What To Consider Before Purchasing Floor Pads And Brushes

In 2016, 34 percent of facility cleaning managers expected to see the square footage of cleanable space within their facility grow. Yet, 60 percent weren’t expecting any budget increases to allow for additional product purchases, and 67 percent would be forced to clean the growing facility with the same size staff.

If this is the reality within facilities, it’s no surprise productivity gains are in high demand. Products and equipment that will achieve the desired clean, while limiting labor, sit at the top of shopping lists for purchasers. In fact, 79 percent of cleaning executives consider product performance, quality and durability the most important factors when purchasing.

This is especially true for floor care products. Properly maintaining floors requires significant labor hours and an array of products and equipment. Plus, floors rank high among building occupants in their perception of a clean facility. This is why it is important for managers to do their due diligence and ask the right questions before purchasing equipment.

In this piece, Facility Cleaning Decisions asked floor pad and brush manufacturers to respond to questions from facility cleaning managers on what to be aware of prior to selecting products.

What are the top four things managers should consider when selecting/before purchasing floor pads or brushes? 

Prior to making floor pad purchasing decisions, the manager needs to consider the floor types to be cleaned/polished, the frequency of cleaning and polishing, the equipment to be used, i.e. Low speed, high speed, rectangle, etc. And lastly, what type of finish is on the floor.
— Rory Beaudette, VP Sales / COO, ACS Industries, Inc., Lincoln, Rhode Island

First, you must determine what type of floor you will be working with; e.g. VCT, Terrazzo, Rubber, Stone, Concrete etc.
Second, determine the procedure you will be performing; e.g. polishing, cleaning, scrubbing, stripping, burnishing etc.
What equipment do you have available; e.g. slow speed machine (175-350 rpm), auto  scrubber, burnisher etc.
Make sure you have the time available to complete the job and the other products you will need; e.g. chemicals, dust mops, wet mops, buckets, wringers, caution signs etc.
— Randall Flowers, Vice President of Corporate Accounts, ETC of Henderson, Inc., Henderson, North Carolina

Square footage to be cleaned/stripped/maintained.
Time available to clean/strip/maintain.
Condition of the floor.
How much man power and equipment available to clean/strip/maintain the floor.
— Chris Shaw, Northeastern Regional Director of Sales, Malish Corporation, Mentor, Ohio

While floor pad selection can be a daunting task, Americo offers a free mobile application to iOS and Android users, which includes a Floor Pad Selector guide.  The guide allows users to select their variables and then instantly view floor pad recommendations based on their designated criteria.  For example, what type of surface are we working with? What is the floor care application or what do we want to achieve? What equipment are we using? What type of floor finish is already present on the floor, if any (soft, medium or hard)? Americo also offers test results which determine which of our UHS floor pads perform best on a wide variety of UHS floor finishes. These recommendations are incorporated into Americo’s Mobile App and take the guess work out of selecting the right UHS pad to use on your floor finish.  
This valuable tool is easy to use and also features how-to videos, specification sheets and other helpful documents for busy on-the-go cleaning professionals.  Americo’s mobile app is available in the Apple and Google Play stores.
— John Miller, VP of Executive Sales and Marketing, Americo Manufacturing Company