Summer Break Doesn’t Apply to School Maintenance Staffs

By: Briana Smith  |  June 26, 2014

Summertime Deep Cleaning & Maintenance Procedures

Mark your calendars - it’s time to tackle those yearly restorative cleaning projects! Many school maintenance staffs are gearing up to tackle some time consuming cleaning tasks including gum & graffiti removal, as well as deep cleaning various hard flooring surfaces. Here are some ideas for making these tasks easier.

Gum Removal

Gum removal is probably one of the trickiest tasks to face as gum likes to stick to everything & everywhere, not to mention that students are rather creative with how they get rid of their gum…and nothing is worse than trying to remove old gum. Somehow it manages to harden like concrete as time progresses. The most effective way of removing gum is through the use of a pressure washer or with Gumwand. Gumwand is a small portable system that uses a cleaning solution to turn gum into a powder that can then be brushed away from hard surfaces or even carpeting.

Graffiti Removal

The key to effective graffiti removal is identifying whether the marks and stains are water-, oil- or solvent-based. Once you’ve figured that out, it gets a lot easier. It’s best to see if your general cleaner/degreaser will remove the graffiti first, especially from desks, but if that doesn’t work than choose a graffiti removal cleaning product with low VOCs (volatile organic compounds) that is meant to be used for the marks that are needed to be removed.

Gym Floors

Don’t make gym floor stripping & refinishing more difficult than it needs to be - with the right preparation & weather permitting it can be done in a day, as opposed to several days. WAXIE Chemical Specialist Tom Ciccarone has these 5 Tips for Refinishing Your Gym Floor. Oftentimes, school districts will accomplish gym floor refinishing with a small maintenance team going from school to school taking care of only the gym floors in a specialized form of team cleaning. Remember, it’s important to keep up with your daily maintenance so that all the dirt & grit that gets tracked in afterwards doesn’t ruin the time you just spent refinishing the floor!

The Windsor Cricket does a great job of effectively cleaning gym floors without breaking the budget.

Preventative & daily cleaning procedures include:

- Entrance matting will help to stop most of the sand & dirt at the door; make sure that it extends at least 15 feet from the doors as it takes more than two steps for most of the dirt to be removed from shoes.

- Dust mopping daily & after each major activity (when possible): student assemblies, PE class, volleyball practice, basketball game, wrestling match, school dance, etc.

- Wet mopping daily will remove any of the soils, spills, etc. that dust mopping misses & it’ll help to maintain the traction of the floor for those sporting events.

Carpeting

Time to get out the carpet extractors for their annual deep carpet cleaning! With as much foot traffic as schools get on a daily basis, carpets end up becoming quite soiled by the end of the school year. Carpet extraction helps to restore carpets by removing even more dirt & sand that gets caught at the very bottom of the carpet structure than you can accomplish with vacuuming or encapsulation (which are excellent daily & interim maintenance procedures) alone. Before starting, it’s best to vacuum and treat spots with spot removers as a way of prepping your carpets. You want to make sure that all of the loose dirt is removed first, just as you would sweep a floor before mopping it. And don’t forget to get out your signs so that no one walks on the carpet while it is wet!

For best results, make sure to use a pre-spray or pretreatment for heavily soiled areas, such as traffic lanes, as they will help to loosen & emulsify tough soils. This will make the time you spend extracting more effective.

Cleaning Tip: Use furniture tabs when moving furniture back onto wet carpet to prevent metal legs, etc. from leaving unwanted spots and creating more work to keep clean.

Tile & Grout

Restrooms in general can get a beating during the school year, and the flooring, grout in particular, can get extremely dirty, even with regular maintenance (especially terrazzo). Deep scrubbing is definitely in order and the best type of machine to use is an orbital scrubber. With an orbital scrubber you won’t get the side-to-side motion that you typically get with a floor machine, thereby saving you from accidently taking out a toilet or a section of wall tile. Some orbital scrubbers, like the Windsor TAZ, can be used on multiple surfaces (carpet, stone, tile & grout, etc.) and you can weigh it down so that the brush really gets into the grout lines. The Windsor TAZ also has a feature that allows you to use the cleaning agent of your choice, which you can dispense as needed with a button on one of the handles.

After going through the process of deep cleaning the grout, make sure that you take the time to seal your tile & grout. Sealing will not only protect your tile & grout from general wear & tear, soiling and bacteria build-up, but it also will improve traction on your floor reducing the potential for slips and falls.

Briana Smith is WAXIE’s Social Media & Product Branding Specialist and spends quite a bit of time skimming the news for what’s new in cleaning, sustainability and technology while managing all of WAXIE’s social channels. She especially loves posting about #teamwaxie activities & conversing with customers on Instagram. Briana has a Bachelor's Degree in Communication Design from California State University, Chico.

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