CBN Building Maintenance

Wishing you a Merry Christmas &
A Joyous and Healthful New Year!

“Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savio,r and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.”
Calvin Coolidge, Presidential message (December 25, 1927)

CBN’s OFFICE AT THE HISTORIC L.L. STEWARD HOUSE
The LL Steward home was built by Southwestern Building & Investment Co. as a residence for its president, LL Steward, in 1914. Over the following decades, the structure has served as a private residence, rooming house, and general office space — with each incarnation creating a further departure from the original design.
The house’s first owner, Louis Lee Steward, was an early Arizona teacher, cattleman, cotton farmer, and organizer of the Citizen’s State Bank in Phoenix. Steward was a campaign manager for Henry Fountain Ashurst in his 1912 election to the U. S. Senate.
The house’s “tasteful Victorian massing and Prairie School design elements” create an elegant composition. This led to its citation as a “significant streetscape element” in the 1983 application for National historic status for the Roosevelt neighborhood.
In 1996, we purchased and moved our janitorial services office to the historic 1914 L. L. Steward House, just south of I-10 in downtown Phoenix’s Roosevelt Historic District.
We’ve restored the home to its former glory after extensively researching public records and interviewing folks connected to the building’s past. The L.L. Steward house has been an attraction on the Roosevelt Historic district’s home tours three times, most recently in November 2015.

Please visit our house web page at: https://cbnclean.com/llsteward/

Check out Bob’s blog at:
https://blog.cbnclean.com/

Solves a wide variety of problems

In my youth (longer ago than I care to admit) I owned several Volkswagens, including an iconic 1960 bus, in faded red. Having few resources, I acquired a bit of ability in vehicle repairs, in the days when one did not need a computer to diagnose. Much repair work was seat-of-the-pants, using whatever materials - duct tape and baling wire come to mind - and odd tools happened to be at hand.
These days, doing commercial janitorial, I have different concerns. Like, supplying TP to clients, and making sure it stays locked up so it doesn't walk off. Had a very high-end machine shop a few years back; if memory serves, they contracted work from the aerospace industry. In the back corner of a huge production area just filled with high-end tools sat a small fenced-off secure area, always locked. In it, they kept their toilet paper.

So the attached graphic struck home.

Low Moisture Soil Encapsulation

Carpet cleaning via the bonnet method utilizes a low-speed rotary floor scrubber and a piece of fabric (usually cotton, with nylon strips for scrub power) disk or pad, called a bonnet. A cleaning solution (specially formulated for this process) is applied to one small area of the carpeting at a time, which is then “massaged” with the bonnet mounted under the floor scrubbing machine.
The agitation and chemical action free the soil from the carpet fibers; much of it is absorbed into the bonnet, which is dunked in fresh solution and wrung out every 100 or so square feet to dispose of the picked-up soil. Once dry, the carpet is thoroughly vacuumed to remove the remaining soil entrapped (encapsulated) in crystallized chemicals.
There are various advantages to low moisture processes over hot water extraction (commonly called “steam cleaning”): less moisture introduced into the carpet, thus limiting the chance of over-wetting, speeding up dry-time (limiting the possibility of mold and fungal growth); environmentally, less water (by about 95%) and less chemical used; less water introduced into the carpet backing avoids shrinkage or tearing of fibers, and bleeding and discoloration. Finally, we experience better worker productivity, so we can clean the carpet more frequently at a similar annual cost.
Rotary cleaning (shampooing)
Carpet cleaning using a low-speed (175 rpm) rotary floor scrubbing machine equipped with a nylon cleaning brush. The solution is applied to the carpet, usually from a tank on the floor scrubber, and fed through holes (“shower feed”) in the brush’s backer block, aggressively brushed into the carpet, and allowed to fully dry. Thorough vacuuming then removes soil and crystallized shampoo from the carpet.
Rotary shampooing tends to be more aggressive than bonnet cleaning; while harder on the carpet, it also tends to “grind out” more soil. It’s commonly used for “heavy duty” or restorative cleaning, often followed by extraction (without added cleaner), to dilute and rinse out soil, rather than waiting for dry vacuuming.
Hot water extraction (NOT steam cleaning)
Sometimes (erroneously) called “steam cleaning” – Carpet backing is bonded to the carpet fibers at temperatures near 200 degrees; real steam (212 degrees F.) would melt that adhesive that binds the carpeting to its backing material. Steam cleaning equipment manufacturers bought a lot of carpeting for the victims of this “technology”!
Extraction uses a pressure nozzle to propel solutions (cleaning; deodorizing; fungicidal, among others) into the carpet, and a wand/wet vacuum system to pull it back out, along with suspended dirt. It works primarily by diluting or solubilizing carpet contaminants. It is effective at pulling out deep soil, residual shampoo, or deep stains.
Extraction by itself does little to agitate carpet fibers, so ground in soil can be a problem. Consequently, it’s often used in conjunction with rotary shampooing for cleaning of grossly soiled carpeting (carpeting in auto shops, for instance) or in “restorative” cleaning, or in pulling out relatively fresh beverage spills (by putting massive doses of water into the carpet, diluting the beverage, and sucking it back out).
Carpet protection (post-cleaning)
Application, usually after carpet cleaning, of a chemical coating designed to prevent staining of carpet fibers by water-borne contaminants or oily substances (pizza always lands cheese side down – doesn’t it?). After protection, ongoing carpet spot removal becomes more effective; the next full cleaning becomes both more effective and easier to perform.
Some carpet protectors are also designed to minimize the attachment of dust, dirt, and dander to the carpet’s fibers, thus allowing more soil removal with regular vacuuming; the carpet looks better longer, exhibits less wear (less gritty soil left behind for foot traffic to grind into and damage carpet fibers), and leaves less fine soil to become airborne during the day, impacting indoor air quality.

Why's you throw that out?
Our commercial janitorial agreement has us emptying trash cans, not "removing trash". The reason for the distinction is that, if something looks like trash, but is not in a can, and is not labeled "trash", it's a good idea to not toss it. We'll toss something if it's clearly labeled, as a favor, but not commit to it, to avoid ambiguity.

But, in this world, ambiguity is hard to avoid.

An example comes to mind. We were cleaning a 9-story mid-rise, a few years back. My crew came across a large computer rack (the kind you see in the server closet, with lots of devices on it), with many boxes of trash stacked around and on it, and a post-it note, "trash". My crew took multiple trips to the dumpster, and a bit of extra effort manhandling the rack into the elevator. Received an irate call from the client early the next morning, asking why we'd removed the rack. OBVIOUSLY, the note only referred to the boxes, not the rack that the note was affixed to.

Another occasion was at a radio station. We tossed a box that was sitting atop a trash can. Again, the irate client wondered why. It seems that the expensive microphone that arrived in the box had arrived damaged; they needed the box to prove that it was damaged while in route. Why would we think that a box sitting on top of a trash can was indeed trash?

Finally, a landscape architect. Picture a wicker trash can, sitting by the front door. We had our regular crew out sick, and a replacement cleaning the building. Turns out that the trash can by the front door was not for trash at all; it held the Mylar drawings set out for pick-up by the blueprint company. Sometime earlier, the client had left a note for our regular crew to not empty that can, but had not mentioned it to my office or during our regular quality assurance visits; our crew assumed that the client would do so, so that the information would find it's way onto our job paperwork. Turns out, Mylar drawings are expensive.

Sorry. Just have to vent occasionally.