This is how I spent mine, and being out of my element and the shear size of it all, I was a little curious how it was all going to turn out.

Late last week, Thursday I think, I got a call from a friend in Atlanta. You know those kinda’ calls you get where a particular job has just got to get done in just a brief window and you’re just the only one in the whole wide world that can do it? Well it was a call like that. I was told that it was a clothing store that was 60,000 sq ft and it had to be done Sun. PM. The biggest VCT floor that I personally have been responsible for getting done in one night was a 65,000 sq ft grocery store and that was big, but how in the world was I going to pull this one off?

According to all you of guys posts and what Rick has had to say I should be able to expect about 2,000 – 3,000 sq ft per hour out of a Cimex & Release It. Even at that rate I’m still looking at 20 – 30 man hours. How was I going to do this with just my DF48 (Diamond Grinding 800 RPM) Cimex? Well for starters I called everyone’s favorite supplier and asked if he could help me out with a couple of loaner machines out of his personal fleet. What a silly question, of course he could, he’d love too. Next I put together my crew (4 men total / 3 operators – 1 water & gum boy) and then showed up at the job Sun. at six o’clock. It took us about an hour to get the machines turned on, you know, walk around the store a few times, figure your plan of attack, explain everything to the store manager a couple of times, mix chems, find outlets, yada, yada, yada. By the time we actually got the machines up and running it was about 7 / 7:05. We walked out of the store at about 1:30.

Of course you need to take into consideration being a clothing store about 50% of the racks are movable so the store staff moved them all out of the way. Yes, less things to clean around but way more sq ft to clean (I’ll come back to that way more sq ft in a minute). We had to stay on top of logistics with where we had cleaned and where things were being moved also. We also lost a little time with tracking down electrical rooms and finding breaker panels when we had inadvertently had 3 Cimexs on the same circuit. All in all I was very happy, and so was the customer, with how everything turned out. Well there was that one small thing about the square footage.

Like I said, I was told it was 60,000 sq ft. Not that I’m not a trusting soul, I’m just a curious soul, I had my water boy measure the store for me between his buckets of water. Well the number he came back with was nowhere close to what it should have been, so I went back the next day and checked it myself. Come to find out he’s not only good at water, gum and a whole host of other things he can count too. It came in at about 75,000 sq. ft. So, six and a half hours (actual run time) Xs four men = 26 man hours OR a cleaning rate of about 2884 sq ft per man hour.

Of course I would rather have been at home in bed Sunday, but hey, cleaning carpets can be fun too. In all seriousness, we did have fun (That sounds sick, carpet cleaning fun?). I think it was more the challenge and that the last time this store was done, more than three years before, it took them all night to get it done.


David Gelinas

i enjoyed my 1st sunday off of work in a couple months, thanx for picking up the slack David ~

wow thats a huge job, this your 1st time CC'ing with the Cimex? how would the 800 rpm compare to our 400 rpm in terms of cleaning ability, anyone know?

yall didnt have to pre-vac? that woulda pushed you right til dawn for sure...if i didnt have to pre-vac i could maybe clean 2k sq .ft. an hour to lol.

thanx for the story, sounds like "fun"

take care Bro --- Derek.

Dave is my brother. He does LOTS of marble care and tile floor care. He uses the Cimex Diamond Finisher machine. And he even uses it occasionally for carpet cleaning as he posted here (not recommended). If you guys have questions about marble - Dave is the guy to ask. The man knows his stuff. He's alright, even if he is my brother and mooches my machines sometimes. :O




Rick Gelinas