Project Safety - Stripping Floors

When strip­ping floors, ensure safe­ty with prop­er use of PPE and prac­tices. Ensure to be wear­ing gloves, shoe cov­ers, knee pads, and ppe gog­gles to increase safe­ty in the workplace.

Video Tran­script:

Hal­ston:

Well, you’ve shown us a lot of real­ly cool projects today. One more I want to ask you about though is as we’ve been walk­ing around and the guys at home can’t see this, but these floors look fan­tas­tic. They’re shiny, clean. I mean, you can almost see your reflec­tion. So how are you guys able to do that?

Justin:

Well, there are many, many com­po­nents to a good floor pro­gram. There’s, of course, sweep­ing, mop­ping things that are hap­pen­ing gen­er­al­ly every day, but then there’s also scrub­bing and bur­nish­ing and at the root of all of that stuff is strip­ping and waxing.

Hal­ston:

Gotcha. Strip­ping and waxing.

Justin:

Yep.

Hal­ston:

So I guess this is machine that does it then?

Justin:

It sure is. This is called the rotary floor machine. These have been around for a pret­ty long time. These are def­i­nite­ly at the root of floor care. They spin at about 135 rev­o­lu­tions per minute and you can put all sorts of dif­fer­ent attach­ments on there. You can scrub the floor with them, you can scrub tile with them, you can do car­pet with them, just a lot of dif­fer­ent things go on this machine.

Hal­ston:

Very cool. Why don’t you tell our folks watch­ing, how are we going to use this thing safe­ly? What are some kind of main­te­nance items we need to look out for to do it safely?

Justin:

Well, there are some things that you def­i­nite­ly want to make sure are done a man­ag­er can do in between jobs. When the job is actu­al­ly start­ed is not the time to be try­ing to fix a cord or some­thing like that. So kind of a check­list that a man­ag­er can go through is at the root of it is the cord. You can see this one is not a clean cord, it’s got some strip­per and wax residue on it, but there are no cuts on it. And the next thing you want to look at is even this plug right down here. It’s got a cov­er on it that slides back and you can see that this plug actu­al­ly goes into this oth­er piece and if that comes unplugged like that or if it’s hang­ing out, that could be the same thing as hav­ing a cut or some­thing like that in the cord. You’re still talk­ing about elec­tric­i­ty and mix­ing with water, which we all know can have trag­ic results.

Hal­ston:

[crosstalk 00:02:19] Nev­er good. Nev­er good.

Justin:

And then also this bolt on here is a real­ly impor­tant thing. You want to make sure that that is tight. A man­ag­er can come through with some chan­nel locks or some type of a wrench and just make sure that that is tight because if that’s not tight, this is the lever that locks the han­dle up and down. And if that bolt or that nut is not tight on that bolt, you can turn this all day and the han­dle is still going to move. And that could result in loss of con­trol for the user if they’ve got the han­dle down and all of a sud­den it flies up or some­thing like that.

Hal­ston:

Okay. One more thing I noticed is I think that that plug looks new, that replace­ment plug, but the cord looks old. So is that a new plug?

Justin:

That is a new plug. These have three prongs on them. You can see I’m pulling out by the actu­al plug itself and not the cord. But these three prongs are real­ly impor­tant. That big one right here in the bot­tom, that’s the ground plug and a lot of times these will fall out. They fall out because peo­ple may try to get 35 feet out of a 30 foot cord and they’re just try­ing to get just a lit­tle bit fur­ther with that machine and the pres­sure pulls that out away from the wall.

Hal­ston:

Very good. Very good. So to me, it looks a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed to run this thing. How do you steer at once it’s going?

Justin:

Well, it’s actu­al­ly a lot eas­i­er than it seems. It does take some prac­tice and some good ade­quate train­ing. You basi­cal­ly you low­er the han­dle and I like to put this some­where down around my belt and then you want to make sure this is tight all the way so it does­n’t go up and down with­out you want­i­ng it to go up and down. And then it’s got a start switch right here that you lift up and you squeeze the trig­ger. I’m not going to do it because it’s plugged in and it’ll turn on, but then once it starts rolling, you just lift up and down to have it go left and right. And then of course, walk­ing is going to make it go for­ward and backwards.

