In schools, hard floors make up a huge percentage of the cleanable surface area, literally billions of square feet. As such, hard surface floor maintenance represents an enormous investment for facility managers. In spite of the magnitude of the task, building occupants expect that floors always appear clean and be safe to use, and rightly so.

Unclean, unsafe and unhygienic hard floors represent an enormous threat to health, safety, and, surprisingly, the revenue. Floors, if not cleaned properly and regularly, are the prime cause for slip-and-fall accidents. Infectious diseases - like the COVID-19 - tracked onto floors can quickly spread throughout a school facility to other areas where people work and eat thereby spreading illness. Moreover, if not maintained well, hard floors become worn out and are costly to replace. Therefore, it is important for facility managers to have a proper professional floor cleaning and maintenance program in place.

Scheduling hard floor cleaning

According to research conducted by US-based Kaivac Inc., hard floor cleaning should be divided into routine cleaning tasks and situational cleaning tasks. Effective routine cleaning removes normal daily soil loads that accumulate and wear down the flooring surface. Situational cleaning happens when there is a spill, mess, or bad weather.

This is required practically every day in a school – a spilled beverage in the cafeteria, wet footprints through the entranceway, or an overflowing toilet. Add to this a disinfection cleaning schedule, in the current scenario, and facility managers will have their hands full. Make sense, right?

Floor soiling & cleaning

In any facility, an enormous variety of soil and pollutants enter the front door. However, for the purposes of cleaning hard surfaces, there are three types of soil: loose soil, stuck soil and embedded soil.

Loose soil constitutes 90% of the soil load in most facilities. Stuck soil from spills or messes constitutes another one percent. This includes food and beverage spills and soils that come tracked in from wet weather. When neglected, stuck soils can become stains that are more labor intensive to remove. Embedded soil lives in areas of the flooring surface that have been damaged. Either from dirty scuffs, salt scratches, or a gash in the floor, embedded soil cannot be removed with conventional techniques. It requires deep cleaning and, then, refinishing of the surface by expensive restoration. Embedded soil accounts for five percent of all soil in a facility. When cleaners regularly address both loose and stuck soils, embedded soils are less likely to form.

Floor cleaning methods

There are various methods to clean floors.

Broom, mop-bucket & floor squeegee: One of the oldest and most traditional methods uses nylon or coir broom, mop-bucket and floor squeegee to clean all floors. But, Stop the Mop! Mops are spreaders, plain and simple. They remove only 50 percent of surface bacteria, the rest, they cross-contaminate across every surface that is touched until the mop head is next laundered. Until then, damp mop heads become breeding grounds for bacteria.      

Auto scrubbers: Auto scrubbers do away with the need for a mop and bucket, are mechanical, and certainly more efficient than the mop, yet one still needs a dry mop before using an auto scrubber – a fact that many ignore or are unaware of. Facilities also find auto scrubber maintenance to be cumbersome, especially given that they require a large initial investment, detailed on-the-job training, and a special technician to repair. And finally, moving them to other sites is not the easiest task

The ideal solution: Ultimately, you have the OmniFlex AutoVac™ from Kaivac U.S.A. Simple, fast, and effective, this automated floor cleaning machine can be operated properly with just minutes of training at the fraction of the cost of an equivalently sized auto scrubber! Maintenance and repairs are so easy to perform and require no special technician.

The AutoVac™ can also be used during stripping and recoating. It picks up salt, extracts grease, and more. It fits well into a car and is gentler on floor finish than an auto scrubber and is easily transportable. With innovative design and technology, the dry and wet mopping functions are integrated into single action; eliminating the need of dry brushing or dry mopping before the clean.

The AutoVac™ is extremely easy to learn, works quickly and leaves floors dry and ready to walk on instantly, so maintenance staff can cover a lot of square footage every single work-shift. It removes those dangerous soils in about a third of the time of standard cleaning tools and equipment. With added accessories like a spreader pad and specially designed wand-kit, the AutoVac™ can be used to clean even tight-spaced washroom floors and difficult to reach corners & grout.

ADVANTAGES OF OMNIFLEX AUTOVAC

-Easy to use and maneuver

-Compact size, lightweight and transportable

-Easy maintenance

-Reasonable cost

-High-speed cleaning - cuts cleaning time and non-essential consumables

-Safe and less cumbersome for all staff to use - including female cleaners