HOW TO TIPS

SOME EXPERT ADVICE:

You can rely on KSS not just for quality products at a fair price, but solid advice on how to best get the job done. We've got years in the business of helping you make the most of your staff, your equipment, and your budget.

Choose one of the links below for expert advice:

Caring for Granite Floors.
Caring for Brooms.
Timing Associated with Humidity/Temperatures.
Caring for Wood Floors.
Caring for Dust Mops.
Carpet Cleaning Chemicals.
Freezing Temperatures/Chemicals.
The Advantages of Team Cleaning.

For more detailed information email us, stop by our showroom, ask your sales representative, or call us at 1-800-638-4191. At KSS Enterprises, we pride ourselves in offering high quality products and the best customer service available.
 

Maintenance and Care of Granite and Porcelain Flooring:

Though beautiful and durable, granite and porcelain flooring was once thought of as difficult to maintain. Today's technologies have changed those ideas, and with proper preparation, these floorings can be cared for with a minimum of work. The key to this is to lay a proper foundation over the flooring to protect and preserve its looks.

When working with granite, porcelain or other mildly porous surfaces, proper sealing and finishing is the secret to sustaining its looks and ease of maintenance. Hillyard 341 Seal is a product that was developed specifically for this purpose. This clear, fast-drying combination sealant and finish enhances the color of your flooring, while protecting it from dirt, spills and abrasions. More porous floors, such as paver bricks and quarry tile benefit more fully from an application of Hillyard Terrazzine Seal. Once a floor seal is applied, the surfaces are better protected from most stains and dirt, making its maintenance a simple procedure.

Glazed floorings have different cleaning issues. While seals and polishes won't adhere to their surface, it's grout should still be protected. Doing so will keep accidental spills from staining and detracting from an otherwise beautiful floor. This will also extend the life of the grout, by not allowing standing water to penetrate and slowly wear away the grout. Bostik's Silox 8 works as an invisible, sub-surface sealant of grout. It does not form a layer over the top of the grout, which can wear away, instead, it penetrates throughout the grout, then acts to repel oil and water absorption into its surface. Silox 8 is not solely for grout, as it is equally effective in protecting unsealed or unglazed tile, as well.

Daily maintenance is the next step in protecting your flooring. It not only preserves the beauty of the flooring, but also saves the labor and expense of refinishing the surface. Dirt and dust are abrasive to floor finishes, and if the protective coating is allowed to wear completely away, will damage the flooring itself. Thus, daily sweeping or dust mopping is an effective measure against this wear and tear.

If you choose to sweep your floors, a flagged broom is recommended, as its splayed ends are effective at picking up finer particles of dirt. Dust mopping is a better option yet, and used with a dust mop treatment, will not only lift the loose dirt away, but leaves an additional protective coating.

Hillyard's Super Hil-Tone is an especially high-quality dust mop treatment formulated to, when used daily, increase the life and beauty of floors by reducing the abrasive effects of tracked in dirt. A dust mop would be initially treated by sprinkling 2 ounces of Super Hil-Tone per linear feet of mop surface, and allowing it to hang overnight to absorb into the yarns (wicks) of the mop head. After use, simply shake out the mop, spread its wicks and sprinkle with 1 ounce of the treatment, allowing it to hang overnight again, before its next use.

As needed, the floor should be damp mopped or auto scrubbed to clean away any embedded dirt or spills. An excellent choice of cleaners is Hillyard's Super Shine-All, a neutral concentrate, formulated to emulsify soil and leave a protective coating. Its gentle formula will not harm floor finishes, in fact it helps to extend the intervals between coatings with the protection it leaves behind, while saving labor since there is no need to rinse the floor after Super Shine-All's use.

Super Shine-All can be diluted at a ratio of 1 ounce per gallon of cool water, for light soil, or up to 3 ounces per gallon for heavier soils. You need only to mop it on, and either wet/dry vacuum or mop up the excess. It can also be buffed with a floor machine to refresh and enhance a floor's gloss. When cleaning polished granite or porcelain flooring, a ratio of 1 cup to 3 gallons of water should be used.

As you can see, maintaining expensive floorings is an easy task when approached in the proper manner. Should you have any questions about the methods explained here, or about a special circumstance your facility encounters, we encourage you to contact your KSS sales consultant. Each is fully trained to know what recommendations to give to suit your individual needs. Back to top.

Why Am I Continuously Replacing Brooms Before Their Time?

One of the many questions that I am asked, at the Corporate Showroom is, "Why do I keep having to buy new brooms all the time?"

What many people do, and it's quite normal, is to set the broom against a wall when finished using it. Resting the broom (and mops too, for that matter) upon their head, is where the spending trailing begins. You see, when you store a broom in that manner, all of the weight of the broom and handle place pressure on the fibers at the head. After time, you'll begin to notice that the bristles begin to bend to one side, and with extended storage in this way, they will curve that way permanently, rendering the tool useless.

