Floor Finish Demystified

You've taken your time stripped your floor to the base.  Cleaned all of your corners, stripped baseboards and rinsed your floor sufficiently.  

What next?

Who sets your expectations?

You, your supervisor, your co-workers?

This is most common the struggle in Floorcare.  It's easy to leave the floor after you've applied sealer if required and floor finish happy as a clam.  Every floor if done reasonably well looks great after it is done.  

The reality starts now.

The questions that need to be answered aren't all that new but they were best answered two stages ago.  

Do I want a floor that is, low maintenance? High gloss right away that is easily low speed burnished, a high gloss medium maintenance floor or the absolute optimum, a daily maintained floor with high to very high gloss appearance?  Regardless of your expectations you can't try every finish out there.  So where do you go?  Maybe the large National distributor?  Maybe the local building center or the big box store?  No matter where you get your products from you need to know what you are applying.  It is true large volume vendors offer you potential advice and support.  Decent selection, training resources and quite often specialists in each vertical. The internet has made knowledge readily available.  Is that knowledge accurate?  Is the information you have gotten relevant to your circumstance?  

Here is the case for your local janitorial distributor.

Can you find all of it when you need it?  If you have and can continuously find it....?  Is it the same product that was on the shelf last time you purchased?

Your decision making process in almost all cases is the difference between success and the longevity of your efforts.  Time is money when you are responsible for payroll.  Time is even more important when you have to redo your floor any sooner than you should.

Early next month I will produce a couple of articles with more answers. 

1. What did I do wrong?  

2. The top ten hints about Floorcare.

3. The incomplete guide to Floorcare. Rules for every floor finish.

Biologicals and hydrocarbon products

Tell me you saw this one coming out of a oil tanker crash.  In the late eighties a major oil spill happened in the North Pacific Ocean.  From all disasters there is a lesson and in my opinion this man-made disaster allowed the world a new solution to hydrocarbon spills the world over.  

While scientists cleaned up wildlife they noticed that a few localized areas had no oil or even signs of it.  The interesting result of this discovery?  A bacteria was isolated that has a tremendous hunger for all hydrocarbons.  Not just Brent crude.  But refined forms of oil offer this non-pathogenic bacteria a wonderful food source that results in nothing more than water and Carbon dioxide as an effluent.  Talk about amazing!

Ten years fast forward and this bacteria was farmed for the benefit of the rest of the world.  This bacteria blend offers odor control where gas spills have occurred.  Clean up after burst oil tanks.  Diesel spills are easily cleaned and buildings once slated for destruction are restored with minimal labour.  

We have manufactured two products with this bacteria for the last 6 or 7 years.  Both have earned us accolades from restoration contractors, Environmental engineering firms all over Ontario.  Households have been saved months of dealing with the ever present odor of stove oil.  If you are ever forced to deal with a petroleum mess. Contact us. We guarantee you will be impressed.

Below are a few images of a remediation demonstration we did.  Before and after.  Fourteen hours.  Wow.

Before 

During 

After

Biologicals for round the clock cleaning. Part I

Carpet Cleaning with Biologicals. 

Recently I cleaned a carpet in one of Niagara's busiest public establishments with a local Cleaning Contractor. The carpet was so deeply soiled that as you walked you could feel your feet re-gluing themselves to the surface of the floor.  Having been here before, I knew full well that carpet is without a doubt the biggest soil magnet.  Even after cleaning some carpets they seem like they haven't been cleaned. 

Carpet behaves like a wick.  Soil through nearly osmotic process becomes evenly saturated throughout the medium.  Once visibly cleaned many carpets will appear almost as bad as they were before they were cleaned shortly after they dry. Many carpet cleaners realize this and with their super powerful truck mounted machines use a shotgun to squash a fly.  Many times this process gives amazing results.

Back to my carpet cleaning adventure. We opted to use three different products to do our test trial. A high pH degreaser, a co solvent traffic lane cleaner and a mild biological carpet cleaner with live bacteria that produce enzymes.  All three locations showed similar soiling. Image #1 is a reasonable cross section of the entire carpet.

