CM/Spotlight: Hard Floor Care The Floor You may think you know a lot about cleaning and maintaining hard floors, but you haven’t seen anything yet. By: Bill Griffin W Bill Griffin is president of the International Custodial Advisors Network (ICAN) and owner of Cleaning Consultant Services Inc. Comments and questions are encouraged: (206) 849-0179; WGriffin@ CleaningConsultants.com for more info When it comes to excitement in the cleaning indus-try, floor care is center stage for cutting-edge inno-vation and technology. Everything about floor care is in flux, from the products and equipment we buy to the processes we use and the surfaces we clean and maintain. The speed and depth of change is creating turbu-lence and uncertainty for manufacturers, business owners and department managers as the industry transitions from the familiar ground of “how things have been done in the past” to the uncertainty of an unknown future that is rapidly evolving. Property and business owners, along with clean-ing department managers, are unsure as to how to proceed. Distributors are hesitant to promote new and often untested products and processes, especially if they have the potential to cut into the profitable sale of existing products and chemicals. Innovators face an uphill battle in getting expo-sure for their products via traditional industry media who rely on advertising revenue from established companies to stay afloat. Some of the new products on the market are so contrary to long-held beliefs and established pro-cedures that they face skepticism from potential purchasers who question whether what is being promoted is realistic or even possible. Innovation Polished, stained and densified concrete and ter-razzo is showing up everywhere. The use of natural wood, stone and rubber mate-rials are on the rise in both residential and commer-cial locations. Vinyl composition tile (VCT), once the mainstay in commercial buildings, is giving way to luxury vinyl Read about more hard floor care changes to come. tile (LVT) that requires no finish or burnishing. Terracotta materials such as porcelain and ceramic tile are now commonplace in kitchens, restrooms, halls, elevators and lobbies. Even clay tile is changing, with nearly 90 percent of the ceramic tile produced today having the color and pattern applied with ink jet printing technology. Where there used to be a mineral glaze on the surface, we now find a urethane or aluminum oxide coating. At first glance, one might say, “So what?” But, the reality is that a urethane coating will not wear and resist scratching like a heat bonded glaze that actually becomes part of the tile. As these new surfaces become commonplace, the processes and products we use to clean, maintain and restore them must keep pace or costs needlessly increase and the useful life of surfaces is reduced. The sustainability movement has brought us bamboo, sea grass, coir, jute, hemp and corn-based carpet fibers that are easily damaged by water and chemical-based cleaning processes for hard surface floors. Another trend being witnessed is moving away from the use of stripper, floor finish and burnishing processes that are hazardous, time-consuming and use large amounts of water that ends up in the waste stream via the drain. Self-cleaning surfaces, diamond polishing, nano-coatings, stain guards, impregnators and cleaners and prevention are replacing the use of topical floor finish in commercial locations. As scientific testing processes migrate into the cleaning industry, we are seeing higher expec-tations regarding slip, trip and fall prevention, the elimination of harsh and toxic chemicals 36 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • April 2013 Image courtesy of Nilfisk-Advance Inc. Change Is On
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