EXPERT ADVICE
SPILLING THE BEANS ON MOPPING UP
Spillages may be messy and unavoidable, but mopping is a sloppy response, says James White, Managing Director of Denis Rawlins Ltd, who is calling for a more professional approach to cleaning up.
When did you last hear that familiar announcement over the tannoy: ‘Will a member of staff please go to aisle nine’? It’s an everyday occurrence, yet many premises’ managers seem to struggle when responding to accidental spillages.
Why is it challenging? Spills are unpredictable events that can happen at the most inconvenient times; though they are so commonplace that even if you don’t have a formal cleaning plan, you know you need to prepare for them.
Liquid does travel quickly when it hits a hard floor. So on a busy day in a store or a fast-paced kitchen environment, it may be difficult to clear everyone out of the area while you clean up the spill and leave the floor to dry.
The big risk is that a customer, or employee, slips and is injured, with the likelihood of a costly damages claim to follow. Hence, the use of the ubiquitous yellow ‘Wet Floor’ warning sign. It’s not unusual to see these still standing sentry long after the event. Erring on the side of caution, staff are probably under orders to be sure the surface is bone dry.
I’ve even seen employees hunkering down with a roll of kitchen paper and a spray bottle. It doesn’t look very professional, but more important, it’s time-consuming and haphazard, especially in a busy space where people are milling about.
The most common scenario, of course, is the worker with mop and bucket. As a company that advocates a science-based approach to cleaning, we at Denis Rawlins are campaigning to ‘Chop the Mop’. There are a raft of reasons.
Hand mopping is laborious and time-consuming. It is not effective or hygienic, as a mop spreads dirt and
www.tomorrowscleaning.com
micro-organisms, rather than removes them. Relying on manual pressure, it is a struggle to shift all the soil from grout lines in tiled floors or other crevices. And perhaps, most relevant in this context, mopping inevitably leaves a layer of moisture on a hard floor, so the area must remain off limits for some time to allow the floor to dry, extending the disruption.
A scrubber dryer is a more professional option, at least in larger premises with a well-equipped daytime cleaning team. These machines have the ability to remove the spillage to a recovery tank while washing the floor thoroughly and drying the surface in one pass.
However, in the minority of situations where this option is available, cleaning up spills with a scrubber dryer machine could be likened to cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Manoeuvring the machine through customer traffic and
clearing a wider area for the cleaning operation is likely to spread rather than minimise the disruption.
The ideal response to a spillage is three-fold:
• suck the liquid from the floor with a wet/dry vacuum,
• apply a cleaning solution to the area to dislodge any residue and soil that remains, and
• dry the floor thoroughly and quickly.
Whatever the offending liquid or substance, this avoids leaving a sticky patch to which dirt will adhere. Also there is no further need to prevent people using the area as the floor is dry and safe to walk on.
At Denis Rawlins Ltd, we advise facilities managers and contractors on cleaning methods and machinery, and we have tested a wide variety of equipment from different manufacturers. The ability to clean hygienically at low cost was what first attracted our attention to Kaivac and its OmniFlex crossover cleaning system.
This is based on a simple platform that allows any cleaning team to progress from mopping to hygienic cleaning, in stages if necessary, by adding a vacuum pump and other components. In its fully functional AutoVac form, the OmniFlex machine meets those requirements for rapid spillage response. The battery-powered model is particularly well suited to this task, and matches the performance of a scrubber dryer at a fraction of the cost.
So let’s plan a more professional response to this everyday emergency.
www.rawlins.co.uk
Tomorrow’s Cleaning November 2015 | 63
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80