This carpet was treated at 8:00 am with Bio Power on the left half and allowed to stand.  Almost to the point where it was saturated.  Shortly after we applied a high pH degreaser to the right portion of the carpet.  At 8:45 we began cleaning the carpet using a truck mounted machine at 500 psi and 175 degrees F.  Keep in mind that this is a polypropylene carpet solution dyed.  Keep in mind, I am not an advocate of using degreasers to clean carpet.  

The end result is great all things considered.  Image #2 shows our results.  

No doubt in my mind that the high pH degreaser in the short term did a great job.  What the picture doesn't  show?  The colour is generally uniform.  Four hours later as the carpet was still saturated I noticed an improvement in the results on the biological side.  

The moral of the story is: Biologicals offer great results and use fewer harmful chemicals.  The risk of damage is nearly none.  Biologicals offer one even greater benefit.  They continue to clean long another you leave.  As most carpet cleaners know carpets stay wet for up to 16 hours after having been cleaned. As long as Biologicals have a food source and moisture they continue to do their thing. No doubt the results are not perfect.  All things considered a  vast improvement.  Carpets like this one would definitely benefit from monthly cleaning.

I recommend that you try Biopower to clean your carpets.  

Image#1

Image#2

Dilution and the case for control

Last week as I was preparing to deep scrub a floor with a caretaker; I asked the caretaker for a measuring cup.  Measuring cup? he said quizzically.  We don't have them here.  Ok I said.... What about a coffee cup?  Ya absolutely he said.  I have one let me go get it.  Five minutes later he came back with a big grin.  Here you go....  

My best guess at measurement and we were on the way to a shiny floor.  

Needless to say.  What was the visible cost? 

About ten minutes.  

What was the hard labor cost?

Maybe $5 total cost.  

What was the real risk?

A floor that wasn't properly scrubbed and prepared.  

What could be the cost?

Two gallons of floor finish. $45  Four hours of his time.  $120 

Soft costs assuming that the floor did go bad?

Facility closure for 6 hours to redo the job properly. A second labourer if a second staff member was there to replace the free labor provided by myself.

All this for a dollar measuring cup?

Dilution itself can be a real monster.  To make that aspect a lot easier I have added a copy of Dilution 101 for those of us that aren't 100% certain of proper dilution procedures.

No doubt dilution control has become readilly available for most products at minimal cost if any.  The real question is?  Do facility managers realize that this potential for loss exists?  

GHS For Canada

HOW DOES GHS AFFECT YOUR BUSINESS?

If you haven't heard already, in Canada there is going to be an integration of GHS (Global Harmonized System) with our current WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System).

This does not mean that WHMIS is going away. In Canada, we are merely integrating the missing components of GHS to our current standards. The updates include changes to classification rules, label requirements and safety data sheet (SDS) formerly Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS).

Why are these changes taking place?
There are many reasons as to why all countries are adopting GHS. One of these is to ensure consistency between countries and allow for smaller nations that cannot afford their own standards to be able to adopt these standards for safety. There are also easier to understand symbols in GHS. To let the users of the products know how to safely handle materials, a more user friendly system has been adopted. It was found that even after training on WHMIS many would not remember what WHMIS symbols and classifications meant. By adopting a 'household' symbol style, classification should be easier to recognize.

What are the benefits of GHS?
The basic goal of hazard communication is to ensure that employers, employees and the public are provided with adequate, practical, reliable and comprehensible information on the hazards of chemicals, so that they can take effective preventive and protective measure for their health and safety. Thus, implementation of effective hazard communication provides benefits for governments, companies, workers, and members of the public.

What must change to meet GHS?
Most of these changes will occur on the end of the supplier. It is your supplier's responsibility to review classifications, have up-to-date SDSs and labels that adhere to the new policies for the products which they provide. We will outline in a later post what these labels and SDSs need to include to comply with the new standards.

In Canada, as an employer, your responsibilities to educate and train workers on hazardous materials regularly, ensure those materials are properly labelled and stored, prepare workplace labels and have up-to-date SDS (MSDS) available do not change.

