How to polish performance

It’s a daily challenge – polishing floors that will soon be scuffed and dull again under relentless traffic. But it won’t seem a thankless task to the cleaning team that’s properly equipped. Stephen Pinhorne, National Sales Manager of Truvox International, whirs through the capabilities of rotary cleaning machines.

It’s satisfying to admire the pristine, gleaming floor freshly polished ready for the incoming office workers, customers or visitors to our buildings. But is that essential cleaning operation smooth and efficient operation or a daily grind?

The answer depends largely on the cleaning team’s equipment. Choosing the right rotary machine for hard floors means distinguishing between buffing and burnishing, between maintenance tasks and finishing, and between multi-use and specialisation.

And that choice comes down mainly to speed.

High-speed rotaries are designed to produce a sparking, high sheen, rapidly and efficiently. Low-speed rotaries are more versatile with capabilities ranging from stripping floors and sanding wood to scrubbing – and they can also buff up floors to a passable shine.

Rotaries are not all created equal; they have different but complementary strengths. So what are the features to look for in a high-speed rotary? A powerful motor is needed for high-speed and productive burnishing. For this reason, the machine’s balance and ease of handling are important.

Other characteristics of the Truvox Orbis range are a centre wheel to aid manoeuvrability for up-to-the-edge burnishing; a floating pad drive that adjusts for uneven floors; a tough vacuum skirt to ensure dust is contained and vacuumed up; and of course, build quality for long-term robustness.

With an operating speed of 1500rpm, the high-speed Orbis UHS 1500 Folding Handle can polish a multitude of floors including stone, granite, marble, terrazzo, vinyl and PVC – with brushes, and using pads – concrete, terracotta, quarry tiles, safety floors and raised rubber. It is available in 43cm and 50cm widths.

Where daytime cleaning is necessary the Orbis UHS Cordless Burnisher is whisper-quiet – at just 56.6 decibels – burnishing floors for up to two hours on a single charge of its maintenance-free gel batteries.

Turning to low-speed rotary machines, utility should be foremost in mind. When hard floors are heavily soiled with impacted dirt, burnishing with a high-speed rotary is not always the most efficient and effective option. A lower-speed rotary, however, can spray and scrub, clean aggressively and maintain or even renovate hard floors, and also polish or buff. And as if that weren’t enough, it can also be used to shampoo carpets and bonnet mop.

Having matched these capabilities to cleaning needs, there are other features to consider. For example, the layout or size of rooms may call for a compact, lightweight machine. The Orbis Compact has a low profile and is easy to handle. Operating at 240rpm, it scrubs floors with minimal noise disturbance. It is also a highly effective carpet cleaner when armed with the right brush and low-moisture encapsulation chemicals.

Some models can be adapted to increase their versatility further. With a slightly lower 200rpm operating speed, the Orbis 200 is ideal for carpet shampooing and bonnet mopping as well as cleaning and scrubbing hard floors. An 8kg weight kit can be quickly added, converting it for aggressive cleaning as the heavy-duty Orbis 200HD. It uses Tynex brushes for heavy-duty wet scrubbing of vinyl, ceramic tiles, and concrete.

Important features to look for are low vibration and noise, and an optional spray kit to speed the cleaning of hard floors, a core task of the Orbis 400. This kit is easily added to any Orbis rotary via a simple bracket and Velcro attachment. The operator manually controls the solution sprayed from the unit’s pressurised bottle.

The dilemma where both light cleaning and more intensive maintenance are important is easily resolved by the dual-speed Orbis Duo Low Profile. In 190rpm mode the rotary is equally capable of heavy-duty and medium-duty stripping and scrubbing, and at 380rpm, it’s ideal for spray cleaning and polishing.

So don’t be over-hasty when considering the speed and features of rotaries – your floors will be gleaming and your cleaning team will be thankful.

www.truvox.com

Published in Tomorrow’s FM – January 2016