How to remove wax from carpets

Here's a stab from the past.

There are several alternatives for cleaning up wax drips in this article - I was taught the second method (which also is the system for removing red dye stains - Kool aid, fruit juices, red wine, etc - except that you add the wax to bind to the dye).

Basically:

- Lay a white cloth on the stain.

-Use a steam iron to apply heat and moisture - the wax will wick up into the cloth.

Article

Bob

"The 5 germiest places in the workplace".

Here's an article by Peter Sheldon - VP Operations at Coverall corporate.

He's the lead tech guy in our "Cleaning for Health / Health Based Cleaning " strategy.

LINK

"Up to 80 % of cold and flu germs are spread via hand contact".

Peter's description of what not to touch in your office.

Or - you could hire us to sanitize it ?

Bob

How to use ozone to deodorize it "may be the most effective......."

Todays Cleanfax Online (a magazine for the carpet cleaning industry) has a nice succinct description of ozone generators use in deordorizing.

Link

A couple of repeat observations.

There is a lot of data out there talking about possible links between ozone and cancer.

Would be relevant IF there was any ozone left in the treated room after treatment.

There is not. To avoid this risk all you need to do is set the timer on the machine, be smart enough to remember how long you set if for, and doubly smart enough to wait a half an hour or so after the machine shuts off. If you smell ozone when you walk in - leave the room for another 10 minutes or so.

Again we've solved some really nasty mildew problems with ours - we like the technology.

Cool, huh ?

Bob

How to avoid germs in the airport - Happy Thanksgiving and Ho, ho .....

Washington Post

It's not just terrorists and perverted body scan viewers anymore - now you have to worry about catching the flu from fellow travelers.

Our VP of Operations - Peter Sheldon is quoted on how to avoid such trials in the above link.

Happy trails to you ............

Bob

Star Tribune Article - Wage dispute at another contractor

Kind of an interesting article in the Strib over the weekend about an employee of a janitorial contractor who asserted that he was, among other things, underpaid.

He was cleaning a retailer - not clear exactly which one but it sounded like a Cub or other Super Valu grocery store.

I don't know anything about the specific case - tho the attorney for the janitorial contractor made a statement that is likely to have the wage and hour people on the contractor like white on rice (she implied that they were treating cleaners as salaried employees rather than as hourly employees) but the article did make one very good point.

The retailers and restaurants (Wal - Mart, Target, supermarket chains, Menards, Fridays, Brinkers, Champps etc) all pay cleaning contractors at rates that make it unlikely that they are using legal labor. But since they have a janitorial contractor actually fronting for them in the charade, they can claim "plausible deniability".

Wal Mart got tagged for $40,000,000 or so a few years ago for using in house employees whose legal status (or lack thereof) was basically winked at - so I am sure they are now laundering the illegals thru a constellation of small cleaning contractors too diffuse to ever attract enforcement attention. The rest of the big box retailers were already doing it.

A second charade uses a variety of national brokers (U.S. Maintenance being the most prominent in this market) to put 2 levels of incorporation between the retailer and the illegals.

Appears to work - so far I haven't seen any action in any of the trade publications that has penetrated this veil.

This is why you will almost never see a reputable commercial cleaning contractor like ABM, Marsden, Onesource, Mid City etc working for these type of customers.

Nor will you see us.

I think of 800 customers we have one restaurant - a one off owned by a customer we do a lot of other work for. No big boxes. We don't sub to the brokers.

We were once offered a $20,000 per month restaurant account - already fully staffed with the fired janitorial contractor's employees that we could inherit. When we heard they were making $7.50 per hour in a market where starting wages for ABM are over $10 per hour we were suspicious. We sent in one of our bi - lingual operators with the predictable outcome - no legals on a 10 person crew. Easy decision. Didn't bother the $billion restaurant company that owns it tho. We told them what we would need to replace the staff with legal employees - costing them another 20% or so. Anyone care to speculate on what decision they made?

As I said in the ABM raid post a year ago - we do a pretty expensive background check on all janitorial franchisees that claims to check not just the authenticity but also the reasonableness of the SS numbers and ID given us. Raises our pricing - but we're good enough at marketing to survive reasonably well without being the low price guy, and I sleep better at night.

Bob

Microfiber - how to launder it:

One of the reasons microfiber is better than string mops is because it is :

A) Easy to launder - string mops are very difficult to get clean.

B) Necessary to launder - string mops at least partially release soil and are only moderately filthy after rinsing. With micro fiber you can't fool yourself this way.

We train the janitorial franchisees on this - but one of the commercial cleaning trade periodicals put a handy tip sheet out the other day:

1) Both wet mops and dust mops require washing.

2) Wash in gentle cycle - but hot water and a mild detergent are ok to use.

3) Fabric softener attacks the microfiber - don't use it.

4) No bleach ! - the acid attacks the microfiber too.

5) Dry on low heat.

6) Don't use dryer sheets - same thing as fabric softener.

7) A netted bag is not a bad idea when washing - necessary for some types of microfiber actually.

Article also mentioned (news to me) that there are specially reinforced variants of microfiber for ceramic tile - the grout lines abrade the conventional microfiber and shorten it's life expectancy.

Bob

Emulsification

I've used the word emulsification for years. There was a kind of cryptic explanation in one of the janitorial trade journals recently, so I thought I'd add a definition to this resource.

I actually got "B"'s in organic chemistry in college, I've been in the commercial cleaning business for almost 25 years, I own a soap company in another market - and I still had to google about 5 different definitions before I (kind of) got it.

Basically the soap molecules suspend and or dissolve in water - whereas soil molecules generally do not.

The soap molecules then clump together in little balls called micelles (micelles link to wikipedia ). These clumps can in turn attract oil and other soils because of their chemistry, which they then surround (encapsulate) and the soil now becomes suspended inside the soap balls and can be mopped or vacuumed up.

Bob