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

H1N1 - how long does it live outside the body ?

Up to 24 hours on dry non - porous surfaces.

Up to 72 hours in select moist situations. (Per Dr. Charles Gerba - Link )

This came up in the technical sessions of our franchisee meeting this week.

What is kind of interesting is we've done a number of top to bottom decontaminations of day care centers and educational institutions with flu epidemics - at considerable cost to the customer.

But if you can stay closed for 24 hours a lot of the H1N1 is gone. If you can stay closed for 72 hours it will all be gone.

While that sounds like a non - starter, if your facility closes for the weekend at 5 PM on Friday, and reopens at 8 AM Monday, that's 63 hours - almost enough for a complete die off.

If you shut down at noon on Friday, it's almost 72 hours.

And if most of your people have the flu, might as well ?

Cool huh ?

Until the first person sneezes on Monday and recontaminates the place ?

Which is why staying home if you have H1N1 is the best thing you can do for you employer.

(Never thought I'd hear myself saying that.)

Bob

Odor control bathrooms, etc.

Visited the Newaire people at the ISSA janitorial supply show last month.

Saw the whole product line - specifically an ozone generator designed to be wired right into a wall to run intermittently 24 / 7. It's about the size of a 4 plug electrical outlet.

Very cool idea.

They claim you could put it in a bedroom or other area where people spend long periods of time with no risk from the ozone - because of the tiny dose.

I wouldn't - plus it's probably unnecessary in those type of situations - not that much odor - usually.

But it would be great in bathrooms, kitchens, over a cat box or pet bed - areas that often generate odor.

Especially in an office or plant bathroom, this is a great idea - lots of people use those rooms - lots of odor generation - but nobody (we hope) hangs out in there for 24 straight hours - so absolutely minimal inhalation of ozone by any one individual - but it's working all the time to destroy odors.

Their car cigarette lighter ozone generator (similar to the old Sharper Image one) is probably a good idea if you travel with smokers - while a little more exposure to ozone would result, I'm guessing the ozone would be less risky than breathing in the second hand smoke organic solvents it neutralizes.

For more data on how ozone works, see my original post on ozone generators.

Bob

Carpet cleaning - how to deal with wicking

Wicking is pretty common in situations where the original stain involved a high volume of liquid. The liquid evaporates, but the color (coffee, soda, juice or some beverage usually) penetrates the underlayers of the carpet and spreads far wider than the visible entry spot.

Note the words high volume - a full glass of soda or a full cup of coffee - not a little splash.

We then clean the visibly spotted area - successfully remove the stain from the visibly spotted area - but leave the residual dyes, soils, etc all around the surrounding area.

The frustrating (but also kind of neat) thing is that when the underlayer soil gets moist again - often from ambient humility - it returns to the surface thru the entry point - not directly above the "well" of stain / source - and reestablishes the stain in the exact same spot and size.

Has something to do with the chemistry of the carpet - I've never seen an explanation of exactly what the process is - but I've seen the problem way too many times.

Now you repeat the cleaning of the stain - visible area only. It gets wet again at some later date. Process repeats.

Commercial cleaning crew frustrated - customer unhappy - not good.

Only solution I've been able to come up with is total war. Instead of cleaning just the spot, you:

A) Clean a wide radius around the spot.

B) Saturate the area with many times as much water as you would normally use.

C) Agitate aggressively with a carpet brush or bonnet (other posts) to emulsify / bind the soil to the detergent / carpet cleaning chemical.

D) Extract multiple times - possibly continuing to add more water - until the intake water no longer shows any color whatsover from the soil.

That said - 2 observations -

1) Water is bad for carpet. It's ok to put a lot in - as long as you take it all out. Well maintained carpet cleaning equipment with good water lift and multiple extractions are necessary to avoid damaging the carpet.

2) This whole time consuming and expensive process could have been avoided. If the minute the spill occured someone started blotting and kept soaking up the fluid with towels, cloths or paper towels and removed the majority of the fluid by blotting, it wouldn't have spread out thru the neighboring underlayer. Also, less total soil would remain in the carpet to be removed. Thus one or two treatments of the stain would suffice to restore the carpet to pretty close to clean.

Bob

Lunch rooms - how to choose the right type of floor.

Most people put either carpet or tile in a lunchroom.

From a commercial cleaner's viewpoint, the best situation is a little of both.

The "high spill" areas - the 2 feet or so around food preparation counters, microwaves, sinks etc should be tile - preferably ceramic. These areas will never look good with carpet as there are too many incidental spills to keep up with.

Unless the clientele spills a lot (small children, very disgruntled employees) the area under the chairs and tables should be carpet, as it's easier to maintain and has a lower probability of a slip and fall accident if there is a small spill.

Vinyl tile should never be used. Tough to keep a finish on it. In the "spill zone" the constant acid bath from food acids will strip the finish off the tile, hence my preference for ceramic. In the seating area the chair feet and table feet will strip the finish in a few days in most situations, also leaving an undesirable appearance, hence my preference for carpet, or failing that ceramic tile.

Ceramic tile is more expensive to install - but in a lunchroom the cost to maintain vinyl tile at a reasonable level of appearance is prohibitive.

Bob

Carpet cleaning - spot cleaning - general

You could probably write a book on this.

The first thing to remember is that spots don't get better with age. The sooner you attack them the less effort to remove them, and the better the results.

Ideally, the person doing the spill would grab a paper towel immediately after the spill and blot the fluid gently. Similarly, any food dropped on the carpet should be picked up or vacuumed up immediately before it can stain the carpet.

(By the way, few things annoy me more than seeing one of my operations guys drop food on the floor and then cluelessly ignore it - I haven't fired any of them for this - but I've been sorely tempted. More than once, I might add.)

Failing that, it depends on the size of the spot. I have separate posts for red dye and iron removal. Pretty much anything else can be removed with a general purpose spot cleaner or, if too large or too long set, carpet cleaning techniques.

For small spots - follow label instructions - which in general say spray the spot with the spot remover, give it a few minutes of dwell time for the spot cleaner to attach to / emulsify the soil, and blot with a clean white (no dye to stain the carpet) cloth. Paper towels are usually ok too - but a cloth is a little better.

If the spot contains too great a volume of soil for a general purpose spotter escalate to any of the appropriate carpet cleaning techniques I describe below.

(We do use a briefcase sized extractor for larger spots. It functions exactly like the bigger extractors - very little set up time compared to full sized equipment tho.)

You may also find that when you have cleaned the spot, you have the original color where the spot used to be, and darker, soiled carpet all around it. This means you waited too long to clean the carpet, and now it's time to extract the whole area.

Wicking is a separate topic I'll handle in a separate post.

Bob