When you walk into a shopping mall, grocery store, high-rise tower, large institution or commercial building, do you notice the entrance mat on the floor? Do you wonder what kind it is or how it gets cleaned? Can you see that it’s dirty and needs to be cleaned? Ever wonder how that is done?
Smaller companies with smaller budgets may wash the mats themselves. A thorough vacuuming does a great job at keeping them looking clean and when it gets really mucky in the spring and winter, a rinse with a garden hose or pressure washer and hung to dry usually does the trick.
Most commercial industries contract this service to mat cleaning companies. The service picks up mats every week, lays down a freshly cleaned mat and drives the dirty one back to the processing facility.
Commercial and Industrial mat cleaning companies use high-capacity, heavy-duty washing machines to wash floor mats. The front load or top load washer looks and operates similar to the one you use at home to wash your clothes, only this one does 100+ pounds at a time. They’re big! But the idea is the same: the mats tumble around in hot, soapy water, are rinsed, then loaded into dryers.
Belly washerBelly and Pocket Washers use the same concept but are different in that they are designed to be machine loaded from the top and feature options such as two-way tilting, gravity load/unload, G-force extraction, medical contamination handling and more. Their capacity ranges from ~200 – ~800 lbs.
Tunnel washerTunnel washers were designed to automate large volumes of laundry on a continuous cycle. The laundry or floor mats are fed in one end through a chamber conveyor or overhead sling, while water enters through the other. A large spiral screw runs down the length of chamber or ‘tunnel’ providing agitation, moving the linen from one pocket to the next all the while shifting the linen progressively to cleaner water and fresher chemicals. Soiled laundry in one end, clean laundry out the other end, continuously. Tunnel washers are truly a computer-controlled engineering feat. They feature 100 kg batch sizes, up to 20 chambers and 95 wash programs, but are very expensive and have a large floor space footprint. Not always suitable for laundry companies with smaller budgets or available square footage.
The CDF Flat Mat Washer washes mats from a different angle – flat.
Washing mats flat eliminates the damage caused from the tumble action of a traditional washer, thereby improving mat life span.
The operator can inspect each mat for damage and pre-treat stains as it enters along the infeed bed. The speed of the washer can also be adjusted for heavier, thicker or more soiled mats. From this point, the mat is flooded in an environmentally safe chemical solution, washed with high-pressure spinning nozzles (more effectively removing mud, sand and other deposits), then dried with proprietary Air Knife technology.
This superior wash quality makes for a cleaner mat, a more effective dust control mat and happier customers.
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