One Machine, Does Two Jobs: It’s Money in the Bank

When a well-to-do California man died several years ago, he left his home, an 1880s Victorian-style mansion on the north side of Chicago, to a private school he had long supported.  School administrators soon relocated their school to the much larger facility, converting former bedrooms, parlors, and other areas into classrooms.

However, a problem they encountered fairly quickly was that although the former mansion was sound and well-built, walls between the rooms provided very little sound suppression.  During the course of the day, students in quiet classrooms could hear sounds and activities from adjoining classrooms, and vice versa.  Compounding the problem, virtually every room had hard surface flooring so sound absorption was virtually non-existent.

According to the school’s contractor, the easiest and most cost effective way to rectify, or at least minimize the sound problem, was to install commercial grade, wall-to-wall carpeting throughout the facility—which they did.  But this resulted in problem number two.  The noise issue was much more tolerable with the new carpeting, but the carpets soiled very quickly.  Within a month, spots and stains were just about everywhere.

The custodial crew used a carpet extractor to clean the carpets in the evening, but the areas were rarely dry by morning so re-soiling was frequent.  A dry carpet cleaning method appeared to be the problem solver and just as school administrators were about to select a system, their jansan distributor, a Tornado representative, suggested a machine that could clean carpets with no moisture as well as hard surface floors.  The machine he suggested: The BR 13/1 MW.

The BR 13/1 incorporates the encapsulation method to clean carpets. A chemical powder is sprinkled on the carpets and as it dries, it crystallizes along with the soils, stains, spills, and other impurities in the carpet.  With each vacuum pass, more of the crystals and soils are removed.  The carpet actually looks cleaner and cleaner the longer it is vacuumed.

But for the school, the hard surface floor cleaning capabilities turned the machine into a major cost saver.  Instead of purchasing dedicated floor care equipment to clean the tile floors in the bathrooms, the BR 13/1 uses cylindrical brush technology to deep-clean the tile and grout.  Because the counter-rotating brushes do so much of the work, users find that the machine uses considerably less water and chemicals, making the BR 13/1 more environmentally preferable than a conventional floor machine.

Today, the school’s custodial crew cleans the carpets using the BR 13/1 encapsulation system once per month and then, for an extra deep cleaning, uses the carpet extractor during school breaks so that the lengthy drying time is not an issue.  As to the hard surface floors, the BR 13/1 has proven to be more than adequate—now the school has no need for dedicated floor care machines, which has proven to be a major cost savings.

And, on top of saving money, school administrators discovered another benefit of selecting one machine that can clean multiple surfaces: custodial workers easily learned how to use the machine and actually became very skilled at working with it.  This means that training costs and frequencies are reduced, re-working areas due to user errors are essentially eliminated, and worker productivity is enhanced.  These are all cost savings for the school as well…thanks to one versatile machine.

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