CM/Spotlight: Restroom Care IS YOUR #1 RESTROOM PROBLEM THE SMELL OF #1? Company and a Cleaning Management In-stitute (CMI) certified trainer. Fortunately for building service contrac-tors (BSCs) and facility managers, there are chemicals, equipment and cleaning tools made especially to address the ap-pearance issues, discoloration and odor problems that are common to restroom tile floors. Up To Bat While three or four tile floors might be a challenge for many cleaning operations, imagine how grout problems can pile up with a dozen restrooms. Matthew Kastel is Manager of Baseball Operations and Events for the Maryland Stadium Authority, and he is responsible for maintenance, janitorial and events in Camden Yards, which includes Oriole Park and the B&O Warehouse. “I have been with the Maryland Stadium Authority for over five years and have over 25 years experience in the industry, includ-ing working for the Houston Astros, Citi-zens Bank Park and the D.C. Convention Center,” Kastel says. By itself, Oriole Park offers visitors 39 restrooms that see approximately two mil-lion Orioles fans during the team’s 81 home games every year. According to Kastel, the Oriole Park rest-room breakdown includes: ■ A club level with 16 restrooms ■ The upper concourse with 11 rest-rooms ■ The lower concourse with 10 restrooms ■ The Eutaw Street area with two rest-rooms. The club level restrooms include tile floors while the upper and lower concourse restrooms have MMA flooring and cinder-block walls, Kastel notes. If dirty grout lines are visible in high-traffic public restrooms, like those at Oriole Park, often the tiles themselves are one cause, according McGarvey. The tile’s edges can act as a squeegee that pulls solution and dirt off of cleaning equipment, McGarvey explains. If a cleaner is not using clean equipment and fresh solution on a restroom floor, the dirt will be pulled from the mop, and it will dry leaving soil in the grout lines. Practice And Equipment McGarvey offers three suggestions for dai-ly restroom floor cleaning tasks: ■ Thoroughly sweep or vacuum floors before performing any wet cleaning processes to remove as much dry soil as possible. ■ Accurately dilute the mopping solution as chemical overuse can cause sticky floors. ■ When possible, cleaners should use a wet vacuum to pick up the dirty clean-ing solution. For restroom floor project or deep clean-ing, McGarvey recommends scrubbing equipment that includes brushes. “Floors need to be thoroughly scrubbed periodically to minimize the buildup of soil,” he says. “This scrubbing can be ac-complished with a variety of equipment, but typically scrubbing brushes should be used whether we are talking about a brush under a conventional floor machine or cy-lindrical brushes on other machines.” The brush bristles should be adequate to get into the grout to provide proper agi-tation, and the chemical used during this process should be tested ahead of time to ensure it will adequately remove the soils, McGarvey notes. Today, BSCs and facility managers have a number of cleaning equipment choices: Equipment designed specifically to clean tile and grout, add-ons created to be used with traditional equipment or equipment that was designed for multiple surfaces in-cluding tile and grout. Manufacturers are also adapting their equipment for restroom uses. One example McGarvey cites is a pow-erful carpet extractor that was adapted by TOUGH JOBS DEMAND SMART SOLUTIONS Bases Loaded In Oriole Park, the biggest challenge to keeping restroom floors clean is the vol-ume and frequency of large crowds, Kastel states. The highest restroom traffic occurs dur-ing rain delays; attendees will leave their seats and congregate on the covered con-courses and in the restrooms. NI-20376 FREE INFO: Reader Service 215 or CMMOnline.com/freeinfo 14 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • October 2013
CMM – Archives October 2013: 14
