Some days you are not allowed to win

I went down to clean a small commercial tonight that I was hoping would be a 2 hour job at the most. Well, it went 3 and the results were not good for the carpet, my machine, nor me.

This building has seen over 1 million customers walk through it every year for the last 10 years and it has never been cleaned.

The challenge was set and the soil was so packed that it burned up the custodian's vacuum when they tried to get it ready for my arrival. You would have thought it was the Oregon trail complete with wagon wheels when you saw it. I ran the CRB over it with tile brushes to break up the packed soil.....looked like Pigpen from the Peanuts gang in there with a huge cloud of dirt around me.

Then I slowly vacuumed the room with my kirby and filled up 3 bags only to realize that I needed another round with the CRB, so I repeated the steps over again. All told, I took 6 vacuum bags of dirt out of that room (only 22x15), but it actually started to look like carpet again when I was through.

Then I hit it with the prespray. Unfortunately, I decided to use up my batch of "Firestorm", but I will get to that later. I preconditioned and let it dwell while attacking about 7 pieces of ground in fossilized gum. I couldn't pull the gum out without digging a hole to China, so that was a wasted effort.

Then I fired up the butler.......damn, it wouldn't rev up. I had just replaced the vacuum pods this morning and it was running great right before starting this job, but now, the machine would not rev up and I was sitting at 1,000 rpm only. Oh, and the freezing rain started falling as well in front of an ice storm that is due to hit tonight.

I couldn't find the cause of the problem and had to break a broom stick and jam it between the gas pedal and the seat to raise the rpm level. I still couldn't quite get the thing to fit just right and had to deal with an under-powered machine which was down about 300 rpm.

So, now I had to switch from my big wand to my 11.5 PQC just to get some vacuum velocity out of it at this reduced power. It was very slow going with lots of dry strokes and having to run back out to the van when the broomstick would slide out of position.

The carpets were cleaning up pretty well albeit slowly and then I noticed that I wasn't alone in the place. There were roaches everywhere!!! Once the primary lights shut off by timer, the floor started moving and the little suckers were running all over the place. It was disgusting and then I started to think that I really should have worn a dust mask when I started this job.....probably going to end up with a sinus infection in the morning.

Once I loaded up I noticed that a bunch of leaves blew into the building when Security arrived to lock up and that the carpet streaked some by the water fountains. It just pissed me off to go through all this and see failure in the mirror once loaded back up.

Looks like I have to spend my Thanksgiving trying to fix my machine in time for Sunday's big cleaning for the billionaires in town....don't want to disappoint the guys who own half of Omaha. I will be thankful for being able to make the repair and not losing power to my house in the ice storm.

Oh, I almost forgot about that Firestorm prespray. I know there are some that like it, but in my limited usage, it has proven to be the worst product I ever used in several decades. It keeps getting frothy and develops a thick floating scum in my sprayer and leaves a ton of foam in my tank. It cleans okay, but it is terrible in just about every other category that a chemical can have in this industry. I am really sorry that I gave it another try at all.

So goes life....

Dang Rob...did you have a blow-out on the way home? Wish I was closer, I would of helped you out. Its nightmares like that, that make me question why Im back in. I stress easy when it comes to possibly not delivering quality due to faulty equip. Keep your chin up! (use the broomstick if you have to)

What a night and I
was complaining about cleaning in 50/mph wind gusts yesterday. Hope you get that Butler reving again. Can you use the Tnt?

I am the exact same way Devon, more upset by the sub-par results than anything.

I haven't been able to look at the problem yet as the ice storm has knocked out power at my house and it is like 22 degrees outside. I am going to have to make the attempt pretty soon, but my motivation is on staying warm at the moment.

The tnt may have to go in its place Sunday night. It does appear ready, but has only been used on a couple of very small jobs so my confidence in it for an 8 hour run just isn't there yet. It will also be in the low 20's that night and the aux heater hasn't arrived yet.

I might just go out and fashion a better broom stick and call it good for this weekend since nothing is open today for parts anyway.

Not much of a holiday this year.

Looks like I need parts.....and maybe new fingers thanks to the wind.

I have it down to the throttle cable or else the vacuum release valve....both are proprietary items so it looks like the TNT will get its first marathon cleaning task Sunday night.

This will be a pivotal point for me and this truck build. The cargo heater will be here next week and I should have it installed by week's end.

Wow, sorry to hear that Rob :-(
I'm easily stressed with equipments failure too, that's why I'm bias for Prochem, they are in my experience the most reliable machine compare to any that I've used, of course that doesn't include Butler, I've actually never used direct drive units before, I heard great things about them especially Butler, nonetheless they are all man made and will fail one day, just seems they never failed at the right time, lol.

Btw I almost stopped reading when you said roaches, I will absolutely stay out of anything that has them crawling, can't stand them at all

I would agree with you Dp, I spent most of my early days running Prochem machines and they were all good machines. The butler has run very reliably for 10k hours, so I shouldn't complain, but it always seems to break in the winter at the worst times.

At least with the TNT, I can get just about every part at the local home improvement centers so a break down would not be a concern in the future. I just need warmer weather to get to use the thing in my current set-up.

Oh well, it just makes Sunday an adventure. I will start my work day 4 am, work at the plant until 6:30 pm, race home to get the truck and then drive for an hour to the cleaning job. I have 8 hours of cleaning ahead of me (thanks to having to re-touch that roach job) so I should make it home by Sun up!

I will probably just plan on sleeping all day Monday.

milspec6 wrote:
I will probably just plan on sleeping all day Monday.

I thought you only sleep 4 hours per night ? Lol

At night yes, daytime sleeping is a different matter.

The forecast is for 6-8 inches of snow on Monday, so I will not miss much.

Dang ROB! dont say the "S" word.

Devon07 wrote:Dang ROB! dont say the "S" word.

I wish I didn't have to!

They changed the forecast and now I will be driving into an ice storm (1/4 inch expected) followed by 6-10 inches of blowing snow while I clean those 2 buildings. Then I get to drive back after being up for 24 hours.

Nope, can't see anything going wrong with this scenario.

Sorry I laughed!...wait you cant see me...I didnt laugh.

I am sort of looking forward to it for some odd reason...I guess I want a challenge. At least the equipment is up and ready thanks to a view "improvements" born out of Farmer engineering.

Some of you know that I am talking about....I will have to get a picture of it up tomorrow.

Now I know what could go wrong?

I got of work late and had to rush home in the middle of some freezing rain. When I got home, I saw the side door on my van open and many of the contents littered across my driveway.....including my backup wand. Oh, and it was 26 degrees outside.

According to my neighbor, he scared off a couple of kids when he saw them pulling things out of the van. They reached through the hose door and unlocked the sliding door...I guess I need to put a lock on it, but then again, they would have probably just smashed the window then.

It doesn't look like they actually got anything, but having a lot of cold sensitive things lying on your yard on a below freezing day is a little upsetting.

I drove whiite knuckled all the way to the job due to the icy roads and seeing all the cars in the ditches. It just made me that much later than I had hoped.

Devon, you would be happy to hear that everything else went very well. My rigged up butler ran with more suction power than it has had in 6 months....used more gas, but I'll take that every time. Single pass cleaning all the way finished at 3:30 am and about to hit the pillow now at 4:18 am.

The heavy snow just started......perfect timing, let it snow, I will sleep right through it.