The Causes Of Flooring Failures: Part III

This article was originally published in Cleaning & Maintenance Management.

There are a variety of ways cleaning professionals can help prevent flooring failures. One of the first steps is to know what types of materials — adhesives, concrete, etc. — were used to install the floor. While this may not always be possible, a lot can be determined by the age of the floor.

If it is a new floor or a floor installed within the past few years, cleaning professionals can assume a low-VOC adhesive was used if for no other reason than their use has grown considerably in recent years. With this information, they can select chemicals that are still effective but more protective of the materials likely used to secure the floor.

Another preventive technique involves the type of floorcare equipment used to maintain the floor. Because we know that moisture and some chemicals can be damaging to some flooring adhesives, selecting equipment that uses less water and chemical can prove beneficial. Typically, an alternative to conventional rotary floor care equipment is a cylindrical brush machine. Because the brushes on these machines perform much of the actual cleaning, studies indicate these machines perform effectively with considerably less water and chemical.

Finally, cleaning professionals should encourage facility managers to apply a sealant or finish to floors. The primary purpose of a sealant/finish is not to put a shine on the floor — although that is the result after several coats are applied — but to protect the floor. In this case, the sealant/finish is helping to keep moisture and contaminants from seeping down under the floor surface. While some managers may want to avoid refinishing floors for cost reasons, in the long run not refinishing can, as we have already discussed, be a costly mistake. In addition to preventing flooring failures, finished floors are typically much easier to maintain, which can prove to contribute to cost savings over time.

The Causes Of Flooring Failures: Part II

This article was originally published in Cleaning & Maintenance Management.

While a number of problems can cause flooring failures, one of the key culprits is the actual chemicals used to clean and maintain floors. Many floorcare chemicals today are effective at cleaning floors, but they may contain ingredients that, over time, can reach their way below the surface, and this is when flooring failures begin. 

As mentioned earlier, many installers are now using low-VOC adhesives. However, these adhesives can become brittle and easily broken down when they come into contact with certain chemicals and chemical compounds.

Citrus-based cleaners: While they may work well and may have less adverse impact on the user and the environment, they may contain d-limonene.

In some cases, if it seeps down below the floor, d-limonene can, over time, break down low-VOC adhesives as well as some concrete-type adhesives used for floor installations.

Additionally, some citrus cleaners can leave a sticky residue on floors, which results in rapid resoiling, requiring the floor to be cleaned more frequently.

Acidic cleaners: With moisture, if these cleaners flow through spaces in the floor surface, they can cause concrete and materials used to secure the floor to “powder.”

As this happens, it can cause the floor to lift, resulting in a flooring failure.

High-pH strippers: Often used for excessively soiled floors, high-pH stripping chemicals can seep under the floor surface, again breaking down adhesives.

This is especially true if strippers contain high amounts of potassium and sodium phosphates.

Soiled water: Cleaning professionals are always advised if mopping floors to use clean water and change water and solution frequently.

Soiled water, especially if used when mopping tiled restroom floors, can seep down grout areas resulting in mold growth.

As mold grows, it can cause adhesive breakdown and flooring failure.

Check back next week to read part three in this series on how to prevent flooring failure.

The Causes Of Flooring Failures

This article was originally published in Cleaning & Maintenance Management.

Flooring, whether it is hard surface or carpeting, is typically one of the most costly capital investments a building owner makes in a facility, and when something goes wrong, it can be another costly investment to repair it. A good example of this is when individual floor tiles or entire parts of a floor start to loosen from the floor backing (or substrate) or begin to buckle.

When this kind of flooring failure occurs, it is often blamed on poor installation. However—and unfortunately—the methods used to clean and maintain the floor can also play a role. And as floor installers turn to more environmentally friendly adhesives, which typically produce fewer volatile organic compounds (VOCs) than more conventional adhesives, these problems may actually increase.

Often, moisture, soil, contaminants, oils, salts, acids, small particulates and floorcare chemicals and chemical residues make their way down cracks, pores and grout areas, eventually reaching the bottom of the floor. As these build up under the surface, they can cause either the concrete or the adhesives securing the floor to break down. When this happens, tiles loosen and flooring failure problems begin.

A lot of this can be prevented by ensuring there is proper protection—a sealant along with adequate coats of finish—applied to the surface of the floor when it is first installed. However, this protection must be maintained because over time it typically wears away. And today, because many facility managers are choosing not to apply finish to floors, whether for cost or environmental reasons, flooring failures can be the result.

