Environmental & Health Concerns

I visited Nova Scotia (Canada) a few weeks ago, and found the approach Canada has toward health and the environment to be a few years ahead of “us” here in the US.

For example, they sort their trash into several categories and insist on using only “organic” pesticides and herbicides on residential lawns. When I questioned my hosts about what it was like when they were forced to make the transition from “the old type” of pesticides to the “organic” ones, they confessed that at first it was a problem. The early “organic products” were not very effective, and there was some public resentment for having to make these changes.

However, over the next few years the products improved and now people can know they are protecting their property while protecting their environment.

How does this story influence our industry?

A Canadian entrepreneur had wanted to develop a product that could work as an effective antimicrobial for restoration and remediation purposes, but without the associated health and safety hazards that some such products might present. When I was first introduced to his product, "Benefect Botanical Disinfectant", I was skeptical. The "Green Revolution" has given us some good cleaning products, but it has also given us some marginal performers.

However, since Canada is ahead of us in this regard, the Benefect is already a "finished product" that has been "through the paces" up north. Of course, a product cannot receive an EPA registration if it doesn't work.

There is nothing "marginal" about Benefect. We've tested the product extensively and have been, quite frankly, impressed rather than just satisfied with the results. Of course, our tests aren't as important as our customers needs and feedback.

I fully expected that some of the restorer's who had more of a "green mentality" would like the product, and a few others would keep a gallon of it around for their customers who might be apprehensive about the "chemicals" the restorer is using in their home or facility.

What I could not have expected were the amount of restorers who have completely switched over to this product. From what I've been told, these people have found that its simpler to use this type of product exclusively, because such a product reassures both their customers and their employees.

If you'd like to know more about "Benefect", visit our website at: www.pembertons.com

Microfiber Upholstery Cleaning

I've been surprised to find out that many cleaners are wary of, or actually refuse to clean microfiber upholstery. It seems this fear arises from the delicate appearance of the material, as well as its tendency to darken and flatten when it becomes wet.

Cleaners should realize that most microfiber upholstery is made from polyester, with a smaller percentage made from nylon. So while this material may look like "suede" or "Nubuck" leather, its actually a fairly easy and safe to clean synthetic product. What gives microfibers their "delicate look" is the fact the the "denier" or thickness of the fibers are finer than silk, and thus give a "natural/delicate" appearance to the material.

To safely and effectively clean microfibers, simply remember that this highly adsorbent (as opposed to absorbent) material will hold high volumes of fluid spills and body oils, and thus needs thorough preconditioning and dwell time before extraction. Hot water extraction can be augmented by towel extraction with the assistance of a hand buffer, such as are used for car detailing.

Care should be taken to not allow hot fittings or the metal parts of cleaning tool orifices to come into direct contact with the material for extended periods of time, and for vacuum adjustment valves to be opened when truck mount cleaning machines are being used.

Finishing of microfibers should be done with a clean, lint free towel.

Microfibers can be confused with "suede" or "nubuck leather", and there is a possibility that rayon microfibers (such as are used in garments) might be used for upholstery cleaning one day. To prevent damaging such materials, it is important that materials that appear to be microfibers be tested before cleaning.

Profitable Upholstery Cleaning

The energy crunch of 2008 has caused many truck mount oriented carpet cleaners to rethink using their truck mount for upholstery cleaning use. When one considers that such equipment uses between 1.5 and 3 gallons of gasoline per hour, it makes sense to reduce one's fuel costs from 6.00 - 18.00 per hour (or more) to 0 by using an electric powered portable machine and the customers electricity.

However, those veterans who remember using such portable equipment in the past are rightly concerned that there might be a higher labor cost or less soil removal that would more than negate the energy savings.

Those fears arise from the fact that the "upholstery cleaning equipment" that was used in the 80's and early 90's was deliberately "underpowered". In those days, low pressure solution pumps were used with tools that had very fine jets. This slow pressure, low flow cleaning was need to prevent overwetting.

Many of these same machines also had very small vacuum motors, as most of the power was diverted to heat exchangers or the technology needed to create a machine that could handle both solvents or water based detergents.

Those days are long gone.

Now, because of the "Dry Tools" now available, such as the Drimaster, HyDry, or Hydrokinetic Upholstery Tools, cleaners are no longer forced to use underpowered equipment. In fact, these "Dry" or "Redirected Flow" tools work best with higher water pressures and water flow.

I have had great success with the Kleenrite Sphere with this type of tool and system of cleaning. The Sphere that I use has a 200 PSI Pump, a Three Stage Vacuum Motor, and a 1750 Watt heater. With it I can achieve performance nearing that of a truck mount, use the Dry Tools that prevent bleeding, browning, and shrinkage, and the low pH preconditioners and rinses that also give maximum performance with minimal risk.

Such equipment and tools together cost less than 2000.00, and rapidly pay for themselves in their energy efficiency, fast productivity, and great results.

