Floor Care Tips For Your Facility
A good floor care program includes consistent cleaning and maintenance processes that help keep flooring clean and delivering a consistent appearance. This reduces the need for more labor-intensive, periodic and restorative maintenance procedures such as scrubbing and recoating.
Every facility has unique flooring materials that require specific cleaning processes. Many have manufacturer care guides that must be followed to avoid voiding warranties.
Floor Matting
Floor mats help keep abrasive soils and liquids from being tracked throughout your facility minimizing floor damage, reducing slip and fall accidents and decreasing costly restorative maintenance procedures like stripping and refinishing hard floors or carpet extraction for carpeted areas. Commercial floor mats are designed to be used in a wide variety of environments and can range from heavy duty scraper or entrance mats to anti-fatigue kitchen mats that help reduce worker fatigue from standing for long periods.
Mats should be placed at every facility entry point to capture and stop the majority of soil from being brought into a building. These can be made from a variety of materials, including carpet, rubber or thermoplastic elastomer (TPE). Some have raised surfaces or “fingers” to scrape dirt and moisture off shoes, while others have cleated or gripping strength for increased traction on slippery hard surface areas. These mats are often used in retail stores or office buildings, but can be used in medical facilities or for a food service business to prevent contamination and provide added safety for guests.
Vacuuming
Vacuuming is one of the most important aspects of floor care. It removes loose soil that can damage flooring or create dust bunnies. It also prevents contaminated air that may impact respiratory health.
Vacuums that are properly adjusted to match the height of flooring are key for achieving better results. Using the correct settings allows for better suction and trapping of soil, making it easier to clean floors. Upright vacuums should be set to use a hard floor setting, which disengages the beater bar so as not to damage carpeting or scratch hard surfaces. Cordless and canister vacuums are typically equipped with a flat floor head that doesn’t have a beater bar to protect textured surfaces.
Regular vacuuming eliminates dust mites, pollen, dander and other allergens that can function as irritants. They can also cause eye irritation and nose, throat and lungs irritation when inhaled. Keeping these allergens at bay not only improves air quality, but it can significantly reduce the symptoms of allergy and asthma sufferers.
Dust Mopping
Frequent dust mopping is one of the most important preventative floor care activities. It reduces wear and abrasion from tracked in grit, soils and dirt extending floor finish life. It also reduces the need for wet cleaning and helps control airborne debris that can aggravate allergies.
It’s a quick and cost effective way to touch up floors and high traffic areas throughout the day and it’s especially useful during the winter when snow and salt residue is tracked into the facility. To ensure effective results, it is best to use a mop or cloth treated with the Dust Mops Treatment that has been specifically designed to pick up grit and grime.
It will not damage floor surfaces and can be used on all types of mops and dusting cloths. When used as directed, it attracts and holds dust and dirt like a magnet reducing the need for sweeping compounds and will not cause streaking or leave a film when wet.
Scrubbing
Floor scrubbing is one of the most labor-intensive aspects of a facility’s cleaning program, but it’s also a key step in restoring a floor’s appearance and protecting one of your most valuable assets – your floors. Scrubbing improves a floor’s appearance, extends its life and reduces the frequency of more costly and time-consuming restoration processes like stripping and refinishing.
Soils that are permitted to penetrate a floor’s finish can scratch, dull, and diminish traction, which can result in slip-and-falls. Interim maintenance steps such as spray buffing, burnishing, autoscrubbing and frequent damp mopping, will help extend the life of a floor’s finish and extend the time between deep stripping and refinishing.
Preventing up to 85% of soils from ever reaching your floors is the best way to protect and prolong their life. This can be accomplished by implementing a comprehensive entrance matting system that will capture the majority of dirt, snow and sand that are tracked into a facility.