Cleaning a large commercial building can be an arduous task. The traditional method of cleaning and scrubbing hard floors was to use a mop, bucket and lots of man power. Since the nineteen sixties many types of cleaning equipment have been introduced to take the man power out of the equation. With commercial buildings such as department stores and warehouses getting larger there has been a demand for new types of cleaning equipment to aid in keeping the flooring in pristine condition. One major type of cleaning equipment that has been introduced to accomplish this tank is the auto scrubber.
The auto scrubber works on three basic principles. These principles are, wet the floor, scrub the floor and then suck the dirty water up off the floor. Advances in auto scrubber technology have made I possible that floors can be cleaned in a fraction of the time reducing man hours and producing a cleaner floor. There are many auto scrubber manufacturers in the world and most auto scrubbers work the same way and have almost the same design. Most auto scrubbers have a brush or pad that rotates and agitates dirt from the flooring surface. A solution line allows water to pour onto or around the moving brushes to help remove soil and dirt. A squeegee trails behind the auto scrubber and is attached to a vacuum motor that sucks the water from the surface. Auto scrubbers usually come with two tanks, one for clean water or a detergent solution and one that recovers the dirty water. The first tank is commonly known as a solution tank and the dirty water tank is known as the recovery tank. Most auto scrubbers are battery operated to alleviate the use of cords that can hinder the range.
There are many sizes of auto scrubbers which are usually measured by their cleaning path. The cleaning path is gauged by the diameter of the scrubbing brush. Common auto scrubbers range in size from 17 inches all the way up to 40 inches. Most smaller units are man powered and use human strength to propel the cleaning unit along. Larger auto scrubber utilize a wheel drive system that uses a transaxle or motor that propels the unit up to three miles per hour. Some larger units can weigh in excess of 1000 pounds making these drive units a necessity. Larger auto scrubbers known as ride on auto scrubbers have a seat where the rider sits and is driven much like a car. These large ride on units are commonly used in areas measuring over 30,000 square feet and can clean an area that would have taken 10 people to clean in the past.
Auto scrubbers can vary in price from the lower thousands to thirty thousand dollars. Electric units are the least expensive of all the scrubbers and the most inexpensive to repair. These types of auto scrubbers are great for small areas but are limited by the length of the power cord. Battery auto scrubbers usually start in the two thousand dollar range and run on deep cell batteries. Batteries can be very costly to replace in these units and can cost about half the original machine price. Being as costly as these units are they can easily pay for themselves quickly by reducing labor costs and increasing the level of cleaning performance. Emerging technology in cleaning equipment is constantly enhancing the performance and size of these machines.
No comments:
Post a Comment