A rinse cycle for safety tiles Creative cleaning at the municipal pool

The administrators of Nuremberg’s South District municipal pool worked closely with cleaning agents and equipment manufacturers on ways to improve cleaning procedures. The new cleaning strategy is as unconventional as it is effective.Cleanliness and hygiene in public pools are an absolute must. And this awareness spills over to making sure that all floor surfaces are safe to walk on, too, to avoid dangerous falls due to slipping. Potential danger zones are everywhere: around the pools, in the shower stalls and washrooms. Where floors get wet, people can fall and hurt themselves. For five years now Nuremberg-based contract cleaner Haßler Gebäudereinigung has been in charge of hygienic cleanliness at the ‘Südstadtbad’ – the ‘South side’ municipal pool – to the full satisfaction of the City of Nuremberg. The main entrance, the areas surrounding the pool, the washrooms and changing areas, and the administrative wing: every day at 4 in the morning, Patricia Räppgen (Operations Manager with Haßler Gebäudereinigung GmbH) and her 14 associates have their work cut out for them. “All the areas and rooms that are accessible to the public must be spick and span by 6 a.m. because that’s when the gates open and the first swimmers arrive for an early morning dip. For the admin offices we have until nine,” Räppgen describes the schedule. “Afterwards,” she continues, “a crew of city workers makes sure the showers and toilets stay clean during the day.“ Skin oil and dandruffThis division of labor obviously works out well, as the pool’s cleanliness impressively attests. “In order to thoroughly clean the floor tiling, we initially used a cleaning machine with an acidic as well as an alkaline cleaner, with a pressure cleaner pass once a week.” This, however, turned out to be not enough, as Patricia Räppgen explains: “Over time an unsightly and greasy gray film would start to form over our non-slip tiles, and we just couldn’t get rid of it.“ The cause was quickly found: the safety tiles (R12 anti-slip rating) installed by the city at the time of construction to ensure the necessary safety on wet surfaces have a rough texture for extra grip – with the unwanted side-effect that they also capture dirt and are hard to clean. There is another aspect as well, says Patricia Räppgen: “In high traffic areas there was also a tendency for skin oil, dandruff and other organic matter residue to build up.” Add to this the unavoidable calcium deposits, and what you end up with are pathways that not only look dull and dirty and spoil the pool’s overall appearance, but also become unsafe. Although barely noticeable to the pool’s many users, this didn’t escape our scrutiny.” That is why the contract cleaning company began looking for a solution to optimize the cleaning procedure for the safety tiles. One important aspect that had to be kept in mind was to minimize the use of a pressure cleaner to prevent unnecessary wear of the tiled areas. Before long, Haßler brought Tana Professional and IPC Gansow, two respected names in the supplier industry, into the loop. All three partners then got to work on testing various cleaning products, pressure cleaners and a cleaning machine to solve the issue at hand. The results were interesting: Used with a pressure cleaner, all the cleaning products proved quite effective and delivered the desired results. “We prepped the areas to be cleaned and after soaking them with the cleaning product for the prescribed time, we made a pass with the pressure cleaner. The outcome was more than satisfactory. But as soon as we used the cleaning product with the scrubbing machine, the results went through the floor. It was frustrating because the pressure cleaner got the job done, but we didn’t want to have to use the pressure cleaner!”, recalls Patricia Räppgen. For some reason, the ‘cleaner/machine’ combination had reached its limits and Jürgen Otterbein (Tana Professional Application Engineering realized that a conventional approach simply wouldn’t cut it. “Along with testing various cleaning chemicals, including some very aggressive products from our portfolio, we also tried out different types of scrubbing technologies.” To this end, Dirk Weber, Regional Sales Director Southeast Germany at IPC Gansow, used various scrubbers and vacuum systems on their machine (a 91 BF 85 Premium Green Line). “The machine in itself is ideal for the job. It comes with the TÜV-certified ‘Gansow Water Management System’ that enables you to save water while covering larger areas. Plus it’s very easy to use. The other benefits have to do with the fact that it is easy to empty and clean, too. It did take us a while to find the right scrubbers, however. It was only after we tried soft brushes in conjunction with the right cleaning agents that we were able to achieve the desired results.” Dish washing detergent does the job And the right cleaning agent in this case turned out be an unconventional choice, to say the least. “It took a concentrated dish washing detergent for commercial dish washers, our Energy Ultra formula, to achieve the cleaning performance we were all looking for. This particular detergent is highly effective at dissolving grease on plates, glasses, cutlery or cooking utensils. In our case, the focus was on getting rid of the greasy film resulting from skin oils. And that’s the story on how we eventually came up with a pretty unconventional solution to the problem,” recounts Jürgen Otterbein. He emphasizes that it’s really the combination ‘soft brush-industrial dish washing liquid’ that made the difference. “Strangely enough, none of the many other cleaning agents we tested was able to get rid of that bothersome grayish film.” The Haßler cleaning crew now does two passes over the safety tiles seven times a week with the Gansow machine, as Patricia Räppgen explains: “We start out by spreading the cleaning solution and let it soak for a while. And then, in the second pass, we scrub and then vacuum the solution.” That being said, Jürgen Otterbein points out that a cleaning pass with an acidic solution is still necessary to dissolve any calcium deposits. “What we are really looking at here is a four-stage process: spread, scrub, clean with an alkaline solution, clean with an acidic solution. The sequence is key because you first have to remove the grease with an alkaline solution before you can effectively get rid of the calcium with the acidic solution.” Mission accomplishedIn Jürgen Otterbein’s experience, a common mistake you often see in practice is to first use an acidic agent for cleaning. “Inevitably you will have grease residue that stays stuck to the floor. With the unpleasant consequence that dirt digs in and starts to build up.” For the acidic cleaning part, the pool cleaners trust Tana’s Apesin SDR San. “This product is designed both for cleaning and disinfecting washrooms and sanitary areas. It meets biocide regulations and thus gives the user the peace of mind of being compliant with the latest health and hygiene standards,” explains Otterbein. Since it also effectively dissolves mineral deposits, such as boiler scale and lime soap, it is perfect for solving the issue at Nuremberg’s South side pool. Ultimately, this approach successfully addressed both needs: the skin oils and other organic residue can now be reliably removed from the porous surface structure of the safety tiles along with other dirt, and the pressure cleaner only needs to be used on an ad hoc basis in those places the cleaning machine can’t reach, preserving the tiles from unnecessary wear. Operations Manager Patricia Räppgen is delighted with the new cleaning solution. It also shows how, together with trusted suppliers, Haßler was able to think outside the box and take the high cleaning standards her company is already known for yet a step further in the interest of the client. Peter Hartmann | peter.hartmann@rationell-reinigen.de

A rinse cycle for safety tiles Creative cleaning at the municipal pool

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