Check back next week to learn about various causes of flooring failures.

Hard Floor Cleaning Practices to Consider: Minimizing Building Disruptions

Equipment noise level is important. Regardless of the facility, using low-noise equipment enhances operator safety without disturbing building occupants.

Finding equipment that operates with low noise is preferable in many settings, especially in schools, hospitals, religious facilities and other noise-sensitive and high-traffic areas.

By utilizing such equipment, facility managers can thoroughly clean floors during business hours. This ability increases safety, since puddles, soil, spills and other potential hazards can be cleaned without disturbing building occupants.

Going Beyond Appearance

Given the cleaning industry’s technological advances, changing safety regulations and increased facility management standards, today’s maintenance practices go beyond improving a facility’s appearance.

By selecting the proper equipment, facility managers can ensure that modern hard floor cleaning values — promoting long-term floor life and meeting the immediate requirements of providing a healthy, safe environment — are being met.

Green chemical solutions, working to prevent accidents and minimizing facility disruptions are practical ways to exercise those values.

Hard Floor Cleaning Practices to Consider: Slip And Fall Prevention

Some automated cleaning equipment utilizes vacuum technology that cleans a floor with water or chemical solutions and then immediately dries the floor surface.

This prevents water and solution from seeping into a floor’s base materials, which can lead to long-term damage.

It also improves safety as reducing slip and fall incidents has become a serious concern.

As it has been reported, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), has even revised itsWalking and Working Surfaces regulations, requiring that facilities have an effective cleaning process and incorporate more stringent oversight.

To help ensure that the proper precautions are taken, the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI) — one of several groups that help identify key criteria that should be considered when selecting cleaning chemicals, equipment and procedures — offers independent product testing for equipment and product manufacturers.

One of NFSI’s tests evaluates products’ slip resistance, and incorporating the slip resistance test results with the product makes purchasing decisions easier for end users.

With the aid of such information, facility managers can select the proper equipment and ensure that the most stringent safety measures and guidelines are met.

Check back next week to read about minimizing building disruptions.

Hard Floor Cleaning Practices to Consider

Though there are many types of hard floors and a variety of building environments and sizes, there are a few common elements when it comes to modern hard floor cleaning.

The keys to current maintenance practices are promoting long-term floor life while meeting the immediate requirements of providing a healthy, safe environment.

To meet these principles, common practices include using green chemical solutions, minimizing wet surfaces for slip and fall prevention and minimizing any facility disruptions during cleaning processes or restorative maintenance.

To incorporate these values, facility managers must consider multiple variables when developing a contemporary maintenance plan, including staff experience and training, specific facility needs and equipment.

Enhancing Floor Appearance

Stripping and refinishing, among other project-based maintenance activities, are understood to preserve and enhance hard floor appearance, quality and durability.

However, current hard floor cleaning practices incorporate regular, routine maintenance to sustain long-term floor quality.

Although a mop can be useful for cleaning up isolated spills or for maintaining small areas, it can be difficult to meet the increasing health and safety standards using this traditional tool.

Thus, more advanced or automated equipment may be worth considering.

There are specific considerations that should be analyzed when selecting any piece of equipment that is intended to help meet modern cleaning practices.

Check back next week to read about green chemical options. 

Is Your Cleaning Method Really 'Green'?

This article was originally published on the Cleaning & Maintenance Management. 

'Green' cleaning is a prominent trend in the cleaning industry. In fact, according to Stephen Ashkin, president of The Ashkin Group who is considered the leading advocate for green cleaning in the professional cleaning industry, most facilities, probably more than 80 percent, are selecting green cleaning tools and equipment and incorporating green cleaning strategies.

That being said, there are many green cleaning methods out there, but which ones are truly considered to be 'green'?

A few green cleaning myths are included below. To read about all of them, read the full article. 

Myth: All green products perform alike.

Fact: Green cleaning products are not all the same. Like other cleaning products, some perform better than others, some work better on certain surfaces than others and so on. It is best to try the products first and compare them with others before making a final selection.

Myth: All green certifications are the same.

Fact: While many of the certification organizations use similar standards and criteria, they are not all the same and some products certified by one organization may not earn certification with another. It is best to select a certification organization that is well-known and widely respected, and then look for the products they have certified.

Myth: Cleaning with green products usually takes more time.

