Can green, clean and cost control ever get along?

You’ve heard the old saying, “How do you want it—fast, cheap or good? You can choose two.” The message, of course, is that you can’t have everything. But cleaning professionals today are being asked to deliver “everything”—environmental sustainability, high levels of cleanliness AND cost efficiency. So how can they do it all?

According to Ciprus Ltd. LLC, nearly 69% of all commercial floors are hard surfaces. These floors are routinely cleaned and maintained with automatic floor scrubbers that, in the past, were not equipped to handle variable soil loads and different hard surface types. Similarly, buildings with carpet and hard floor surfaces have had to purchase both carpet extractors and hard floor scrubbers to effectively clean their floors.

Maintaining the flexibility to achieve the exact cleanliness level required for different areas, surface types and soil levels with the minimum effort, time and resources is a key to meeting the competing requirements for green, clean and cost-efficient floor cleaning. Three factors that contribute to a flexible floor-scrubbing program are:

• Rotate solutions (water and detergents) for different soils, areas and surface types
• Spend more time cleaning, less time getting ready to clean
• Use fewer machines for more tasks

Download the white paper to take a closer look at these three factors and to learn more about implementing a flexible hard-floor scrubbing program.

Can Green, Clean and Cost Control Ever Get Along?

You’ve heard the old saying, “How do you want it—fast, cheap or good? You can choose two.” The message, of course, is that you can’t have everything. But cleaning professionals today are being asked to deliver “everything”—environmental sustainability, high levels of cleanliness and cost efficiency. So how can they do it all?

Maintaining the flexibility to achieve the exact cleanliness level required for different areas, surface types and soil levels with the minimum effort, time and resources is a key to meeting the competing requirements for green, clean and cost-efficient floor cleaning. Here are three factors that contribute to a flexible floor scrubbing program:

1. Rotate solutions (water and detergents) for different soils, areas and surface types.
2. Spend more time cleaning, less time getting ready to clean
3. Use fewer machines for more tasks

Learn more about flexible hard-floor scrubbing programs here.

Flexible Cleaning: Cleaning Performance for Specific Areas

It’s well known that high-traffic areas such as entryways and lobbies get particularly dirty. Some of today’s latest scrubbers allow operators to temporarily increase cleaning aggressiveness for specific problem areas. For instance, Advance’s EcoFlex™ System includes a “burst of power” button that automatically increases detergent, solution flow and brush pressure for 60 seconds in order to deliver greater scrubbing power for heavily soiled areas. This helps to eliminate time- and labor-intensive double-scrubbing that can be required if using a single-mode (low-flow or water-only) scrubber.

Now that we have discussed how advanced automatic scrubbers can provide flexible cleaning for your facility, try one out for yourself! Visit http://www.advance-us.com to learn more or contact us info@advance-us.com with any questions.

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!

One Machine, Multiple Cleaning Modes

One facility can present many different cleaning challenges, including different types of surfaces and varying cleaning strengths needed to complete the job. To tackle these challenges, cleaning professionals often have to purchase multiple pieces of cleaning equipment to satisfy each job. This not only results in extra equipment costs, but can also require additional labor.

Automatic floor scrubbers are a significant capital investment, as they not only have a high initial purchase cost, but can also present preventative maintenance and operating costs. Overall, these factors can greatly influence the total cost of ownership. For example, every cleaning machine requires specific training for operators, storage space, additional parts and ongoing maintenance. When you add this to the initial price, cost-efficiency is no longer attainable.

A floor scrubber with flexible cleaning modes can mean buying fewer machines and reducing training and maintenance costs. The most flexible machines are capable of cleaning in multiple ways and allow staff to use the same piece of equipment for a variety of floor-scrubbing jobs. This ultimately leads to reduced cleaning costs and higher productivity.