THE SKY’S THE LIMIT
With more offices now posing added challenge thanks to high ceilings or glass atriums, Cleanology here discusses the advantages of high level vacuums like SkyVac.
Every commercial cleaning firm is familiar with the challenges posed by offices with high ceilings or glass atriums. Short of hiring Spider-Man, the options for removing dust particles from harder to reach areas are limited, disruptive, and expensive. However, when Cleanology was contracted to deliver high level cleaning at design firm Pentagram’s offices, it brought SkyVac, a high level vacuum cleaner to tackle the least accessible areas.
Large corporate firms tend to house their staff in great headquarters with glass atriums supported by solid steel structures. Many other office buildings, although smaller, still integrate glass atriums or tall ceilings.
Andy De Sallis, Sales and Marketing Director at Cleanology, said: “Progressive companies now seek workspaces with a more open- plan and industrial aesthetic; with overhead pipework and electrics on show or in exposed ducting - gone are the days of suspended ceiling tiles in modern offices. This means there are many more surfaces openly exposed for dust and grime to settle on – SkyVac is the answer.”
Traditional options for cleaning high level areas have placed restrictions on frequency. Andy continued: “Typically, a cherry picker with an operative onboard would be used for the really tall atriums and ceilings or, if a cherry picker was unsuitable, then a tower.”
Towers, although cheaper than hiring a cherry picker, are still expensive and disruptive – hire, build and dismantling are charged in the region of £400 plus manpower. Once it is has been assembled, the tower may not extend to all the areas which need cleaning, and moving it around the workspace is not a possibility. As a result, high level cleaning often happens just once a year – or even less frequently.
In 2017, Pentagram approached Cleanology to arrange high level cleaning. Pentagram is a large independent design consultancy, with offices in London, New York and San Francisco. Its work covers everything from architecture, products and identities, to posters, exhibitions, websites, and digital installations.
The company’s Notting Hill offices feature a glass atrium at the centre of the building. A cherry picker would have been too wide to fit through the doors, so a tower would usually have been the next choice. However, in this case, Cleanology had what Andy described as a ‘eureka moment’, commenting: “With SkyVac, we were able to reach all of the nooks and crannies; it is much faster and more accessible, and cheaper. If Pentagram needs the work to be done more regularly, we can easily send operatives more often.”
Unlike its traditional alternatives, the SkyVac is portable. It employs up to 8 tapered, super lightweight carbon fibre poles up to a height of 12m. Each section only weighs 305g, which can be moved around all the hard to reach areas without staff having to lean or even leave the ground. It also comes equipped with a camera that shows the operative where to direct operations, and allows them to monitor quality control.
32 | SPECIALIST CLEANING
Cleanology staff worked over the weekend; the SkyVac is portable and less disruptive than building a tower in a work space. The powerful 1500W motor is boisterous enough to tackle loose cloudy dust and thick grime at the highest regions. At the end of the job, the operatives were delighted with the results.
Andy continued: “Nowadays, warehouse-type offices are open plan. That change in interiors has a huge impact on cleaning, because those high ceilings – without suspended ceilings – and exposed pipes are where the dust sits. High level cleaning becomes really important. With SkyVac, we are now able to offer high level cleaning on a much more regular basis. We can get rid of dust and cobwebs in a couple of hours and it gives us a huge increase in productivity. Instead of one operative performing the cleaning while another holds the ladder, we are now able to do the job much more safely with just one member of staff.”
www.cleanology.com twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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