The Janitors' Closet

A bit of neglect. Just a bit.

We're cleaning a large industrial facility out by one of the east Valley airports.  Nice modern facility, that the previous janitorial service had let go, for so long that the client had more or less forgotten what a clean facility might look like.  We spent the first couple of nights bringing the routine janitorial up to speed (one can now see the paint on the walls around the Bradley sinks in the shop), and then rolled into floor work.  (We generally include periodic floor and window work as part of our ongoing service and billing- burnishing and refinishing VCT, carpet cleaning and protecting, ceramic, stone and concrete scrubbing, and so on.)

The worst part, appearance wise, involved lots of junked up textured ceramic, in office and shop lunchroom areas; took us a couple of nights to scrub.  Then we addressed office carpet cleaning, and some shop restroom concrete.  Last night, we finished the concrete and got into carpet cleaning in a couple of small shop areas.

Received this from the client's Quality Supervisor, this morning:

"...Also, kudos to your team that shampooed the quality office carpet last night! I have never seen the carpet look this good, great job!"

Always with the stories (you accumulate a few in 40-plus years in the industry), I responded:

"Glad the quality office looks better. We’ve fooled with worse.  Had a small place years back – offices of a trash collection firm – located right down at the dump.  No dumpster for the trash – we were supposed to open the back door and toss it.  They had a couple of back rooms with so much gunk in (and on top of) the carpet (and enough oil that it was kind of shiny) that my folks thought it was really grubby tile, at first…."

True story.  These days, we try to stick with rather more upscale clients, like the industrial one referenced.

(Top photo is the before, bottom the after.  As usual, the regular lines are lay of the knap from the extractor; when the carpet has dried, we can vacuum it to pull out the lines.)

 

Flood clean-up

While much of the country suffers high temperatures and drought, here in Phoenix we're having our usual summer monsoon season.  And, as usual, neither our trees nor our roofs are ready for it.

I spent yesterday evening chain sawing fallen tree limbs in my backyard and my neighbors; meanwhile, I had my service techs do preliminary flood clean-up work in a cardiovascular facility to which we provide janitorial service.  Multiple points in the roof gave way, bringing down ceiling tole and insulation throughout the office.

While there is no asbestos to contend with (too recent construction), the fiberglass insulation is rather nasty stuff, so we used masks, goggles and gloves, with bunny suits available if needed, all on our vans as a result of ongoing Coronavirus electrostatic disinfection, which we've offered to clients and the rest of the commercial community since quite early in the pandemic.

Looks like the job went well; the contractor has baseboards to replace, at a minimum.