Flexible Cleaning: Detergent Dilution Ratio

Today’s floor chemicals are usually diluted at a ratio of 128:1 (128 parts water to 1 part detergent). This ratio is suitable to cleaning heavily soiled floors but can be excessive for routine cleaning applications.

To minimize chemical use, some recent floor machines include an ultra-low detergent mode suitable for normal cleaning. For example, Advance’s EcoFlex™ System is capable of dispensing detergent at a 400:1 ratio for routine cleaning of moderately soiled floors. This ratio enhances the natural cleaning power of water and break surface tension. In addition to providing green-cleaning results, this mode saves at least 50 percent in detergent costs and leaves behind a light, just-cleaned scent, which water cannot equally produce. Advanced floor scrubbing machines also feature onboard detergent-metering systems, which allows users to fill a tank with a cleaning product, set a selector to match the manufacturer’s suggested dilution ratio and insert the tank into the scrubber. This eliminates operator guesswork and ensures that detergent is dispensed at the proper dilution ratio.

Need to clean an area that requires a bit more scrub power? Next week we will look at automatic scrubber features that produce the necessary cleaning performance for specific areas.

Flexible Cleaning: Detergent Usage

In addition to switching between detergent cleaning and water-only cleaning, advanced automatic scrubbers have the ability to change detergents while scrubbing. This allows operators to easily match the correct detergent use to the specific cleaning application at hand.

Scrubbers that provide separate onboard tanks for water and detergent eliminate the task of premixing solution and the need to “dump” unused solution. This saves water and chemicals, in addition to minimizing waste-stream contribution. Refillable cleaning-fluid tanks allow a user to easily swap one detergent for another or to clean with water only, no matter where the machine is in the facility.

Next week, we will discuss the importance of dilution ratios.

Flexible Cleaning: Detergent and Water Cleaning

All facilities, regardless of whether it’s a university or grocery store, require hard-floor cleaning machines that are both environmentally preferred and flexible enough to handle a wide variety of cleaning applications. With recent technology advancements, automatic scrubbers with flexible cleaning capabilities are now available for cleaning professionals and facility managers. Today, we will look at these machines’ ability to use multiple types of cleaners and water only.

Ideally, a “green and clean” scrubber enables facilities to use any type of detergent or cleaning fluid—including green-certified cleaners. Machines that are designed to use a proprietary cleaning fluid only or water only are not conducive to the variable cleaning practices used in many buildings today. For example, a facility may choose a neutral cleaner for routine daily cleaning, but prefer to scrub with a stronger detergent for deeper cleaning weekly or monthly. Or a facility might use water-only cleaning interspersed with detergent-cleaning to gain the benefits of each; detergent-based cleaning gets into pores and removes more soil, while the intermittent water-only cleaning washes residual detergent out of surface pores to improve floor appearance. Once detergent is washed out of the pores, the water-only process no longer provides the same cleaning benefit. For porous floors, a good practice may be to alternate cleaning methods—detergent and no detergent—to keep floors looking their best.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog post on automatic floor scrubbers with the ability to change detergents while scrubbing!

Facility Type Vs. Level of Clean

For the past few weeks, we have been talking about what “clean” really means, how it is defined and what components make up a cleaning program. Regardless of these factors, the type of facility ultimately defines the standard of “clean,” and can vary between using water-only cleaning or different detergent solution strengths.

Most facilities’ standards of “clean” for porous floor materials would require that the cleaning solution be able to penetrate the small spaces where soil accumulates. Water alone, because of its surface tension, actually sits on top of porous flooring. Porous flooring types—which include grouted tile, terrazzo, vinyl composition tile (VCT), concrete and rubberized track surface—require a cleaning agent called a surfactant that breaks the surface tension of the water, allowing it to get into cracks and crevices.

Let’s visualize this. Healthcare facilities or food processing and preparation areas require bacteria to be reduced to a safe level. This sanitizing level of cleaning requires a chemical disinfectant such as a phenolic or carbolic that gets into cracks and crevices where viruses reside.

On the other hand, facilities with an emphasis on cleaning for appearance, such as retail stores and grocery stores, might choose water-only cleaning methods for frequent cleaning procedures. However, it should also be noted that if the local water supply delivers mineral-laden water, these minerals can leave deposits that make floors look dull over time—perhaps even worse than they looked before cleaning.

The bottom line? Assess your facility’s cleaning needs before you define your level of “clean.”