With the winter season approaching, snow removal creates extra challenges for buildings and facilities. As snowy parking lots and sidewalks are treated with salt and ice melt, it all gets tracked into buildings when employees, customers, and visitors enter it, wreaking havoc on floors and carpet. Keeping building entryways clean in the winter can be time-consuming, and improper or irregular maintenance can lead to damaged floors or expensive cleaning costs.

The best way to keep snow, dirt, and salt residue out of your entryways is a mat. Properly maintained matting at entrances will collect up to 80% of dirt entering the building, and greatly reduce the time and money spent cleaning the floor. Matting should be cleaned regularly, as dirty mats will do more harm than good. Matting should be cleaned nightly, or dirty mats should be substituted for clean ones on a daily basis. It’s also a good idea to observe the traffic flow through the facility and use less matting during low-traffic periods.

However, snow and salt residue ending up on the floor is sometimes inevitable. Ice melt products typically have a high pH, and can act as a stripper on finished floors. This can cause a sticky mess that attracts even more dirt at best, and require stripping and re-finishing the floor at worst. The best way to avoid messes or floor damage in entryways is regular cleaning with an acidic cleaner or neutralizer. An acidic product neutralizes the high pH of the salt residue so it can be cleaned and removed. The floor around entryways should be cleaned at least daily, or more depending on traffic.

For more information, check out the CMM Magazine article on snow removal.

Multi-Clean offers an acidic cleaner/neutralizer that is effective on snow and salt residue on both floors and carpet. For more information, check out our Floor Care Webpage.