One of the most important procedural issues in cleaning is dwell time. A disinfectant cleaner, which kills germs as well as cleans, is a must-use chemical for a restroom. In fact, some facilities find a multipurpose disinfectant cleaner can handle all the cleaning duties in a restroom, but to do its job correctly, the product must sit on the surface for a specific time. Just spraying and wiping doesn’t give the chemical the time it needs to kill 99 percent of bacteria. In many cases, proper dwell time is 10 minutes or longer.

To achieve necessary dwell time, janitors can apply the chemical as they move around the restroom following the top-to-bottom cleaning method. By the time they are finished, they can return to where they started to wipe up the chemical. In a smaller restroom, they may need to disinfect the men’s restroom and let it sit while they work on the women’s restroom, and vice versa.


posted on 4/25/2011