Profitable Upholstery Cleaning

There are many ways to make your upholstery cleaning service more profitable: Increasing your price, adding on upholstery protector, time saving techniques, etc.
In this entry, I'd like to discuss and idea that should help you save labor and fuel costs cleaning upholstery.

The past several years has seen an incredible growth in the percentage of cleaners who use truck mounted carpet cleaning machines to clean upholstery. The advent of "dry tools" has helped make upholstery cleaning safer than ever, and the ease of set up and quickness of cleaning that tools afford has made us very comfortable in using our truck mounts in this fashion.

However, there are two inefficiencies inherent in this method that should be addressed: Labor and Fuel Costs.

If you have two people on the job cleaning carpet, one can stay busy pulling hoses, moving furniture, spotting, grooming, etc. However, when furniture is to be cleaned, one man invariably is standing around while another does most of the work. If this is the case in your company, consider using "dual wand upholstery cleaning". A truck mounted machine does not have to be a dual wand machine to be able to handle dual upholstery tools, as such tools require far less water volume and vacuum power per tool.

Simply purchase a "Y" for the vacuum hoses and a "Splitter" for the solution lines, and now you can have both employees cleaning. If there are multiple piece of upholstery, one the lighter furniture can be moved to another area to keep the operators out of each others way. If it is only one piece, such as a sofa, one operator can clean the cushions, and the other the body.

Try this method. It saves time, and since the work is done in half the time with the same gasoline or diesel powered machine, it saves fuel.

In my next blog entry, I'll discuss the use of portable equipment to clean upholstery, and how it can be done more efficiently than in the past.

Area Rug Opportunities, Part II

In my last post I discussed the growing opportunity in cleaning area rugs, especially as it parallels the growth of hard floor surfaces in homes.

Once you decide that you would like to expand your services into this growing market, you now have to mak this decision:

Will I clean area rugs in place, in the home, just like I clean wall to wall carpet?

Or will I set up a small in plant operation with the understanding it will require an investment in overhead, specialty equipment and tools, and training?

It would be unfair to suggest that cleaners are not able to "do something" to area rugs in homes; its been done for years. However, every time that a delicate area rug is cleaned in this fashion, the cleaner is either undercleaning the rug or taking a considerable risk in damaging the rug, or the flooring below it.

Area rugs are best cleaned in an environment that can allow for better dry soil removal, more complete flushing of the rug itelf, and more controlled drying than can possibly be done in the home. The advantages of cleaning rugs in this fashion are many, and the ability to charge a fair price for this far better service is not difficult.

Area Rugs and Hard Surface Cleaning

The trend of putting ceramic tile and hardwood flooring into homes continues to grow with no end yet in sight. Carpet cleaners who have not kept up with this trend have found less and less wall to wall carpet to clean in such homes, though there are those who have are profiting by diversfying into hard surface cleaning in their customers homes.

There is another opportunity that now presents itself in such homes:

Cleaning of area rugs.

Few who have moved to hard floor surfaces find that they like "bare floors". It doesn't take long for them to get some type of area rug to create a less stark appearance in the room, as well as providing some cushion and warmth underfoot. The dominance of area rugs has become such that those who have attended large floor covering shows have been stunned at the large amount of "area rug only" displays that they are finding.

How comfortable are you with cleaning area rugs? Are you able to test and identify expensive (and potentially easy to damage) natural fiber products versus inexpensive synthetic imitations? Can you solve the heavy urine odor and staining problems many of these rugs are exposed to?

In my next blog entry, I'll discuss the opportunities that are opening up for cleaners in this field that was once large, became small, and is growing exponentially right now.

Mold Inspection: Scams or Expedient Behavior?

I had the opportunity to view a video clip last week that should be of interest to all cleaners and restorers who have anything to do with the mold remediation industry:

http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=199430

A few points to note:

There are a few things that might not be obvious at first regarding the "set up":

Cosmetics were used to simulate the mold, but the "homeowner" did lie when she said that she cleaned the substance off and it came back again. She also made at least one other deceptive comment when she mentioned she'd been coughing a lot.

Those "set up" comments were, of course, dishonest, but they did serve to reveal the fact that none of the cleaner/restorers shown insisted on independant, third party testing. In the narrow confines of an edited news presentation, its difficult to know what other things were said and done to bring the company representative to their conclusions, but the bottom line is that testing should have been insisted on, rather than dismissed as unnecessarily expensive.

These individuals were likely not "scam artists". Instead, they appear to have belonged to a much larger group of business people who, when given the opportunity, take the easy way out to get the "easy sale". This self serving behavior put each of them in a very bad position in the public eye, and they only have themselves to blame.

Another type of Bait and Switch

Last week I reviewed the most commonly understood method of "bait and switch" advertising done by carpet cleaners.

There is, however, another sort of marketing misrepresentation going on in our industry, and I feel it is as damaging as the more conventional low price bait and switch tactics that we are more familiar with.

