How and how much

[jwfoulk12]

So I have a customer that I've done quite a bit of work for at his house call me the other day and ask me to give him an estimate on cleaning 60,000 sq ft of warehouse flooring. This is just concrete that is totally empty but has your typical grease and industrial crap all over it. How would you go about doing this and what would you charge. I have an idea of how I want to go about it but I wanted to see what you guys thought and how you would do it. Thanks

 

[Mikey P]

A walk behind would be nice but most likely not agressive enough.

Scrubbing with a 20" and a brush or black pad, followed by a wand or Turbo rinse will take longer than they may be willing to pay for..

Maybe a pre scrub with a 20" in the bad areas and a flown up with the walk behind?


Where is Ray?

What's your idea?

 

[Shane Deubell]

Best case would be rent a sweeper and autoscrubber.
How much depends on size available, the production rates vary greatly.

The only exception would be if this was for pharmaceutical or some other "clean room" environment.
I doubt this guy is looking to spend $20k .... probably more like 2.

 

[TimM]

I just did a smaller warehouse that used to be a Harley dealer. Lots of oil and crud on the concrete. Mine was only around 10,000 sq ft on two levels. I mopped down a good degreaser, ran a cimex over the bad areas, then used a walk behind auto scrubber to suck everything up. If you can rent a ride on floor scrubber, that would be the best route and then use a good degreaser to put down on the floor.

 

[Mikey P]

the rug doctors didn't work?

 

[TimM]

I got those for my new ETM that I am building. I am going to hook them up is parallel so I can mount them in my van.

 

[jwfoulk12]

My dad has a pressure washing business. I have a cimex I could prescrub with if I had to but my idea is to run 2 high temp pressure washers hooked to modified deck washers that will accept a 2 inch vac hose to extract the water. Price wise I was thinking between 10 and 11 grand. I don't know how well an auto scrubber would do with this heavy of a soil load.

 

[Russ T.]

Are there drains on the floor Justin?

 

[jwfoulk12]

No floor drains to speak of. There might be one here or there but I didn't find any and when I asked, they didn't know of any.

 

[Shane Deubell]

Impossible for us to know without talking to the guy.

In general that would be far more then most buyers want for a warehouse.
But, always exceptions....

I would give him couple options.

 

[Desk Jockey]

If you can rent a ride on floor scrubber, that would be the best route and then use a good degreaser to put down on the floor.

I agree with Tim. Precondition the worst areas as Tim did and autoscrubber the rest.

Pressure wash could work if you have the hard surface tools that you can hook your TM to. Other than that you'll fill that place with steam and it will create other issues for him.

 

[NobleCarpetCleaners]

grease/oil? better hope there's not a sewer sniffer down stream of where you're dumping this. I clean for the lady who prepares the litigations in my county for these offenses. In any given 12 month period she's got 2 or more cases against professional cleaners dumping oil deposits in the sanitary sewer system. They move the sniffers around like trolling for fish. Lifting the soil and oil off a concrete job like this is the easy part. Treating the waste water before introducing it back into the sewer is serious stuff round my area. Every year my county renews my sanitary discharge permit and gives me a fresh copy of B.E.S.T. which spells out how to conduct myself yada yada. Cleaning "indoors" doesn't require a discharge permit cause it's not what they call powerwash waist water, however (and this is a big however) they will crusify if caught a carpet cleaner dumping oil deposits. So make money and cover yourself.