School Wonders: Did We Make a Mistake?

Like many schools, Middleborough High School, Middleborough, Mass., recently installed a textured rubber floor in its gymnasium. These floors help reduce slips and falls during fast-paced sporting events, are durable, and, for the most part, are easy to clean.

However, rubber floors eventually need to be machine scrubbed. "Grit and soil develop in the grooves of the floor," says Adam Schaffer, New England Regional Sales Manager for Tornado Industries, "which can become unsightly and moldy, causing bacteria to grow and odors to develop."

To clean the floor, the custodians used a conventional rotary disk floor machine-but with little luck. "A rotary floor machine just cleans the top surface of the floor," says Schaffer. "It does not penetrate below the textured surface where the soiling takes place."

Schaffer suggested they try Tornado Industries' BR750 floor scrubber. Instead of pads, the BR750 uses cylindrical brush technology that deep scrubs the rubber floor's grooves and textured surface.

The machine has a 26-inch cleaning path, rotates at 1,500 rpm (faster than most conventional rotary machines), has 21-gallon solution and recovery tanks, and features a 37-inch squeegee.

"Also, it has six times the head pressure of a conventional floor machine," says Schaffer. "This extra pressure is exactly what you need when cleaning a textured surface like that on a rubber floor."

According to Schaffer, when the school first began having trouble cleaning the new rubber floor, they wondered if they had made a wrong-and very expensive-decision installing it. "But with the BR750, their troubles are over," he says. "They are happy with the rubber floors, happy with the BR750, and-whew-happy they did not make a costly mistake."

Tornado Industries has been designing and engineering quality cleaning equipment for more than 75 years. The company has a long history of developing innovative products and applying the latest technology to increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve safety. Tornado prides itself on always being on the cutting edge of floor care cleaning solutions.