CM/Spotlight: Carpet Care IS YOUR #1 RESTROOM PROBLEM THE SMELL OF #1? Vacuums Advance According to Matt Reimers, VP of sales and business development for ProTeam, vacuum cleaners available to the profes-sional cleaning market have seen rapid recent evolution. Three particular areas of improvement are air filtration, ergonomics and battery power. Air Filtration Air filtration is an obvious area of concern for manufacturers because the whole pur-pose of vacuums is to pick up and capture as much of the particulate as possible. It is important to not only have a high-performance vacuum, but filtration is important to prevent emitting dust back into the air, Reimers notes. “That has been important to us on all of our latest generation products: Uprights, back-packs, cordless backpacks. We attain a HEPA level filtration,” he says. “In addition to our vacuums with certified HEPA filters, we offer HEPA level filtration on most models where a combination of three to four filters removes 99.97 percent of particulate down to .3 microns.” Air filtration is important in healthcare market, and also in schools, particularly in the K-12 arena with the concerns for the younger, most sensitive part of the population. Air quality in office buildings has become a bigger factor with building service contrac-tors (BSCs) and in-house cleaned facilities as well. Here, occupants are in the building for eight hours a day or more. Reimers’ company even partnered with the American Lung Association because proper air filtration can be just as important as removing soil from the carpet. Image courtesy of ProTeam Ergonomics The backpack vacuums available today mean cleaning workers may carry 10 to 12 pounds versus pushing the 15 to 20 pounds of a commercial upright. Further, during use, workers are replicating natural human motion. “You’re able to cover more area in the same time, or a different way of saying that is they use roughly half the human energy to clean a particular space,” Reimers explains. “The improvements that have been made [are] to enable and facilitate and make com-fortable all natural human motion while vacuuming.” There has been a focus on designing a harness that moves with a worker’s body, according to Reimers. By enabling the vacuum and harness to move with the cleaning worker, troublesome pressure points can be avoided when he or she reaches to get under desks or tables. TOUGH JOBS DEMAND SMART SOLUTIONS Battery Power “We see continued opportunities for improvement in the cordless, battery-powered vacuum,” Reimers concludes. “As batteries become more viable in terms of weight and cost, I think that’s really going to open that part of the market.” Battery-powered vacuums may prove to be an important tool in the future, both in terms of productivity increases and more efficient use of power. NI-20376 FREE INFO: Reader Service 205 or CMMOnline.com/freeinfo 18 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® June 2014
CMM – Archives June 2014: 18
