Focus on Floor Care Equipment

It is estimated there is at least 70 billion square feet of commercial office space in the United States—much of it covered with hard surface flooring such as tile, stone, stone, rubber, and similar coverings. And the appearance of these billions of square feet of hard surface floor can be crucial.  Floors set the stage for most facilities.  Walking into a facility, the first impression most visitors and building occupants have—and helps them determine if they like, dislike, trust, distrust, or wants to live, work, or do business in this building—is the floor.

Floor care is also demanding.  In most settings, floors require more time and labor to maintain than carpets, which also means their upkeep and maintenance can cost considerably more money than carpet care.  It is estimated that as much as 90 percent of floor care costs can be attributed to just labor and floor care costs can be as much as 80 percent of a facility’s budget. 

Because of this, finding new ways and floor care technologies to help keep floors well-maintained, in less time and with less labor, is on the mind of most all facility managers.  And distributors can prove invaluable by guiding and helping their clients make wise floor care product selections specific to their client’s needs.

Although floor machines have changed little in decades, floor care technology has advanced considerably in the past 10 years, and even more in just the past five.  And it continues to advance.  New machines, technologies and floor care cleaning procedures have been introduced recently that make floor maintenance easier, more efficient, less labor intensive, healthier, and are helping facilities save considerable sums of money as well. 

Determining Floor Care Needs

The overriding concern among most end users and facility managers revolves around floor care productivity—selecting equipment that helps cleaning professionals complete floor care maintenance faster and more efficiently.  “Productivity and performance remain the key factors when end users select floor cleaning equipment,” says Jim Hlavin, director of business development for Chicago-based Tornado Industries, manufacturers of a wide variety of floor and carpet equipment.  “However, this is very dependent on several issues such as the type of floor, how, and where the equipment is to be used.”

According to Hlavin, larger facilities usually require a combination of floor care equipment—from buffers and burnishers, to walk-behind scrubbers or ride-on machines.  The right mix of cleaning equipment is often dependent on assessing the facility’s specific floor care needs. Some of the factors that affect this decision include:

• The size of the area to be cleaned
• The amount of soiling and debris generated in different areas of a facility, such as lobbies, warehouse, kitchen, or factory/production areas
• The type of soiling on the floor area, i.e. oil, grease, heal marks, dust, moisture
• The type of hard surface floor
• Foot traffic and the overall cleaning attention paid to the different areas of the facility
• The “value” of the floors appearance to the facility manager and/or what constitutes "clean" for specific areas of a facility or the facility in general.

This last point is quite important because it will be a primary aspect in determining the type of floor equipment selected, the amount of time and money budgeted for floor maintenance, and the cleaning systems and processes used.

Selecting the Machine to Fit the Job

With productivity such a prime concern and considering that 90 percent of the cost of floor care is labor as mentioned earlier, the additional costs of a ride-on machine can likely be recouped from labor savings in a relatively short time, as is demonstrated in the spreadsheet below.  “Ride-on sweepers and scrubbers offer dramatic productivity gains over walk-behind machines,” says Hlavin.  “In addition, ride-on equipment is usually easier to operate and less fatiguing, also improving productivity.”

Courtesy of Tornado Industries

Hlavin adds that one of the advances of newer ride-on machines is there ability to get into narrow spaces, there improved maneuverability, and turning capabilities. “However, enhanced maneuverability is not just an attribute of some ride-on’s,” says Hlavin, “some newer walk-behinds machines have been redesigned so that they are much more compact, which not only improves productivity, but allows these units to get into and more efficiently clean areas often difficult or impossible for ride-on scrubbers to enter.”

Whether a walk-behind or ride-on machine is selected, the size of the equipment can play a major role in productivity gains.  The general rule of thumb is to select the largest floor care equipment possible but appropriate for the facility.

Some situations may require a ride-on machine to tackle large open areas and a smaller walk-behind, or even a traditional buffer-type floor machine, for narrow aisles or to get in and around work stations and smaller working areas. By matching the size of the machine to the facility’s needs, costs are minimized and productivity is maximized.