When you run a warehouse, there are lots of things that need to be taken into careful consideration in terms of maintenance. One of those things is making sure you keep your warehouse floors clean. Without an adequate cleaning schedule and cleaning process, warehouse floors can become a real safety hazard, and it is crucial that as business owners we avoid letting that happen.
Warehouses are big and busy, it is kind of inevitable that the warehouse floor is going to get dirty over time. So why do you have to clean it? If it's just going to get mucky again, is there that much point in a regular cleaning schedule?
The answer is yes. Here's why keeping your warehouse floor clean is important:
A dirty warehouse floor can become a real safety hazard for you and your employees. Dirt and debris can build up on the surface of the warehouse floor and create prime slip, trip, and fall hazards. These can lead to serious injuries and costs for the company.
Not only that but in some situations, a build-up of dirt on the warehouse floor can even create fire hazards!
Be it a home, a warehouse or anything else, a tidy space is an efficient space. By sticking to a strict warehouse cleaning schedule and keeping your warehouse clean, you'll make your business run more efficiently. Your warehouse workers won't have to spend extra time darting and dodging around messes and will know where to find things much easier.
While you might not think that your warehouse floor's appearance is crucial to your business, it is something that you should consider. If you show stakeholders or investors around your warehouse, you want that warehouse flooring clean and sparkling!
There are plenty of floor cleaning techniques when it comes to a warehouse. Which one suits your warehouse floor will depend on the size of the property, your budget, what kind of industrial flooring you have, and what it is your cleaning materials and cleaning supplies are trying to budge.
For a real, in-depth cleaning, it is always worth considering hiring warehouse cleaning services. The warehouse cleaning experts have an arsenal of cleaning solutions and machines that are often inaccessible to smaller businesses and that clean your warehouse to a much higher standard than a regular cleaning team. They will also have full training on how to keep your warehouse clean and keep your warehouse floors safe. Cleaning your warehouse floors wrong could damage the flooring material, leading to expensive costs and business downtime. By hiring a team of experts, this can be avoided!
Take a look: How To Clean Industrial Concrete Floors
In a warehouse, dust can cause fire hazards and slip hazards, as well as allergies and all sorts of other issues. To help combat it, you can use a vacuum sweeper. This stirs up the dust using roller brushes and then, like a vacuum cleaner, sucks up the dirt using a fan. The dust is then separated with a filter system.
Scrubbing machines are a great way to clean warehouse floors. Large machines, these are ideal for picking up and cleaning large amounts of coarse dirt as well as cleaning the floor beneath it.
The exact type of scrubbing machine suitable for your warehouse flooring will depend on a number of things. In order to make sure you're getting a thorough cleaning and not damaging your warehouse floor, it is worth contacting professional cleaners like EMS Powerwash.
Even if you are hiring a team of experts, sometimes there are small, unscheduled cleaning tasks that arrive. In order to maintain clean warehouse floors, these need to be dealt with quickly and efficiently. Often, these can be dealt with by using mundane cleaning supplies such as a vacuum or mop.
There is a certain amount of warehouse floor cleaning that can be done by you and your warehouse employees. With the help of a good cleaning schedule and the right cleaning supplies, you can ensure relatively clean warehouse floors across your business.
However, it is definitely worth supplementing this kind of cleaning process with some professional warehouse cleaning. A professional warehouse floor cleaner will use big, expensive, technical pieces of cleaning equipment that are often too expensive for businesses (and too large for warehouses to store). These pieces of equipment must be manned by professionals, like the team at EMS Powerwash, and cannot be driven or used by warehouse staff with no training.
Should you decide to deep clean your warehouse floor yourself, you should make sure to follow these steps.
Once you've done this, you need to make sure you work to keep the floor clean. To do so, you should set up an adequate cleaning schedule among your staff. Remember to:
Make sure all of your staff know what cleaning jobs are expected of them, and how to safely use the cleaning chemicals and equipment on hand. If you handle other chemicals in your warehouse, you should make sure that everyone knows how to safely handle these. Your warehouse manager should help you to deliver this training.
Whilst a standard broom and a Henry Hoover are great, for a warehouse setting you might want something bigger. That's not to suggest that you go and buy the expensive technical gear that the professionals use, but that you make sure you have enough equipment to properly clean your warehouse floors.
This includes making sure you have cleaning solutions that will clean any grease spills, and tools to help combat loose dirt and dry particulate soils should you need them.
When you are buying cleaning equipment, whether it's chemicals or cloths, you should make sure you do plenty of research into whether the product is actually suitable for your warehouse flooring. Otherwise, you could end up causing long-term damage to your floor material instead.
As mentioned above, sometimes accidents happen and you end up with a spill or something to clean that wasn't anticipated. When this happens, you need to trust that your staff will deal with it immediately to prevent fall accidents and to keep your warehouse safe and clean.
Bins are major culprits for debris and dirt. If left in the warehouse they can break and lead to debris everywhere, or they can leak. Rubbish bags themselves, if left on the floor because the bins are full, become fall accidents waiting to happen.
To avoid your bins from making your warehouse floors dirty, ensure that they are regularly taken out and removed from the area.
