keeping floors clean in winter

[Rose Orlan]

I am wondering if anyone can give me some advice on keeping my floors clean. We have ceramic tile and in the winter, they get so filthy looking from salt and snow. We mop them each evening and have mats at our entrance. What do others do?

[Chuckels]

Mop more often. We are in So Cal and we sweep and spot mop on average three times per day and once again at closing. And when it snows here we give free wash and dry.


Chuckels

[Duane]

Rose,

There are several ways to help (remember, I said help) to keep your floor clean. More important is to keep the floor dry as to not cause a slip and fall issue.

1. Start by making sure all snow is removed from the outside of the store in front of the doors. I usually shovel an semi-circle around the front of the door and keep the snow and slush removed as much as possible. Do it often enough and a good push broom does the job.

2. You should have a good rubber mat to scrape the bottom of shoes on the outside of the door to help remove debris before tracking it into the store. This mat should have large holes in it to let the debris fall through. Make sure the edges are beveled so it doesn't create a tripping hazard. Some mats also have yellow border for safety.

3. The first mat in the door should be another rubber mat that has small "fingers" that help clean shoes.

4. You should then have enough carpeted mats to allow a minimum of 4 steps to dry the bottom of the shoes. A large mat would work okay, but two smaller mats are easier to handle and can be rotated with an extra dry mat from storage when one gets too wet.

5. Make sure you have your slippery when wet signs out at the end of the carpet (one on each side).

6. Mop at the end of the carpet area where people take their first step on to your tile several times a day (or as needed) so the dirt isn't tracked throughout the store.

7. If possible, see if you can safetly set up a fan (floor drying fan works best) to constantly blow across the tile and then onto the carpets to keep them as dry as possible.

You can find some good examples in www.globalindustrial.com catalog. They can be pricey, but their catalog does show a good selection of mats and carpets.

All the above is worst case scenerio, but should do the job during your next blizard (not that you will have any customers during the blizard....).

One last thing I have that makes life easy is an auto floor scrubber. It is battery operated and will lay down water, scrub the floor and then vacuum the water up all in one pass. The floor is nearly dry when done and takes about 20 minutes to do my 2500 sf of tile. Sometimes I just make a quick pass over the heavy traffic areas that takes about 3-5 minutes. Sweet. Very sweet.....

Duane.

[Fred50]

Duane,

Please give us more details on the floor scrubber!

[Duane]

I bought an older 20" model on :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: and replaced the battery charger, batteries and squeegee. I have about $1400 into it, but considering the cost of a new one is around $5,000, I am pretty happy with it...

Here are some sites that show different types of autoscrubbers.

http://www.tennantco.com/products/machines.asp?ProductLineID=3
http://cleanking.com/list.asp?CtgID=13
http://www.cleanfreak.com/floormachines.htm

Duane.

[CharlieS]

Duane is on the money with the autoscrubber. I have one in each store. One is a Nobles Autoscrubber 2401, the other is a Tornado 20". Both are great, but the Nobles is really the better of the two.

These things are great. They clean the floors far better than mopping, much quicker, and with much less effort. I bought both of mine on Ebay for about $1K each.

The Nobles is great for several reasons. It has forward and reverse, plus a big wide curved squeegee that picks up almost all the water. It has adjustable forward speed. Mine has been trouble free since I bought it.

If you have vinyl tile, then you might also consider a propane buffer. You can spray buff your floor and make it look gorgeous with very little physical effort.

Charlie