A very simple tool made to deal with this problem is the Gripit, made by Geerpres. The Gripit is a patented holder that not only provides convenient wall storage for brooms and mops, but for tools as well. The standard Gripit is designed to hold any item with a handle up to 1-3/16". The Expando Gripit accepts heavier tools such as vacuum wands, hoses, and shovels with handles up to 2" in diameter.

The relatively inexpensive purchase of a Gripit is offset by replacing your expensive tools less often. It also frees up floor space in those crowded cleaning closets. Now that you won't be asking "Why am I replacing brooms so often?", how else might I be able to assist you? Back to top.

Timing, as Always, is Everything:

Have you ever planned a project so well that you swore everything has been covered, then had it fail miserably due to circumstances out of your control? When planning housekeeping projects, always remember that timing continues to play a crucial role. The two critical factors that can play havoc with your projects are temperature and humidity.

Temperature is more an issue during the winter months, as many cleaners are not effective below 55 degrees. This means, in a cold room, or building with cold floors, you may not be able to strip or apply floor finishes. If it's necessary to complete a project under these circumstances, be sure to allow for pre-heating the floor to 56-60 degrees. This will give you the productivity and results which allow you to complete your project. Laying a thermometer directly upon the floor will give you an accurate reading after approximately thirty minutes.

Since most cleaners will actually work better in warm to relatively hot conditions, you will not have the risks associate with cold extremes. However, it should be noted that water breaks and a slower work pace will ease the exertion associated with working in hot conditions.

The second critical factor that can destroy any plan for a housekeeping project is humidity. Defined as the amount of moisture (water) in the air, humidity can be present in both hot and cold areas, and when air conditioning units are not functioning properly. Humidity affects drying times with cleaners, paints, floor finish, and plain water rinses. Levels higher than 70% is common in the summer months. Needing to complete projects in a timely manner, as with water or oil-based gym coats, can take some creativity. Beginning projects at 3 or 4 a.m., to allow for dry time, or increasing cross ventilation can help (never use direct fans). Portable dehumidification units can also be used, and paint professionals sometimes use a Sling Psychometer to track and record conditions.

Additionally, if you are forced to postpone a floor refinishing project due to humidity, do no resort to cleaning carpets. Most carpet take 3-8 hours to dry after extraction. In humid conditions, with temperatures in the 70's you could end up with a mold and fungal issue. If this occurs, an EPA registered fungicide must be used to rectify the problem.

The best recommendations for planning around these critical factors is to have back-up work waiting in the wings until the conditions are conducive to good results.

Saying NO to certain temperature and humidity sensitive projects is your best defense against poor results and costly reworking of projects. Back to top.

Two Ways to Help Maintain Your Wood Floor:

Step 1 - Daily dust mopping and/or sweeping

Now that you have finished your wood floor, it's time to put a maintenance program in place. Dirt and dust work like sandpaper on your floor finish. If it is not removed, it will scratch and dull your finish.

Dust Mop Treatment - The easiest and best way to delay this process is to sweep and/or dust mop daily. If you choose to sweep your floors, be sure to use a flagged broom head. This will help to pick up the finer dirt and dust particles. When using a cotton dust mop, be sure to treat the mop with KSS Dust Mop Treatment. If you choose to use a synthetic dust mop, dust mop treatment should not be used.

Regular maintenance, by sweeping or dust mopping has been proven to extend the life of your floor finish. This ultimately will lower your labor and product costs. By spending a few moments a day on this simple task, your end result will be to lower your overall operating costs. Put simply: Your floor will shine for a longer time.

Step 2 - Weekly / Monthly Mopping

Shine-All - Now that your sweeping program is in place, we need to take care of dirt and dust that sweeping won't get. For this, pick up a KSS Mop Head and Handle, a Mop Bucket and some Super Shine-All by Hillyard (a neutral cleaner with a pleasant sassafras scent). It will lift the dirt and dust up and off the floor. Again, the goal of this is to reduce the sandpaper effect the dirt and dust have on the floor finish.

If you have a floor machine available, Super Shine-All will actually help restore the shine to your floor. To do this, you simply buff the floor with a white buffing pad (3M) after mopping.

For more detailed information, email us, stop by our showroom, ask your sales representative, or simply call us at 1-800-638-4191. At KSS Enterprises, we pride ourselves in offering high quality products and the best customer service available. Back to top.

Care to be Used When Dust Mopping:

Keep the dust mop clean above all else. After a day's cleaning, empty the dust mop into a bag, or better yet, vacuum the dirt out. Remember that the dust mop is not a substitute for a broom - it is not good for cleaning up candy wrappers and should never be used to clean up soda spills or other liquid spills. Get an appropriate tool to clean the spill or messy litter. As with brooms, a variety of sizes are best to insure that any cleaning need can be handled efficiently.

Follow the manufacturer's specifications for dust mop treatment. In general, use a fresh application of dust mop treatment every day, and let it set out overnight so the treatment will be absorbed by the mop instead of leaving a residue on the floor. The amount of treatment is crucial - too little will leave dust streaks and too much will make the floor sticky or slippery.