Fact: While this may have been true years ago, this is not true today. However, cleaning professionals are advised to try different green products, just as they would conventional cleaning chemicals, and select those that perform most effectively for them.

Seeking Higher Green Cleaning Standards In The Professional Cleaning Industry

This article was originally published in Cleaning Maintenance & Management.

Those in the professional cleaning industry often hear from clients that their facilities “look even better” after making the switch to a green cleaning program. While customers may attribute this improvement to using green cleaning chemicals, janitorial service providers believe there’s something else going on. The detailed training protocol that is a part of a comprehensive green cleaning program often results in cleaning staff learning new and more effective ways to perform tasks, leading to a cleaner, healthier facility overall.

This outcome demonstrates an idea that green cleaning advocates have been promoting for years: green cleaning means much more than just the use of environmentally preferable products; it involves proper green cleaning equipment, processes and procedures, communication and training as well.

In keeping with this view, Green Seal, a leading not-for-profit certification organization, has developed an industry standard for commercial and institutional cleaning services. Green Seal designed this standard (GS-42) with the goal of protecting the health of janitorial workers, building occupants and the environment. Service providers certified to the standard, including private cleaning companies and in-house custodial workers, have met specific, rigorous and science-based criteria that ensure cleaning excellence. In addition, GS-42 calls for stringent oversight of cleaning operations after workers have completed the appropriate training.

The standard mandates follow-up visits by Green Seal, ensuring workers are continuing to perform the correct green cleaning procedures and processes as required by the standard. In many ways, this operations review is similar to the periodic audits Green Seal performs to confirm that, for example, manufacturers continue to produce their green cleaning chemicals adhering to the criteria that originally earned the products their certification. Along with detailing a very comprehensive training program, GS-42 also specifies that, to maintain compliance, certified professionals use only environmentally-preferable cleaning products.

Other requirements of the standard include, but are not limited to, the following.

Standard Operating Procedures: All cleaning service providers must develop and maintain a set of written guidelines that govern all cleaning processes, chemical handling and tracking requirements, equipment maintenance, operational procedures and reporting and recordkeeping practices.

Building-Specific Green Cleaning Plans: Cleaning service providers must create building-specific green cleaning plans that comprehensively describe the methods by which they will effectively clean a facility, while also protecting human health and the environment.

Floorcare Procedures: Cleaning service providers must develop and implement a floor maintenance plan consistent with manufacturers’ maintenance recommendations. This plan should extend the life of flooring through routine, periodic and restorative cleaning, with the goal of minimizing floor refinishing cycles, as refinishing is often the most environmentally harmful floorcare task.

Approved Equipment Selection: Vacuum cleaners and carpet extraction equipment must meet the minimum approval standards of the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Seal of Approval program.

Training Considerations: All cleaning workers must receive “best practices” training regarding the proper handling of chemicals, the proper use and maintenance of capital equipment and proper cleaning procedures.

Not only does this training help protect the health of the cleaning worker, but following green cleaning practices can also result in a significant reduction of indoor air pollutants when compared to using conventional cleaning processes. Because the professional cleaning industry tends to have high employee turnover, the standard recognizes the importance of and requires the training on proper cleaning procedures for all new workers.

This training should include teaching the proper sequencing of cleaning steps and the proper use of personal protective equipment. To comply with the standard, employers must provide this training before a new employee can begin work.

Read the full article here to learn more.

Preventing The Causes Of Slips And Falls

This article was originally published in Cleaning & Maintenance Management.

Although most likely to be identified as the primary cause of a slip-and-fall accident, please note that flooring materials, maintenance and hazards contribute to only about half of the problem.

That is to say, regardless of how safe the floor is, the remaining 50 percent of slips, trips and falls are attributable to four other areas.

These four contributing factors include:

• Footwear
• Fraud
• Hazard identification
• Training

Therefore, a prevention strategy should focus on a comprehensive approach that addresses all causes.

However, we must not neglect the vital topic of safe or unsafe floors as it relates to cleaning and maintenance.

Certain floor care practices also contribute to slips, trips and falls. Among these contributors to unsafe surfaces are:

• Using too much or too little of a floor care product
• Using the wrong cleaner for a particular surface
• Not following label instructions
• Not rinsing the floor care product, if required
• Not brushing the floor thoroughly, if required
• Not having or adhering to a routine floor maintenance schedule

Read the full article here to learn more about floor maintenance products. 

