My son has taken over our business and is interested in wood floor cleaning to add to our services. He is a 25 year veteran and pretty darn good at what he does. I think he should get some good info on floor cleaning before just diving in. (I dove in 25 years ago and discovered that most peeps who inquired about this service really needed floor refinishing instead of cleaning and surface treating that we offered so we quit this service.) I'm wondering if he shouldn't just go to a
Mikey's Fest and clean some wood floors and other surfaces he may not be familiar with to get his feet wet along side of service people who do this regularly. He has seen the Dirt Dragon in action and is curious about that. I sure don't want anything happening to our equipment when rinsing waxy floors. What is your opinion? (Where is Desk Jockey when you'd really like him to weigh in?) I would especially like to hear from cleaners who have attended a
Mikey's Fest. Thank you!
I was in the same situation your son was in earlier this year when I went to the Greenville MF. There was a carpet dye class in my area and I had to pick one or the other. I chose MF, because it was a nice weekend getaway, and I don't get very many requests to dye carpet enough to take the class and dive in the service yet so the service really wasn't a big need.
And just from my experience in hardwood, yes the dirt dragon is a nice maintenance cleaning machine, but you need to know if that wood class will put some valuable time to teach how to properly identify a floor to screen it due to the very many types of engineered wood that look like real wood but can't be screened. I already messed up one floor this year, just for maintenance cleaning that led to a problem of not being able to remove previous floor finishes because my chemical company, Basic Coatings, recommended their "green" floor stripper, which was crap. I didn't think it could be screened, so I hired a hardwood refinishing company to fix my error and they came and screened, restored the damaged area and applied the correct finish. I was lucky they charged me only $600.
During that job, I called their (basic coatings) guy who helps idiots like me when we're on the job for tips and he put the blame on choosing the wrong stripper for the job and told me I should've used their other branded stripper from Betco, which is totally wrong if you watch their instruction videos, which doesn't make any mention of that. I told him they should've put this little bit of information in their video to suggest the correct product if their "green" product wouldn't work and I would've been prepared to finish the job correctly. Those videos make the hardwood stripping process look so simple and not very time consuming , which is wrong! He denied it being their fault, so if your class that you're thinking about attending is hosted by Basic Chemicals, I suggest looking for another one elsewhere. They will be putting the format of the class around one of their new lines of chemicals mostly and not the important teachings of hardwood restoring. And yes, I was told that from the guy who is with that company.
So what I suggest is going to MF and enjoying working with the crew on all that hard surface and finding a class later on hardwood that is NOT hosted by Basic and is at least a week long. It's not like a 2 day carpet or upholstery class, due to all the types of hardwood out there that require a different method, ESPECIALLY screening the proper way.
That is wonderful stepping into his Dad's shoes and continuing such a successful business which you built from scratch. You will be a terrific teacher.