Dust mops pick up dirt instead of moving it around like a broom. Periodically clean the dust mop while cleaning (dump the dirt into a proper waste receptacle). Only pick up the dust mop head when necessary.

Use swivel heads for hard to reach areas cluttered with furniture. When using the big dust mops for hallways, carry a smaller one for side rooms. Back to top.

Carpet Cleaning Chemicals:

Chemicals used in cleaning carpets have become more precise with today's technology. If you know what the soil load or spots are, there is a product to remove it, Red Kool-Aid included.

The real issues associated with carpet care is staying with your plan to clean it, and daily spotting. Many of you are currently focusing on carpet renovation, using an extractor and a cleaner like Hillyard's Clean Action. Becoming more popular is the practice of applying the detergent directly on the carpet with a pump-up sprayer, allowing a dwell time, and using the extractor with only clean, hot water, or water with a neutralizer, to rinse out the detergent and soil. This process is easy on mechanical aspects of the extractor, and ensures that there's no soap residue left in the carpet, which can attract and trap new soils. During the more humid months, post spraying with a carpet de-browner such as Pro-Link Debrowner can assure you of a pH balanced carpet while drying.

More heavily used rooms should be considered for specialty treatments. For food areas, use carpet protecting treatments such as Hillyard's Soil Stop II. This type of treatment makes for faster and better results when you bonnet clean. Areas near heaters can be treated with an anti-static treatment to help stop the zap associated with touching metal.

After the carpets are clean, evaluate your total program. Your KSS Representative can assist you in fine tuning your carpet maintenance program. Back to top.

Freezing Temperature/Chemicals:

By Gary Dean, Sales Consultant - Kalamazoo Branch

Winter's not over yet! That is why we want you to remember to keep your cleaning chemicals inside a heated building. It is extremely important to keep these solutions from freezing.

Freezing temperatures can do the most damage to your water-based seals, finishes, and restorers. Other products that can be affected are enzymes, and some thickened restroom cleaners. These items can be rendered useless if frozen, causing potentially huge expenditures when having to replace them.

Even those products not chemically altered by freezing can incur adverse effects, by running the risk of having the container rupture. Clean-up of a chemical spill is not a task anyone looks forward to, especially if it is a product that requires special handling.

So lets keep the snow and ice outside, and your products inside, where it is warm. You'll thank yourself for it later, when our real spring thaw arrives. Back to top.

Team Cleaning:

What is Team Cleaning?

In Team Cleaning, individuals are specialists. Each member is responsible for a specific duty rather then performing the dusting, vacuuming, removal of trash, and restroom cleaning within a given area or zone. The size of a team is determined by a building, but there are four primary specialists

Who are the specialists in a team and what are their responsibilities?

Light Duty Specialist:

Empties the trash and recycling bins
Dusts
Cleans telephones
Spot cleans horizontal and vertical surfaces

Vacuum Specialist:

Vacuums
Check out the lights
Turns out the lights
Secures the area

Restroom Specialist:

Fills dispensers
Empties the restroom garbage
Cleans and sanitizes fixtures, floors and drinking fountains

Utilities Specialist:

Hauls out the trash to the dumpster
Cleans brass, blinds and carpet
Mops entry tile
Handles light maintenance and any other specialty service

What is the biggest advantage of Team Cleaning?
Fewer People - Less Equipment

Visualize a cleaning situation in an eight story building. To Zone Clean the eight story building, each janitor works a 12,000 square foot floor in a four hour shift. He performs every cleaning task. The outcome is that eight people, eight vacuums, eight trash barrels, and eight restroom carts are needed for the entire building.

In the same building using a team system with backpack vacuums, there are six specialists. One pair, comprised of a light-duty specialist and vacuum specialist, are assigned to floors 1-4, while an identical pair to floors 5-8. A restroom specialist and a utility specialist work throughout the entire building. The outcome with a team is six people, two vacuums, two trash barrels and one restroom cart.

What are some other advantages of Team Cleaning?
Supervising a team is less time consuming. When a supervisor checks a zone-cleaned building, he must look at each floor to determine the overall quality. To check the team-cleaned building, the supervisor must check two floors and a couple of restrooms and he can judge the overall quality.

Training team members is less complicated and time-consuming. If a person is absent for zone cleaning, a supervisor must teach the new person several tasks.

Empty the trash. With a team, there is a double check system. Because the vacuum specialist follows the light-duty specialist, he can enter an office and immediately goes to the trash can, checks it, and begins vacuuming from that point.

Energy is saved by cleaning buildings with teams. As a twosome completes an area, the lights are turned off. Floors 2,3,5,6,7 are finished, and the lights are turned off. The specific areas of each floor where the restroom and utility specialists are working remain lighted.

Individuals in a team have a thorough knowledge of their functions and responsibilities. As the cleaning industry becomes more complex and issues such as recycling are addressed, it's important that employee job descriptions are well defined. With teams, this is far more possible than with zones. Back to top.