Many businesses today utilize multiple tools and accessories to clean and protect their facilities. One of the most common is a commercial floor scrubber, and for good reason! Floor scrubbers can offer one of the greatest increases in efficiency to a business’s cleaning program compared with other cleaning tools and accessories. Many people see this increase in efficiency and effectiveness, but a lot of people miss a key point with floor scrubbers: SIZE.
When selecting a floor scrubber for your facility, you should consider the following:
- Types of floor to be cleaned
- How level or pitted the surface of your floor is
- Any soil or chemicals that may be present
- Square footage of floor space
- Time allotted to complete the cleaning
- Tight corners, edges, and hard to reach areas
- Width of entryways and height of thresholds to cross
- Where and how waste water will be disposed of.
All of these things are highly important, yet often I see customers decrease the size of the scrubber to get a more affordable price.
Deck Size
Deck size selection is one of the keys to getting floor scrubber selection right. Ultimately, you should purchase the scrubber that can clean the floor most effectively and in the least amount of time. As a caution, selecting the largest size scrubber isn’t always best. Be sure to consider what areas you will be cleaning to ensure that the scrubber will be able to both access the area and exit the area. Aside from that, if additional width could save you 30 minutes per day on your cleaning program, that could save you up to 15 hours per month or 182.5 hours per year (a savings of $3,650.00 at $20 per hour)!
Tank Size
In addition to deck size, tank size matters just as much. Dumping and refilling an auto-scrubber can be time consuming. If you have 20,000 square feet of floor space to clean and a 10 gallon solution and recovery tank, you will more than likely have to dump and refill more than once. However, if you opted with a larger 20 gallon solution and recovery tank, you could potentially cut the number of dumps and refills in half. That small savings of 15 minutes a day can add up to an excess of savings throughout the course of a year.
Overall, when selecting a new floor scrubber, make sure you are engaging with your sales rep and asking a lot of questions to ensure you make the best decision for your business.
– Evan Dill
