Microfiber - recent health based cleaning implementation

We standardized on micro fiber mops, along with much of the commercial cleaning industry, for medical cleaning several years ago. Micro fiber's superior soil pickup re the objective of disinfecting and having the disinfectant effect persist longer because of less residual soil for pathogens to "eat" / live in is widely documented.

We also rolled it out to most non medical accounts and virtually all new accounts as well as part of our "cleaning for health" strategic thrust.

We started a relatively large medical facility recently. They'd been cleaned for years by an independent janitorial service who had been given passing grades and had been cleaning with conventional dust mops and mops.

We were amazed at the amount of dust pickup in the first day. Had the laundries going full blast - re laundered a weeks worth of micro fiber. This is a high needs customer that stated an at least modest level of satisfaction with the incumbent janitor service - and yet .......... Pretty good proof of concept - a little more dramatic feedback than we usually get.

Bob.

Carpet Cleaning - How to deal with Wicking - # 2

Was doing some research on wicking and ran across a carpet cleaning process I hadn't seen.

Basically the manufacturer of this product (Ban - Clene - a very well known carpet cleaning chemicals vendor) claims that they have an encapsulation product that will dissolve the soils still resident in the carpet underlayers to a powder that will eventually come out with repeated vacuuming.

Haven't tried it - but if you have a wicking problem and it works as advertised it would be a heck of a lot easier than the "total war" per my prior post on the subject.

Let's see if I am mastering the art of linking - else the search criteria follow also.

Bane-Clene® Pro’s Choice ARA Anti-Resoiling Anti Wicking Agent

www.baneclene.com/articles/wicking.html

Bob

Hand Sanitizers

Hand sanitizers have become, for want of a better word, epidemic.

OK - there is a better word - pervasive.

Basically there are two kinds - alcohol based and not alcohol based.

Alcohol kills most of the stuff we are interested in killing instantly.

Alcohol will also give you very scaly lizard like skin. Which can also be painful.

If you can use alcohol use it - if you are having trouble with skin reactions to the alcohol go find some of the water based variants. I haven't done the research (yet) - but I doubt they are as effective. Basically the 'instant kill' feature of alcohol means that you don't have to do prolonged hand washing with it. If using a water based sanitizer - read the instructions for how long it has to be on the hands to be effective.

The same cautions apply to sanitizing in commercial cleaning applications as to hand washing (prior post) tho - the minute you touch a contaminated surface, your hands are no longer pathogen free. No point in sanitizing if the next thing you are going to do is wipe your nose or touch a doorknob.

Bob

How to pick the right Ice Melters

We got our first ice storm since I started this blog, so it's time for this one.

First, if you want the whole story I recommend the Peters Chemical website - peterschemical.com. I pulled a great write up down from there.

They list 10 different active ingredients for their various purpose ice melters, as do several of the other manufacturers' web sites. hence they make money no matter what you chose and have no axe to grind re the different formulations.

Morton salt, on the other hand recommends sodium chloride (for obvious reasons).

Most commonly used are sodium chloride (table salt, rock salt, water softener salt, kosher sea salt, etc), calcium chloride and magnesium chloride.

Regular salt has two advantages:

1) It's cheap. (Well - it's cheap on a per pound basis)

2) If you forgot to buy ice melter it's on your table, in your water softener salt bag, etc.

It has two disadvantages -

1) It's expensive - if you are salting a large area some of the other formulations will actually do a better job with less salt - on a per square foot basis or as used basis - then sodium chloride. They are so much more effective that the higher per pound cost is more than offset by the higher productivity.

2) Kills your grass. Some of the other formulations don't.

The local TV station put their gardening guy on the other nite and recommended that you buy magnesium chloride formulations for this reason. Who am I to disagree ?

Not that it matters much but I learned researching this that ice melters don't so much melt ice as they undercut it.

