors may require mechanical agitation to reach embedded soils and bring them into suspension so they can be removed. This might involve using machines for deep cleaning of grout and hard floors versus daily mopping.

“The key is to bring that up into suspension, so that when you wet it, you’re actually removing all the soil, rather than allowing it to stay down in the grout,” Craddock says.

Drains are another frequent source of odor complaints from end users. Franke explains that floor drains, sink drains, and other drain lines can accumulate odor-causing organic matter and biofilm, making drain inspection and maintenance a key part of a facility cleaning program.

Schneringer recommends instructing customers to maintain the water barrier in the P-trap and incorporate the use of appropriate bioactive chemistry to address fats, oils, grease, and decomposing organic material in drains.

When chemicals are not the answer, distributor sales reps should instruct their customers accordingly. Dry traps, plumbing defects, leaks, or mechanical problems can produce smells no chemistry will eliminate.

“If an odor keeps returning after cleaning, that indicates the source hasn’t been eliminated,” Franke says. “Sometimes the best recommendation a distributor can make is to tell the customer that they have a maintenance or plumbing problem. That honesty builds credibility and trust.”

Matching Solution to Problem

When odor problems hit and customers come calling, jan/san distributors are encouraged to lead with the problem, not the product.

“This shifts the conversation from selling a bottle of odor eliminator to helping the customer develop an overall odor control program,” says Franke. “It can also uncover other opportunities across chemicals, dispensers, cleaning tools and equipment, restroom care, floor care, and employee training.”

Once distributors help customers identify the source, they can determine the appropriate combination of chemistry and equipment to recommend.

Options may include bioactive or enzyme-based products, drain-maintenance chemistry, urine-remediation products, degreasers, controlled dispensing, microfiber systems, touch-free restroom equipment, carpet extraction, trash-receptacle cleaning, or air-care products.

Schneringer favors bioactive chemistry for odor control. These products use microbes to consume organic material that can serve as an odor source. He also points to air purifiers equipped with carbon filtration as another tool for broader odor control.

Autoscrubbers, touch-free equipment, and other machines that extract contaminated solutions can help prevent organic material from being picked up in one location and deposited elsewhere. Craddock recommends deep scrubbing at least quarterly, increasing frequency in busier facilities.

He also recommends specifying smaller, portable restroom-cleaning machines—roughly 6 to 12 inches wide—that can work aggressive brushes into grout lines and ceramic surfaces.

next page of this article:
Address Building Odor Problems