Revised training from WHMIS to GHS standards will be necessary. If you have your own in house training 

program, slight modifications may be necessary to meet the new standards. If you purchase your WHMIS training system from your supplier or a third party, such as the WHMIS training course through Corporate Chemicals & Equipment, it is that party's responsibility to have the course up-to-date for your training needs.

When does this come to effect?

In the US, most companies have completed their changes to meet the GHS standards. In Canada, complete implementation needs to be done by May 2015. In this time suppliers may be updating their labels and MSDS (SDS)s to meet these standards. Having these newer labels and SDSs does not violate current WHMIS standards and adopting them earlier is encouraged as to meet the May 2015 deadline.

Next Steps.

As a business or employer, consult with your chemical supplier on how to start making the changes if they haven’t already approached you on it. They should have a plan in place. If they do not have a plan, you may want to consider a new supplier. Also continue the discussion here, on LinkedIn under our Corporate Chemicals & Equipment company page or on Twitter @CorpChem #GHS.

Microfiber for Cleaning. Is premium worth the added cost.

As a distributor I have to do my best to serve all markets.  As a manufacturer I am forced to service the most viable markets.  Microfiber is without a doubt one the most challenging markets that I am forced to compete in on a daily basis.  Some products are made to the most rigid of expectations.  Others are built with economy in mind.  Here is the rub.  Why should the Customer buy a cloth for $2.50 when they can get as many as 6 cloths at a chain store for the same money?  I can and have said these words hundreds of times.  You get what you give.  If you give 35 cents you will get similar return on your investment.  Likewise in the other direction.

Of course there will always be arguments that offer good reasoning.  "I lose nearly 50% of my microfiber due to pilferage over the year."  Or...  "Why would I buy premium products when I don't have the budget to supply all staff with enough microfiber to do their job?"  The value proposition is yours to decide and to justify.

But here is my logic.  When you buy premium product you can be assured of 300-700 washes before replacement,  while a low cost alternative might be only useful for 50 washes. You can most certainly guarantee better efficacy with premium cloths.  Use cost will be lower when you buy premium.  But results are absolutely #1.  Education, Healthcare and related fields do need to pay attention to this.  Ironically, they have been.  The focus on low cost alternatives will always be a reality in public bids.  Fortunately most buyers can justify the investment in "The Good Stuff". 

Where do I see Green Chemistry in 5, 10, 20 years?

When I entered the Jansan industry in 1985 the beginnings of the sustainability movement were already under way.  Almost every industry insider knew that ortho dichlorobenzene was a known carcinogen.  D'limonene was a miraculous new solvent that could easily replace butyl solvents.  Now d'limonene is a controlled substance in many jurisdictions.  In the early 90's manufacturers made us aware nonyl phenols were known endocrine disrupters.
In the past 25 or so years I have noticed a natural progression towards what has become a cash cow for some companies.  Entire industries have developed as a result of market reaction.  Certainly there will always be manufacturers that develop products that fool consumers into the belief that they are purchasing products that are greener, safer and more gentle on the environment.  The reality is that consumer/user safety is the most important factor in the acquisition process.  Many consumers believe that a rubber stamp on the product that they purchase means that everything is ok....
In the late 90's biologicals became an even bigger part of Jansan chemistry with the addition of bacterial and enzyme products for cleaning and odor control.  In fact it was said at that time, that in some parts of the world 25% of all cleaning products contained enzyme additives.  These bacterial solutions have evolved well beyond the expectations of industry veterans.  Shortly after an oil spill it was discovered that specific bacteria thrived in the ocean in areas where oil was nearly non existent. Just a few years ago a strain of bacteria was discovered that had effective biological activity in the presence of plastics and their additives.
What's next?  We all have our suspicions.  But here is the good news!  The likelihood of there being toxins present in these new cleaning compounds is significantly greater than it was just a few years ago.  The moral of the story is....
The revolutionary chemistry of today is the everyday cleaning solution of tomorrow.  And that is the reality of the free market economy.  Safer products shouldn't mean additional costs.  Third party approval agencies offer the consumer a guarantee.  For this guarantee the end user must accept that products will cost more.  My two cents worth...  If you purchase your cleaning products from a trusted source.  You shouldn't have to pay more for safer technology and biodegradability.