Taking a poll here - What's the biggest commercial job you've ever done, and what did you use to clean it?

Mine is: 30,000 sqft, using 1 cimex over a couple of days...Second biggest was 28,000 using 3 cimexes in 7 hrs...

Used Cimex, CFR walk behind, Butler and ProChem truckmounts, and Bonnet with Argo. Took us 9 years and they paid us $528000.00

We have a number of LARGE accounts that we service, and have serviced in the past. One of our larger buildings is a campus of 3 multi-story buildings. We have a technician in their each month cleaning different sections of the buildings. I don't have a total of the sq ft for those buildings off the top of my head, but it's big.

We've also done some large retail stores such as Circuit City stores, FYE, Borders, and Barnes & Nobles. Through the years we've cleaned millions upon millions of sq ft of retail carpet. However our emphasis is on office buildings these days.

A favorite large office building that we clean is 31,000 sq ft. It's a Class-A office space that's gorgeous. We arrive at 9AM and leave at around 3:30 (and this includes a lunch break of about 45 minutes). We run 3 Cimex's and have 4 techs on the job. One person gets water and helps keep the 3 Cimex machines cranking. We gross $2170 on that one. Not a bad return for a days work.

We like the larger accounts because it's easier to pull a greater profit on these accounts. In fact anything over 3,000 sq ft begins to move the profit levels upward, even though we charge less per sq ft as the size of the job increases. So we try to "super size" em! We don't pursue the real small stuff, (down around 1,000 sq ft), it's just not worth it.

There's gold in them there big ones












Rick Gelinas
encapman

How about HUGE accounts, like airports, etc. How do they get cleaned? I would guess it would be some kind of tennant ride-on machine that is all self contained? Take a look at the orange convention center in orlando, you'll get what I mean!

Joe

If you are going to do the Super Sized ones like airports
I would use the propane model or several electric machines and a few different types. you just never know what situation you may run into

I have one account that has 6 buildings the largest being 100,000 sq ft. the smallest is 32,000 sq ft. cleaned every 6 weeks... cha ching


Ralph

The largest single floor that we have done was an airport; 240,000 sq ft of terrazzo --- in a single night. Yes, one night; and ALL of the power went down from about 12:30 AM to about 3:00 AM. You haven’t lived ‘till you’ve hung flashlights off of your automatics. We double scrubbed the floor; laying down solution with a 32 inch propane automatic and picked it up with two battery powered automatics, trail mopped and buffed the floor with a 27” propane buffer.

For carpets the largest single carpet to date that we have done is 60 or 65,000 sq ft; in one night. It took three guys on Cimexs and one more bucketing water and it took 5 or 7 hours, I can’t remember now. It was a very large clothing retailer that was in an old JM Fields department store. We’re waiting to hear now on an 80,000 sq ft job.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

you guys have me beat bad. biggest we've done in a day is 7,500 sq.ft.

we do have a Hotel we clean, but we don't do it all at once, and we don't do any of the upper floor halls or any rooms...they do those themselves.

good thread!

thanx --- Derek.

BTW, not that we don't want bigger jobs, we just haven't landed any yet

Your Insurance Credentials. Or Insurance Agent sends out a packet to everyone that I make a proposal to as a follow up to my visit. So it is not just a statement from me that we have these insurances, but when they receive it from the Agency itself, it just has more clout, and lends a air of professionalism to the whole proccess. We carry Workers Comp., a 2,000,000.00 General Liability, Care and Custody (we pick up a lot of rugs) and also list our vans and the extra coverage we carry on them. If it is a big enough space like 20000 or more square feet, we include a CAMP (computer aided maintenance program) if they let me have the floor plans. We are doing a "Clean Carpet" proposal on a 38000 square foot, four story insurance office bldg. right now. Talk about the cream of the crop in carpet cleaning, it just don't get any better than that for a clean environment.

Dave is almost right. We did 120,00 s/f in one night with two hours of down time because of the power outage. We did another 60,000 s/f a couple of nights later with a star stripper backed up by an automatic scrubber.

I could have sworn it 240 that night, maybe it was just that it felt like 240K. I was thinking that the whole facility was like 340K. Anyways, it was a lot of floor but it was also kinda of fun --- in a sick, demented sort of way.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

I'm sure. Remember, I measured what we did and used your blackberry as a calculator. One thing you're right about . . .we are sick and dememted. Who in their right mind would go out at 12am to get flashlights to use as headlights on autoscrubbers and take all the contractors extension cords to get electricity from the parking garage across the road when the power went out.

You gotta love it Bro!!!