I will be checking out a high-rise residential building on Monday. It's a little over 40 stories tall, with approximately 63,000 sq ft of carpet. This would be primarily hallways.

I initially contacted the resident manager over the phone, and he actually invited me over to see if I would be able to solve his carpet issues (recurring spill stains and rapid re-soiling).

The concerns I have are:

1) There are no janitor rooms on each floor. I'm sure I would need to consider this in my estimate. However, would it be possible to just cimex the job from the first time? During my demo, if I clean a very dirty area, and it looks great, would that mean it could be done without hwe?

2) Also, would the perpetual clean contract come into play here with hallways? I was thinking of charging 5 cents a square foot to maintain the whole place once a month. For quarterly I was thinking of charging 15 cents a sq ft. Not sure if the perpetual clean contract would work, since hallways get used quite a bit. For the first time, I would need to charge more of course. The resident manager actually even mentioned that to me. I'll see how bad it is.

If you have any other suggestions, I would appreciate it.

Thanks

Hi Thomas,

I cleaned loop constuction hallways in a commercial setting and it was filthy-mac-nasty. Recurring stains, all kinds.
The caarpet has a very thin padding under it. Traffic areas matted down/fiber damage. It was my very first real cleaning job. I only used my Cimex. and my hands and knees and white coton towel. As i had no idea that the Cimex could have taken care of the stains and that i didn't need to get on my hands and knees.

Anyway it turned out great man. I was completely amazed at the results. I thought i was superman. The management was excited the stains never came back and still gone till this day. So do you need to HWE? Well based on the heavy weights i would say it depends,variables are involved. Pee, carpet type, nature of stain, how long it been there, glue down or stretched previous chemicals used. These things i learned from the inspection form to determine my rate for the job.

I always liked the perpetual idea cause you only end up cleaning 20% of carpet in the end. As the whole footprint of the building would not be carpeted. But in your case everything is carpet. If i charged .05 sqft. monthly i would give the option of .18 sqft quarterly. Less frequent the cleaning more money i charge. Cause of soil build-up,which means more work for me, more cleaning agents, wear&tear ect.

Thats great Thomas,you're busy with it. You didn't make the mistake i made by setting my cms on the shelf for couple of months.

Thanks
Your Servant Alex

Cultivate the "OCCD" you had at first for the industry!

Thanks for the suggestions as well as your real life experience. The more I hear people's experiences with the Cimex and Releasit, the more I am impressed.

I thought your idea of upping the price for the quarterly cleaning makes sense. It would be virtually impossible for them to want anything but the perpetual clean contract, as it will save them money annually, and their carpet will be cared for 3 times as often.

It will also prevent them from wanting you to come less often if they see that the carpet is staying clean longer. They will just see it as you living up to your promise of perpetually clean carpet.

This takes care of the double edged sword of encap, that of keeping the carpet looking clean longer to the point of them wanting you to clean it less often. I guess you could always charge more for less frequency as well.

But of course at that point, they may not think that they are getting as good of a deal.

Well, I'll just have to see how tomorrow goes.

If anyone is still following this thread (this is not the same building as the other thread), I think the GM at this building is a moron.

Let me recap here. This is an upscale 40 story high rise, with 63,000 sq ft of carpet. Guess how they are presently maintaining the carpet?

RUG DOCTOR!

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT? A 2 gallon rug doctor. Plus, there is no water on every floor. UP and DOWN, UP and DOWN. The one guy in house doing the carpet is basically costing them $30,000 a year just for carpet cleaning, and a horrible job at that.

To make matters worse, it takes the in house vacuum lady one whole week to vacuum the whole building. Only a pace of 8 floors a day.

Talk about wasting money.

I'm going to send a bid, to help them see that hiring a professional is not only better, but cheaper as well.