'Tis the Season for Dirty Footprints (and What to do About Them)

I'm writing this blog post in mid January and I know it isn't as timely as it could be, but as I write it snow or some form of precipitation is falling in nearly every state (Floridians are spared, except for the falling iguanas). With the cold, ice, and snow, there'll be an uptick in dirty floors, and an increase on complaints that we didn't mop the floors well enough. 

Let me start with a cautionary tale. We cleaned a church that had concrete floors. Our staff there had been with us about 20 years at that point working at other locations in the past. I trusted them and it wasn't super common we'd receive a complaint. Well, we did and we received that complaint on a week of record snow fall. I received the complaint via text and chalked it up as someone walking in our church after we cleaned it or maybe we missed a spot or two. My corrective action was to relay the complaint and ask them to focus a bit better on the floors. 

A week later I received the complaint again. This time I received with it a crappy picture the client took. It was inconclusive and figured the best course of action was to visit it myself, and I did. Here's what I found:

Yikes! I'd complain too. They looked terrible. The client prompted me to tell me they looked mopped and as you can see in my picture, they were, but it looked like dirty water was used. You can even see footprints. So I quizzed the employee. He said they mopped it twice and used a neutral floor cleaner, the same as he always had. 

If he mopped it, then why did this happen?

Let's talk science and chemistry. Ice melt is usually made up of one of four compounds: Sodium Chloride (rock salt), Calcium Chloride, Magnesium Chloride, and/or Potassium Chloride. Each react in different ways and in different temperatures. In a nutshell, these compounds break down the ions into one sodium ion and one chlorine ion, or one calcium and one chlorine, etc., depending on the compound. Because of this division and because of these ions are foreign materials to water, it pushes water molecules apart and makes it a lot harder for ice to reform. It'll keep water in a colder state without refreezing. 

But this remaining residue is acidic. Acid on concrete creates calcium carbonate (limescale) and creates an alkaline. Combine that with leftover waste from calcium, magnesium, sodium, etc., and you get a powdery substance that is hard to remove. People then step on that powdery substance and track it in. This substance can easily be up to a 11.0 pH. Any neutral cleaner will not have the strength needed to remove any residue at a high or low pH. So mopping with a neutral cleaner won't help and therefore the residue is mixing in the mop water and just spreads around, if the mop bucket water isn't frequently changed. Then it dries and....viola...you get a hazy crazy mess. That mess is heightened if there are layers of leftover and dried neutral cleaner on those floors. It dries clear but add this residue to it and you're building layers of mess. 

What's the solution? You can buy and use a ice melt residue cleaner. Several manufacturers make this. But I think you can save $$$$ just by mopping with warm water only. Use a new mop and mop with warm water. As soon as the mop bucket turns soapy and/or dirty, then dump the water, clean the mop, and redo it. In my example above in the picture, it took 4 times before we noticed the mop water remained clear and the floor dried nice and clean. 

Hope this chemistry lesson helps. Keep an eye on your floors and once you notice streaks, or worse, footprints, then it's time to clean them with water only.