Garage Cleaning Techniques - Post Them!

ONPLS

New member
Hello All

Our company primarily washes underground parking garages. like all contractors here I am always looking for better ways to do things.
Hopefully other people can post their ideas and we can all benefit.

Here is our process. 4 man crew average job, 2 levels 200 parking spaces booked for one day 8AM - 5 PM

1. Get to the job, one guy heads to the PM or building super, makes sure all is well and that the exhaust vent fans are on and working, he will get access keys and fobs etc. He then helps the guys set up the machines.

2. One guy will start power sweeping ( tennant 6600 ) immediately around the area we want to start washing, this guy will sweep almost all day, We do a grid pattern so all areas are swept twice. Once he is done sweeping he helps with things like hooking up more hose, cleaning around the drains etc.

3. The other 2 guys drive the truck and trailer down into the garage to set up for the washing, start filling up the tanks and hook our machine exhausts up to the ventilation fans using exhaust hoses. We always set up right beside the fans for safety.

4. We always pre-soak and soap the area to be washed first, this helps loosen up any left over dirt from sweeping and breaking down the oils and grease.

5. Start washing and rinsing in one step, no surface cleaners, just 40 deg tips and wand washing. This has proved to be the fastest for us so far, I know a lot of guys swear by surface cleaners. My guys are trained to keeps the tips an even spacing and know to look out for marks, we also rinse the posts and walls up to a couple of feet of the floor. We push the water towards the drains. Any dirt that collects around the drains is scooped up into buckets and the water is rinsed into the drains.

We use 3/4 supply hose
1/2 in and 3/8 galvanator pressure hose on cox reels and keep 500 ft loose on the trailer
one 9GPM hydrotek SCU on trailer with 275 G tank on our trailer, Hot water only if there is a lot of oil.
and as many 4GPM machines as we need, sometimes hooked together to get 8 GPM if there are enough supply taps available.
Tennant 6600 propane sweeper


That is our way of doing things, I would love to hear other peoples ideas. Im sure there are many ways of doing this.


Thanks, its deep winter here so were hibernating, otherwise I could post videos of our current jobs and setup
 
I don't know anything about Canadian laws, but down here in Oregon your system would land you in trouble with the DEQ for violation of the EPA CWA.


Our customers have filtration systems built into the building, all wash water that enters the drains goes into the sanitary sewer sump pits and is pumped up and out into the sanitary sewer, not storm drains. So reclaim is not an issue here.

So i would imagine that you are reclaiming all wash water in the US? What methods do you use?
 
I don't want to sound stupid, but what is a M20?

M20 is a scrubber built for doing garages. Scrubs and vacuums it up in usually one pass. We've done it both ways and I WILL NOT GO BACK!! :) Still have to wash around the edges but the garage is dry almost immediately.
 
Our customers have filtration systems built into the building, all wash water that enters the drains goes into the sanitary sewer sump pits and is pumped up and out into the sanitary sewer, not storm drains. So reclaim is not an issue here.

So i would imagine that you are reclaiming all wash water in the US? What methods do you use?

That sounds great! That is how it is done in 95% of the US too. Unfortunately the 5% who can't do it like that are jealous and would rather make it hard for the rest of us just out of spite.

Sounds like you are doing well.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk
 
Get a M20 and fire half the helpers.


We have a M20 and do use it for some applications, not very many though. We will use the M20 if the surface is very smooth and not too dirty, lets call that 10 % of our buildings. The issue we have with the M20 is that since the majority of what we are cleaning here in southern Ontario is winter debris (sand and salt mostly ) we run into 2 issues with the M20, the first is if there is too much debris it is not fast for sweeping and actually takes longer than the way I discussed in the beginning of this thread. The second issue is that it will not remove tough stains like oil and even hard packed dirt so you have to wash or rinse most of the place anyway.

Mike, are your properties very dirty?
 
Yes we get dirty ones here as most of the ones we do are only done annually. We spray degreaser on and wash the tough spots but rely on the M20 to do the finish work. We run a 6600 ahead of it as the m20 is pretty much useless as a sweeper on it's own. The M20 can be a real pain if the operator isn't following a certain procedure so hopefully you have that figured all out. There are a couple properties where the surface is so poor that it's easier to just wash it. We have no problem doing upwards of 400 stalls/day with 2 men.
 
400 Stalls is very good in my opinion, our max is generally 350-400 but with 4 or 5 guys. This definitely depends on the surface and soil level.

Next time im in BC i will have to donate a couple days of labour, so I may see your setup, I just cant imagine doing that many stalls with 2 guys.

Mike, I see you are a sponsor for the Houston event, are you going to be there?
 
400 Stalls is very good in my opinion, our max is generally 350-400 but with 4 or 5 guys. This definitely depends on the surface and soil level.

Next time im in BC i will have to donate a couple days of labour, so I may see your setup, I just cant imagine doing that many stalls with 2 guys.

Mike, I see you are a sponsor for the Houston event, are you going to be there?

mike is probably using surface cleaners. With a 9 and 8 gpm you should be able to move a lot faster with less fatigue on your guys. I mean at first they might be able to clean faster but after an hour I'm sure they start to slow down. I would have one guy run a surface cleaner on the next job for one day and another (the best employee with a wand) and see who is able to clean better and faster
 
I think Mike is using a sweeper and a M20 scrubber to do this, then using a PW to rinse around the edges and posts in the garage.

Im curious to see if a surface cleaner with vac recovery would be the fastest, some of the garages are massive though, you would need alot of vacuum hose
 
We wash around the pillars and outer walls immediately after the sweeper goes through. By doing this the ground is pretty dry before the scrubber does it's thing. The less water it needs to pickup the better. I run both machines and the helper does the washing and loading of the trailers. Trust me I'm all about power washing but these machines make our lives so much easier.

I am a sponsor of the Houston event but unfortunately not able to attend as something came up. I'll have some giveaways there. Have fun and learn lots!
 
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