Cleaning The Right Way Makes You Smarter

This article was originally published in Cleaning & Maintenance Management. 

By Roni Barker

According to the best-selling book, Spark, by Dr. John Ratey of Harvard Medical School and a member of the Healthy Facilities Institute (HFI) Advisory Board, brain growth happens as a result of regular exercise.

That growth is especially pronounced when the exercise includes activities requiring an acquisition of skills. Thus, Ratey explains, learning to play the piano can make you smarter for performing algebra because developing the skills needed to play the piano creates brain connections that can be used to perform other tasks.

What does this have to do with cleaning? Simply put: Everything.

Learning the precise and well-orchestrated movements and skills needed for cleaning and disinfection tasks that produce repeatable results — a great example is Process Cleaning for Healthy Schools (PC4HS) — builds brain cells for other activities. The bottom line is that, process-based cleaners and, indeed, any skilled custodial professionals, are smarter than their unskilled counterparts.

Per Dr. Ratey, for maximum brain development, you need both aerobic and skill-based exercise. Building upon this, cleaning and learning better, faster, healthier ways of executing tasks should aid in brain growth.

Your Soil Is Showing

This article was originally published in Cleaning & Maintenance Management.

Just like any other floor surface, carpet takes a beating from foot traffic. And, if a facility has extended hours of operation and a high occupation density, the carpet can receive quite a bit of abuse. However, building occupants do not walk on all parts of a carpet; they track soils indoors in specific patterns that quickly develop into traffic lanes.

Facilities that take a proactive approach and clean their carpets on a consistent and regimented basis rarely need to worry about traffic lane soiling. But, locations with lower operating budgets, insufficient staffing relative to foot traffic or those not making use of floor matting tend to view traffic lane soiling as problematic.

If you remove dry particulate soils from carpets frequently and thoroughly, less intensive cleaning will be necessary. Especially in entrances and hallways, foot traffic is intensified and fibers become prematurely worm, matted down and rapidly soiled. If not cleaned properly and frequently, traffic lanes can be a real eyesore to an otherwise clean carpet.

So, the question is: “How can traffic lane soiling be remedied or even prevented in the first place?”

The answer is not universal to all facilities and can change with the seasons. Read the full article here to learn about four key factors in you carpet care procedures.

Hard Floor Care: More Shine, More Satisfaction

This article was originally posted in Cleaning & Maintenance Management

In North American markets, the level of shine on a floor reflects the performance of the custodial crew, with high gloss perceived as superior. Interestingly, in many European markets, more of a matte finish is preferred.

According to Bill Griffin, president of Cleaning Consultant Services Inc., it is a matter of differing opinion. "We polish it to a shine and, in Europe, they would shoot you for destroying the historic integrity of the floor if you patched it or made it shine," proclaims Griffin.

So, you want a shiny floor because it looks great, is more durable and, last but not least, you feel a sense of pride from gazing at a mirror-like finish. But, how do you get from a dull floor to one worthy of reflection? It is all in the ongoing, daily maintenance. However, the process begins with selecting a finish that will withstand a constant onslaught of foot traffic and detergents.

Choosing The Proper Finish

There are two basic camps regarding floor finish — what longtime industry veterans would refer to as wax. High solids finishes, which have a greater concentration of polymers, and low solids finishes, which contain more water. Solids content is what remains on the floor surface after a finish has been applied and the water contained therein fully evaporated. Generally, high solids finishes dry more quickly and are more resistant to scuffing, marring and other degradation. Low solids finishes are typically less expensive and require an area to be out of commission longer due to increased curing times.

As one would imagine, a low solids finish — roughly 18 percent to 22 percent polymer content — is more susceptible to discoloration and will not react as positively to frequent burnishing as will a high solids finish of roughly 22 percent or higher polymer content. However, the higher the solids percentage in a finish, the more difficult it will be to spread out evenly on a floor, opening the door to uneven gloss, mop swirls and worse if proper procedures are not followed.

Depending on the type of traffic your facility receives and the amount of resources at your availability for daily maintenance, your choice of floor finish will vary. A general rule of thumb is that high solids finishes require fewer coats to achieve a protected shine while lower solids finishes require increased stripping and refinishing cycles.

But, regardless of how many coats you apply — four to six thin layers of finish, with five being ideal — and notwithstanding the types of polymers present in your finish and their concentration, your success hinges on your maintenance.

Read the full article here.