Hal­ston:

So up is left?

Justin:

Up or down is left and up is right.

Hal­ston:

Okay.

Justin:

There’s no shame and not know­ing that off the top of your head.

Hal­ston:

That was good. Yeah.

Justin:

I want to make sure I was right.

Hal­ston:

Very good. Okay, very cool. So before, I want to actu­al­ly see you run this thing and show us how you would do this room, but before we do that, is there any­thing, any kind of PPE that you would rec­om­mend wear­ing when you’re doing some­thing like this or any equip­ment that we would need to get this job done?

Justin:

I am so glad you asked because [Hal­ston 00:04:47], it seems like a lot of places that I go strip­ping and wax­ing is such an impor­tant part of what we do here at the Budd Group that peo­ple kind of dis­re­gard the safe­ty things. But strip­per, whether it’s mixed up or def­i­nite­ly straight out of the jug can be absolute­ly cor­ro­sive. I’ve seen it eat through paper or sty­ro­foam cups before. That’s how strong this stuff is, so it’s real­ly impor­tant that we’re pro­tect­ing ourselves.

Hal­ston:

Gotcha.

Justin:

Okay. Now this is kind of out of the ordi­nary, but you want to put on your gloves before you start work­ing. Usu­al­ly when peo­ple are clean­ing bath­rooms, you want to take them off as you leave the bath­room so that you’re not tak­ing germ from the bath­room and take them out. That’s because you’re try­ing to pre­vent the spread of germs. We’re putting these on today sim­ply to pro­tect our hands.

Hal­ston:

Okay.

Justin:

So every­thing that you do when you’re mix­ing up your strip­per and you’re putting on your, get­ting ready to go. Basi­cal­ly, you want to have your gloves on because you nev­er know where there’s going to be some old strip­per. Maybe it’s on an old shoe cov­er. Maybe it’s on a fun­nel. You just, it’s a good idea to have the gloves on.

Justin:

Sort of at the heart of our pro­tec­tion, our shoe cov­ers. These are the shoes for crews use by the Budd Group. These do a real­ly, real­ly phe­nom­e­nal job for just reg­u­lar wet sur­faces. If you’re just mop­ping a floor or some­thing like that. There have been some issues with stuff get­ting built up in these treads and-

Hal­ston:

Uh-huh (affir­ma­tive). I see that.

Justin:

Yeah. It’s got … The treads are very, very close togeth­er and you’re going to be tak­en old fin­ish off, mixed with strip­per, so it’s going to turn into like a glue and over time, it’s just going to clog these treads up and these aren’t going to do any good. So it’s real­ly impor­tant to rinse them out at the end of your shift.

Hal­ston:

Okay. So rinse them out if you want those things to be effec­tive. Oth­er­wise, it’s like wear­ing ice skates.

Justin:

It is.

Hal­ston:

Okay.

Justin:

That’s exact­ly the way it is. Anoth­er good thing about these is they also pro­tect your shoes.

Hal­ston:

[crosstalk 00:06:49] That’s okay … yeah, good point.

Justin:

Some peo­ple don’t want to get their shoes messed up, but these are prob­a­bly the favorites among every­body that I’ve seen. These just sim­ply strap onto your shoes. Now they don’t do any­thing as far as pro­tect­ing your shoes, but this mate­r­i­al, feel that Halston.

Hal­ston:

Yeah, it feels exact­ly like the pad.

Justin:

This is exact­ly the same mate­r­i­al as a strip­ping pad. And these just do a phe­nom­e­nal job giv­ing you trac­tion. When you get into the details and the stuff, not just the main floor that you’re going to be doing with the machine, but most floor jobs usu­al­ly have one or two peo­ple going around with like a put­ty knife or a scraper get­ting the base­boards and all that stuff. You want to make sure that they’ve got some type of knee protection.

Hal­ston:

Okay.

Justin:

These are just your stan­dard knee pads.

Hal­ston:

So that will pro­tect your knees as well as keep­ing the chem­i­cal off of you.

Justin:

Exact­ly.

Hal­ston:

Gotcha.

