Project Safety - Carpet Spot Cleaning

When engag­ing in car­pet clean­ing ser­vices, it is impor­tant to ensure work­place safe­ty. Prop­er use of lock­ing mech­a­nisms, wet floor signs, and the clean­ing pad are how to ensure you’re prop­er­ly using a car­pet cleaner.

Video Tran­script:

Hal­ston:

Well Justin, call me crazy, but this looks like the exact same machine we just used a strip and wax, is that right?

Justin:

Yeah, it def­i­nite­ly is the same machine. These rotary floor machines can be used for a vari­ety of clean­ing appli­ca­tions, and we’re going to use it to clean this car­pet out right now.

Hal­ston:

So what method of clean­ing car­pet is this called? What are we about to do?

Justin:

We’re going to encap­su­late this carpet.

Hal­ston:

Okay.

Justin:

I’m going to show you how to do it. We’re not actu­al­ly going to do it right now.

Hal­ston:

Got you. So is that the only way there is a clean carpet?

Justin:

Well, no, def­i­nite­ly not. There’s encap­su­la­tion, there’s extrac­tion, there’s bon­net­ing, there’s tra­di­tion­al, old fash­ioned, I call it, sham­poo­ing. A lot of places frown upon it, but I know it’s still out there, and it’s all gen­er­al­ly used with this pad.

Hal­ston:

Okay, so when are we going to use the encap­su­la­tion method?

Justin:

That would be for like this car­pet right here that you don’t see any vis­i­ble stains on it. It just has some dirt trails and stuff. You can tell where the occu­pants gone over to his or her desk, and the encap­su­la­tion is going to get that dirt up out of the car­pet pret­ty easily.

Hal­ston:

All right, so I know you point­ed at this pad, so we’re just going to slap that pad on it and run it like a vacuum?

Justin:

Absolute­ly not. If you were to do that, it would prob­a­bly send you right through this door, per­haps even the wall. These things put out one in three quar­ters horse­pow­er, which does­n’t sound like enough, but I’ve seen it throw a 350 pound guy into dry­wall and leave a dent, because this pad was bone dry.

Hal­ston:

Okay, so how do we do it then?

Justin:

Well, when you have the encap­su­la­tion clean­er in here, most of the time it’s in a pump sprayer. You mix it up accord­ing to the label instruc­tions, and you want to spray it on the car­pet in small areas, but before you actu­al­ly get start­ed, you want to prac­ti­cal­ly drenched this pad. Because as long as the pads wet, it tends to not get stuck in the car­pet and send peo­ple into walls, and that sort of thing.

Hal­ston:

Okay. So we got to get the pad wet.

Justin:

Yep, and anoth­er thing that I’ll show you is real­ly, real­ly impor­tant and the man­agers can do this in between jobs, just sort of as a rou­tine main­te­nance thing. Is if you see this nut right here over this bolt, that is actu­al­ly a lock­ing nut. Some­times these nuts will get lost and peo­ple go down to the hard­ware store and just put a reg­u­lar nut on there, not a lock­ing nut and this vibrates, this comes loose. And then what you have is a sit­u­a­tion where this han­dle, you might be run­ning it, and it’s real­ly impor­tant that when you’re doing the car­pet with these pads, most peo­ple have the most con­trol when the han­dle is right around their belt clip. But once you lock this into posi­tion, you don’t want it to move sud­den­ly when you aren’t plan­ning on it. And if that nut is not tight on there, this thing may come unlocked and it may do just that, and you may lose com­plete con­trol of the machine.

Hal­ston:

Gotcha. Okay, so what oth­er safe­ty stuff do we need to know about run­ning this machine when we’re doing it on carpet?

Justin:

Well, get­ting back to that nut, I don’t want to harp on it too much, but it’s a rou­tine main­te­nance thing. You need some sort of tool to actu­al­ly get that nut. It needs to be real­ly, real­ly tight.

Hal­ston:

Okay.

Justin:

If that thing comes loose, you can turn this all you want, and the han­dle is still going to come unlocked on its own, sort of like it does right there.

Hal­ston:

Gotcha.

Justin:

That’s a rou­tine thing, and then real­ly the same things when we were strip­ping a floor, they apply to this machine. Don’t have any nicks or cuts or any­thing in your cords. Make sure you’ve got three prongs on there. You can see this one was actu­al­ly replaced. With the ground plugs, it’s got to have the three plugs on there. They’re like, I don’t know, maybe $3 down at the hard­ware store, and def­i­nite­ly does­n’t take an elec­tri­cian to swap one of these out. That’s pret­ty much about it when it comes to carpet.

Hal­ston:

All right, well good to know. Thanks for show­ing that to me. There was one more project I was hop­ing to see while I was here. I was hop­ing you could tell me-

Justin:

Oh, and [Hal­ston 00:04:12], I don’t want to cut you off, but it’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant that we have wet floor signs even when we’re doing carpet.

Hal­ston:

Oh man, I’m glad you told me that. I almost for­got. I mean, I can’t slip on the car­pet though, so why would you need them?

Justin:

Because, when you’re doing car­pet, most of these meth­ods are low mois­ture, so you don’t have to shut down the area. You may have peo­ple still work­ing while you’re clean­ing the car­pet. And they’re going to come walk­ing through here on this wet car­pet. It’s going to get their shoes wet, and right out there is VCT. And if the fin­ished VCT comes in con­tact with a wet shoe, then it’s a real­ly good chance for slip­ping. There are many more falls, from what I under­stand, that if some­body’s going to fall, it’s when they’re not expect­ing to fall. So they’re walk­ing across this car­pet think­ing they have good trac­tion, take a step out there and they don’t have any traction.

Hal­ston:

Man, that’s great to know. Good, well last thing I want­ed to see was a lit­tle bit of pres­sure wash­ing. So could you show me a lit­tle bit about pres­sure wash? Maybe go out­side and see that?

Justin:

I’d real­ly, real­ly like to, and I do know a fair amount of that, but we hap­pen to have a res­i­dent expert right here in this office. His name’s Marco.

Hal­ston:

Awe­some.

Justin:

Let me go get him. Hey Mar­co, are you in here?

Mar­co:

Yeah.

Justin:

Can you come out here and minute with Hal­ston? He wants you to show him a lit­tle bit about pres­sure washing.

Mar­co:

Sure I’d love to.

Hal­ston:

Hey, Hal­ston.

Mar­co:

Hey, Hal­ston, how are you doing man?

Hal­ston:

I’m good. You want to show me a lit­tle bit about pres­sure washing?

Mar­co:

I’d love to.

Hal­ston:

All right.

Mar­co:

I got a guy down at the sta­di­um right now doing some.

Hal­ston:

All right, let’s do it.

Mar­co:

All right.

Justin:

All right.

Speak­er 4:

Pro safe­ty tip num­ber three, make sure your clean­ing pad is ful­ly wet using the encap­su­la­tion solu­tion, before you put it on the rotary machine. Then ful­ly tight­en the lock­ing mech­a­nism, which is locat­ed below the han­dle­bars, before you turn it on. Also, make sure the plug is safe to use. Then always place wet floor signs around the area, even when you’re clean­ing carpet.

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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