What happens is they melt a small amount of the ice. The melt (salt brine) then spreads out underneath the rest of the ice and melts the layer adjacent to the pavement or sidewalk underneath the ice. It then becomes easy to scrape the ice, now detached from the pavement off to the side.

Cool huh ?

Bob

Odor control - daughter's cat

Ok - time to put my money where my mouth is - daughter's fiance is allergic to her cat. Worse, the cat finds the fiance's lap more comfortable than the daughter's, compounding the problem.

Bought two of the Newaire ozone generators for her apartment for a "cat christmas present". They are rated at about 500 square feet per install - basically a room sized appliance.

I'll keep you posted on whether it solves the problem or not.

I also hit on the idea of putting them on timers and only running them noon to 5 pm so that the level of ozone when daughter and or fiance are present is further reduced.

Supposedly you can run them 24 / 7 with no health effects, but if it'll sufficiently knock down the allergens / dander with no ozone exposure to humans whatsoever, why not do it ?

If it doesn't work they can always add hours incrementally until they completely eliminate any allergic reactions.

Bob

H1N1 - After the first round / hand washing

There was an article in the paper last week about the LACK of H1N1 outbreaks shutting down day cares. While expected to be the worst affected, so far, anecdotal evidence suggests that day cares appear to have had a similar or even lower incidence of H1N1 than schools, workplaces, etc.

The explanation given was that they did what everyone recommended and made sure the kids washed their hands thoroughly multiple times per day.

Cool.

Follow advice / read the instructions - no ?

There were multiple articles on exactly how to wash your hands in various popular press periodicals, as well as our janitorial trade periodicals.

The one I clipped said "do what mother told you", I.E.

- Thoroughly lather your hands with soap - soap is apparently preferable to alcohol based cleansers, but they are effective too.

- Wash for 20 seconds. 20 seconds is a VERY long time. The article I clipped describes this as singing "Happy Birthday" completely twice.

- Try to shut off the faucet with a paper towel so as not to recontaminate your hands at a high frequency touch point.

Remember also the talk about the flu having "peaked" current at this writing does not mean that flu season is over - usually there are multiple outbreaks, mutations to new strains, etc.

Keep washing.

Bob

ABM and the immigration raid.

First of all if you missed it ABM Janitorial had to discharge 1200 or their 4000 or so employees in this market last weekend because of their illegal status.

I assume the cross match of their social security numbers on ABM's payroll submissions triggered some sort of flag at the INS. ABM gave everybody the opportunity to correct any errors then discharged those who didn't.

First, ABM was 100% in compliance with the law. The law is an "honor system" for the employee - a contract cleaner can take the employee at his word that the identity documents being submitted when we fill out their I - 9's are legitimate. At this time there is no obligation on the employer to do a background check that might (or might not) verify that the documents were in fact "real" and not forgeries.

Second, the operative word is background check. At Coverall we do a high quality (i.e. expensive) background check on all new janitorial franchisees. Where merited or required by customers we require the janitorial franchise owners to do background checks on their employees as well.

It's been years since a franchise candidate investigation has turned anything other than a non - security related issue (we do get the occasional DUI - but unless a franchise owner will be operating a customer vehicle that poses minimal risk to the customer) but occasionally a franchisee employee candidate will get flagged for illogical or fraudulent immigration status and be disqualified from employment.

I have no opinion on the right way to proceed with the global issue of immigration reform, enforcement etc. From my standpoint, working exclusively with "legal" people, we are obviously at a cost disadvantage competitively to a variety of small competitors who aren't as scrupulous - but the big significant players like ABM are operating on the same playing field as we do, so we can deal with it.

However, if they claim they are doing a background check, it is obviously not as thorough as the one we get.

I pay about $100 per candidate to a company called "Orange Tree" - I recommend them to anyone, competitor or no. We have tested them against the (numerous) solicitations we get and so far they have been able to find some fairly tricky non security related transgressions better than anyone we have tested.

Of course, there are people out there who would "prefer not to know " aren't there ?

Bob