more down pressure from the scrubber to remove heavy soil or stains. Any facility will have a variety of floor scrubbing needs, from the more lightly used areas to heavily trafficked entryways, meeting and eating areas and even kitch-ens where food stains and spills are a regular occurrence. Technology To The Rescue Adaptive new automatic scrubbers can handle these differing needs with one piece of equipment and do it without lengthy, expensive operator training. For instance, some automatic scrub-bers provide separate tanks for water and detergent. An operator can use water only on lightly soiled hard floors and add detergent to the solution when encountering heavier soil. Push button controls adjust water flow and detergent ratio, eliminating the need to pre-mix the cleaning solution before scrubbing. This flexibility helps avoid locking in to one detergent type and dilution, allowing operators to make adjustments when and where they are needed. At St. Michael-Albertville High School in Albertville, Minnesota, head custodian T.J. Zerwas uses an autoscrubber that offers these flexible performance capabilities. “The onboard detergent system has saved us a ton of time and allows us to really stretch our detergent use a lot further,” Zerwas said. “Not only is the system saving us money on detergent costs, but it has helped us clean with less impact to the environment.” In fact, Zerwas’ crew now uses just one gallon of detergent a week at the school, versus five gallons per week with their pre-vious scrubbing routine. And, not only does the school spend less on detergent now, Zerwas’ staff no lon-ger spends time pre-mixing detergent and water, saving the school labor costs as well. Also available at the touch of a button is instant cleaning power. This burst of power allows an operator to apply the added strength needed to clean heavily trafficked areas or difficult stains. Randy Britton, an operations man-ager with cleaning contractor Service Management Systems, noted: “We have to approach entryways differently because these areas typically have the dirtiest floors in a building. The scrubbers we use with [flexible performance capabilities] minimize downtime so that we can make adjust-ments with little time or effort.” With these simple controls, cleaning professionals are able to use the same machine across a wide variety of hard floor cleaning challenges within a facility, apply-ing different solutions for differing needs. Going Where No Autoscrubber Has Gone Before The trend in automatic scrubbers is mov-ing toward smaller equipment that uses Circle Product Information no. 209 on page 32 www.cmmonline.com 29
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