Justin:

And then anoth­er thing that a lot of peo­ple over­look, but it’s real­ly impor­tant that that per­son who’s down there scrap­ing with a put­ty knife that’s flex­i­ble and bend­ing, has glass­es on.

Hal­ston:

That’s right. Keep it from splash­ing in our eyes.

Justin:

[crosstalk 00:07:53] Because any time I’ve seen it hap­pen, at any time that can, the strip­per can get up into their eyes and-

Hal­ston:

Gotcha.

Justin:

… I’ve seen what it does to flesh. I don’t want to know what it does to eyeballs.

Hal­ston:

Absolute­ly.

Justin:

And then, of course, when it comes time to mix­ing the strip­per, you always want to fol­low the man­u­fac­tur­er’s instruc­tions as far as the pro­por­tion. For those of you who don’t know that, a trick, a real­ly easy way of doing that is tak­ing 128 because that’s the num­ber of ounces in a gal­lon, and if the solu­tion is call­ing for a one to four, then you divide it by four. If it’s call­ing for one to six, you would divide 128 by six and that’s going to give you the num­ber of ounces of strip­per you should mix with a gal­lon of water.

Hal­ston:

Gotcha.

Justin:

I like using these real thin fun­nels and I know a lot of peo­ple like to buy mea­sur­ing cups from the store and they’re actu­al mea­sur­ing cups, but those get lost. Those get mis­placed in clos­ets. Every­body’s got these. So you can see that there’s a mea­sur­ing ounces on there and that’s why you get these, the more nar­row fun­nels because these fit down in there. And then strip­pers are going to come in a case and you just emp­ty it down in there and you can mea­sure it up. Always have gog­gles on.

Hal­ston:

I was going to say one thing I’ve seen as well as some­times you drop it or it hits some­thing or just impor­tant, any­time you’re pour­ing chem­i­cals, no mat­ter what chem­i­cals, make sure we’re wear­ing goggles.

Justin:

Yes, and I mean, that’s … peo­ple who’ve done floors for awhile will tell you that that strip­per’s no joke. I’ve got­ten it under fin­ger­nails and it hurts.

Hal­ston:

Gotcha.

Justin:

And it just keeps on eat­ing away at what­ev­er it’s touching.

Hal­ston:

So we’ve gone through every­thing here. I think the last thing is why don’t you show us how to use this thing? I know there are a lot of dif­fer­ent tech­niques, but if you would just talk us through and show us what you think is the best way to kind of make your way around a room like this.

Justin:

The route is real­ly, real­ly impor­tant. We’re not going to strip this floor today, so I just have a pol­ish­ing pad on here, but it’s going to, I’ll do the same exact route that I would do if it were soak­ing in strip­per and I was tak­ing the wax off.

Hal­ston:

All right, take it away.

Justin:

All right.

Speak­er 3:

After work­ing his way out of the room with the strip­ping solu­tion, notice how Justin works the perime­ter of the room first with the rotary floor machine, to avoid walk­ing in the strip­ping solu­tion. This gives them a safe walk­ing sur­face around the room. Then he’s able to strip the mid­dle of the room in a back and forth man­ner, again, to avoid step­ping in this solution.

Speak­er 3:

Pro safe­ty tip num­ber two. First, look at the machine. Ensure the cord has no nicks or cuts, is ful­ly intact, and is prop­er­ly plugged in. Look at the plug and the out­let and make sure they’re safe for use. When strip­ping a floor, make sure you’re using the prop­er tech­nique. Hold the han­dle­bars firm­ly with both hands and at waist lev­el. Move slow­ly and ensure the cord is out of the way of the machine. Use the right PPE: gloves, shoe cov­ers, knee pads, and eye pro­tec­tion are all nec­es­sary through­out this process. Final­ly, start on the perime­ter and work your way in this way. It will avoid step­ping on any wet surfaces.

The Budd Group strives to be a God-hon­or­ing com­pa­ny of excel­lence safe­ly deliv­er­ing ser­vices in jan­i­to­r­i­al, main­te­nance, and land­scap­ing; offer­ing devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for their employ­ees; and con­tribut­ing to their community.

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