being that i am a 1 man show, how big a job can i expect to handle all by meself? im talking in terms of sq.ft.

100,000?

500,000?

i am a noob so please give me any pointers you can, either here or via email.

thanx fellas --- Derek.

Do your own math, lets say you can do 2000 sq. ft. per hour, so a 500,000 sq ft contract will take you about 250 man hours, and thats without pre vacuuming. I guess that is no problem unless your client wants the job done in a shorter time frame.
Most jobs in that size range would be on a maintenance contract and would turn into about 2 million sq ft of carpet cleaning per 12 month period, can 1 man handle that?
Now you are talking about 1000 man hours or about 20 man hours a week, can be done, however, you would be putting a lot of eggs in one basket.

In my experience, you will rarely get that magical 2000 ft² per hour.

Something always comes up. And don't forget to add the time it takes to prevac. We just finished up our last school, just under 10k ft² band hall.

They had done some construction, and it took my wife 2 hours to vacuum it all. It was a mess. Not a normal occurence, but also, it was not an expected situation either. Theye were supposed to be through weeks ago. Bottom line, something always pops up to slow you down...plan on that.

And on big jobs...say over 5k ft², I'd strongly recommend hiring a helper. Some jobs will not hire you if you can't finish in a certain time frame, and being alone will definitely take alot longer. HAving a helper has made a world of difference...like night & day as far as efficiency is concerned.

KC

Personally, I sorta draw a line at about 10,000 sq ft per day. Anything under that, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to handle in a day all by myself. If I have to clean over 10,000 sq ft in a single day,...I may try to recruit help to push a 2nd Cimex(or other machine)

Funny thing,...I recently did a 10,000 sq ft building by myself. I've done the building several times in the past. I used to take myself, and 2 guys. We had 3 guys, running 3 machines.
The three of us took between 3 and 4 hours to do the job. About 10 hours total labor. (= approx 1,000 sq ft per hour)

So,.......this last time I decided to do the whole job by myself,.....took me 5 hours!
(=2,000 sq ft per hour)

The moral to the story is,... Tom ain't bringing help no mo',....unless I know for sure I really need the help!

I agree with Ken. I like to measure time INCLUDING ALL THE TRAVEL, SET UP, LITTLE PROBLEMS, CHIT CHAT WITH CLIENT, ETC. Extra stuff just comes up.

Not just machine operating time.

You can make $150 per hour. But if it takes a technician an 8 hour day to have 4 of those 'billable hours', then it cuts that rate in half, doesn't it?

.

agreed on the time-table. just runnin the Cimex i may get 2000 sq.ft. per hour, but adding in a thourough pre-vac can cut that time in half on some jobs for me.

about 1250 sq.ft. per hour including all the extras, is what i average, and thats with hardly breaking a sweat lol...work smarter not harder = Encapsulation.

thanx fellas for the input, i may be getting a 50k sq.ft., twice a year account. boy do i have aLOT to learn

wet-behind-the-ears --- Derek.