When a cleaner sells their service as a very high price, and sells the higher price as being of more value because of extra steps that are provided, or extra services that are rendered, but the cleaner does not deliver the promised services, that too is a type of "bait and switch", is it not?

Let's look at this scenario:

"Rolls Royce Carpet Cleaning" sells carpet cleaning at a premium price by promising that the following steps will be taken:

Prevacuuming
Preconditioning
Prescrubbing with a rotary scrubber or counter rotating brush machine
Hot water extraction with soft water
Corners and edges cleaned with a special hand tool
Carpet Groomed
Speed Drying

All too often cleaners who sell the benefits of such multistep cleanings end up only providing 2 or at most 3 of these steps.

When someone pays a very high price for such a service, and when the results end up not being any better than a more moderately priced company, they will eventually find themselves going back to lower priced cleaners, and likely resenting the price that they paid for the service that was ultimately less than what was promised.

In these tough economic times, consumers will look for value in their purchases of services, and will quickly drop service providers who they feel aren't delivering value to them.

Carpet Cleaning Bait and Switch Tactics

For over 30 years the cleaning industry has been beset by cleaners who use pricing strategies that border on "Bait & Switch Advertising".

Its a common practice to advertise low room pricing (often less than 10.00 a room), but to put in the fine print that this low price only covers "maintenance cleaning" or "good for carpets that are cleaned on a yearly basis". If the cleaning company will actually clean a light or moderately soiled carpet for this price, its likely not very good for the company, and I doubt there will be a very good result, but one cannot categorically state that this method of advertising is in itself unethical.

However, in most cases, the low "maintenance cleaning" is a "bait". The "switch" occurs when the small print offer of "free demonstration of our deep scrub method" comes into play.

In this scenario, the cleaner gives this "free demonstration" in the middle of a moderate to highly soiled traffic area, and they often are using a cleaning agent in this presentation FOR THE FIRST TIME. Now there is a very clean patch present that the "maintenance method" cannot match.

The customer has unwittingly fallen into a trap where they must now pay for the "deep scrub method". How much? Sometimes its only another 20 cents a square foot, which in of itself is not a high cleaning charge; but it is far higher than the customer expected when they hired the cleaner. However it is often 50 cents a square foot or more. And sometimes the pressure for protector, sanitizer, and anything else they can "push" are added on top until the bill is several hundred dollars more.

A cynical cleaner often snickers and says: "Well, those people who fall for such things deserve what they get!" That feeling is understandable when the cleaner has dealt with price objections all day and is tired of explaining their position. But the fact is very often it is our senior citizens who are being victimized.

Our seniors grew up in a different time, have a value system that sometimes cannot comprehend such underhanded techniques, and sadly are not always in possession of the mental faculties they once had.

Taking advantage of this generation who worked our country out of the depression and World War II is despicable, and needs to be countered at every turn.

How are cleaners to combat such tactics? One easy way is to keep all such coupons that are mailed or published in various "coupon magazines" at hand, and to have you or your office personnel add up the "add ons" that your prospective customer will have thrown at them, so that they can tell what the true cost of such cleaning would be. Compare it with yours, and your price will likely be lower.

In my next Blog post I'll talk about another, far less obvious, type of Bait and Switch marketing being done in our industry.

Unexpected High Performance from "Portable" HWE

I don't often deliver machines to clients any longer, and I confess I miss those times when I spent so much "one on one" time at our customers' locations.

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to deliver a machine a customer of ours had ordered, as Scott (the customer) had requested that we make some changes on his standard order to enhance the performance of this machine, and I wanted to see it in action.

The machine is a Masterblend Truck Force, which is a triple vacuum, 400 PSI portable unit with automatic fill and discharge features. What Scott wanted customized was a change from 1.5" vacuum hose to 2" vacuum hose, and from an 1.5" wand to a 2" wand (tube diameter). When I arrived at Scott's home, it was rainy and humid, which of course is not good drying conditions.

What impressed me was that after we cleaned moderately soiled, cut pile carpet with this system, at 50' away in humid conditions, that the carpet dried in an hour and a half! What remarkable results!

Had the carpet been more heavily soiled, I don't doubt that the drying time would have been longer. But to have a unit that can be used a such distances and more and with such great results in cleaning and drying addresses many important needs for cleaners:

1. Such equipment would provide a legitimate "back up machine" for a truck mount without having to tie up a van as well. This unit works comparably to small entry level truck mounts at half the price.

2. This type of machine could do limited access commercial work, or remote areas of commercial jobs that might otherwise be difficult to do with a truck mount system. A large job could have upper floors done with this unit while the truck mount worked at the lower level or levels.

3. An "electric truck mount" for cleaners who are concerned with rising gasoline costs. Some cleaners take units such as the Truck Force, and use a small generator to run the electric power on jobs that have low power resources, and use electric on jobs where such sources are more easily found. In ways it might remind you of a hybrid car that uses the battery power for some purposes, and gasoline for others.

I will keep you posted as I have more experience with this energy saving, high performance, system.