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Managing Rock Salt in Your Building Interior

Jan 3, 2019

Winter can take an exceptionally high toll on your buildings exterior, but it can also take a toll on the interior if proper precautions aren’t taken. Rock salt and other ice melts can damage flooring and furniture if they are tracked into your building. Whether your building has tile flooring, carpeting, or hardwoods protecting them is important if you want them to last and look presentable. Let’s look at some ways to protect your flooring during the winter when rock salt and deicers work their way into the building.

Prevention

Preventing rock salt and other harsh deicers from entering your building in the first place is the best way to reduce the damage to your building. Using high quality mats outside every entrance to your facility can help keep deicers from reaching your floors. Even if the entrance has very little traffic, such as a service door, it is still important to use a good mat there to prevent damage to the floors.

In high traffic areas like airports, universities, and hospitals mats should be at least five feet deep outside the facility to remove as much salt as possible. Directly inside the doors there should be another ten feet of mat to help remove even more salt, dirt, and moisture. Because the people entering your building are not intentionally wiping their feet as they hurry inside, you want to choose mats that are made to pick up dirt and debris just by casually walking on them.

Routine Cleaning

Just as important as having the mats in place both outside and inside entrances, you’ll also want to schedule routine cleanings of the mats. Once they become heavily dirty with dirt and debris they won’t be as effective at keeping deicers and other threats off your floors. Regular, daily vacuuming can help keep the mats clean and allow them to do their job. In addition to vacuuming the mats will need to be deep cleaned on a regular basis. This schedule will be determined by the amount of traffic you have as well as the amount of snow and ice there has been.

During a particularly bad storm mats can be replaced as they become saturated, the replacement mats can take their place while the previous mats are cleaned and dried. Having a rotation of mats available can help prevent any damage to the floors while also not disrupting your customers’ experience.

If you are in need of floor cleaning solutions for the upcoming winter, contact us at Kent Clean today to discuss your situation and how we can serve you. We offer floor cleaning in Westminster, MD along with many other cleaning services you may need. We’d love to speak with you today about how we can help your business run smoother and stay cleaner!

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