Killed an RC-99

I went to what I expected was going to be a 2.5 hour job on commercial. Well, they decided that they wanted another part of the building cleaned as well. Just another 1,500 sqft, so I agreed.

It had not been cleaned in 15 years....and this place gets 2 million people per year walking through there. It would have been easier to clean a dirt bike path with a wand. I vacuumed the heck out of it and threw the Rotary Extractor at it.

I FILLED my RC-99 TWICE in only 2 hours! It was so bad that it actually closed off my vacuum completely on the first filling. I was scared that my blower went at first, but it was just a packed full filter.

I ended up being able to see the carpet again and it looked pretty good, but I told them that it needed a second cleaning to get it to anything really acceptable. They booked it for Monday. Should be an easier job that day.

Just crazy how much soil there was and even crazier that any business would let it get that bad in the first place.

You know, it doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that it can be reasonably cleaned and not wick or brown out.

Gone are the days when everyone was clean. People used to be concerned about keeping things clean. Now we seem more likely to accept dirty. I think it comes from two reasons.
1 Advancements in medical science. People don't die from stuff like we used to. So in turn, we don't fear getting sick if things don't sparkle and smell like cleaner.
2 People are not being taught at a young age, to be clean. Or what cleaning IS.

You might also add in, people don't seem to take as much pride in their possessions either. I think that may be a factor too.

That is so true ! Plus they just don't want to spend !
I sure hope you charge them enough to cover 2 days of cleaning.

I do think that businesses stopped caring years ago, just look at the carpets in the last restaurant for proof of that. They will spend money on the dumbest things, but not on the infrastructure.

At the power plant, that policy was in-effect and called "run to fail" approach. Just run it into the ground and replace instead of maintaining it for extended life. It is now shut-down for good, so that tells you how well that plain works.

I actually have some leverage now with this client since they are fighting a roach problem after all the neglect. That is a big problem since they can't use pesticides due to all the animals. Keeping up on the cleaning will need to be a bigger priority to stay ahead of it.

It actually paid poorly last night due to the rotary usage. That tool can really dig, but it is so much slower unless you have someone to pull hoses. What made it worse was that there was only one outlet about 100 feet away, so I had a 150 foot extension cord getting wrapped up in my hoses as well. I win with the second cleaning which should take about half the time and just be wand affair.

As for the bats dive-bombing me all night and the fact that it is a jungle exhibit where it was already mid-90's inside....well, that is a different story.

Oh so it's a zoo ? Well that sucks but the best part is you are doing some work and hope you can get a long term contract or agreement out of it.

I just did a bank earlier today, it's 5700 sq ft and 40 steps of stairs, last time with 3 guys including myself, 2 guys finished in 4 hours and I finished in 5 hours cause we also had a couple more jobs and I decided to send my techs out at 12 pm, so in total it was 13 man hours last time which was 2 years ago, I charged them very low considering the amount of soils we had to deal with, the grand total was $ 1280, not too bad at $ 100 / man hour, but today, without price increase and they changed the carpet last year ( that's why they skipped the cleaning ), we finished in 3.5 hours, all 3 of us, and I didn't have to touch the wand at all, that's 10.5 hours of the same price, I started to think I should try to get as much commercial as possible at the same rate and start to copy Bob's business model, no one breathing down our necks, heck no one was watching at all.

That is my favorite parts, wide open spaces and nobody watching. Knock down 4-6 hours and cash out.

It really isn't a bad plan, especially when there are so many cleaners that will not go after those jobs. I wish had more help like you instead of running mostly solo, but that will hopefully change in 2018 if things work out at contract time.

Well, now I really did kill that RC99. Went back for another round in that building and pulled out 2 more full bags of sand, soil, and bat droppings, but this time it broke the tabs off that hold the basket and just sucked the whole thing down to the bottom.

I guess I will be doing some repairs in the morning and probably cleaning out my blower as well.

I would love to clean a lightly soiled house right now as my patience for this kind of bulk cleaning is running very thin.

Lol, I actually cleaned a condo last week that doesn't look any different than before I cleaned it, I meant that in a good way, I don't know why these people ( asian ) is cleaning this carpet, they are moving in and before they move in, they want to make sure the carpet is clean, I almost tell them that it doesn't need to be cleaned but since I'm hurting for jobs, I just pulled the hoses and make $ 218 in 30 minutes. The bad part is the guy was referred to me by an asian real estate agent and he barely speak English, so on the phone both of us looked like idiots.

I thought I was going to get one of those "no real need to clean it" jobs this morning. Young couple bought their first home and wanted to get the carpets cleaned regardless prior to moving in. No pets and no stains was the report.

I went in expecting to ole it for an easy check, but it was about a 12 year old nylon that had seen better days. No stains, but loose install and pretty badly worn to the point of fraying along the edges.

I felt kind of bad for them and decided to try and pull a rabbit out of the hat. Brushed it up, cleaned, dried, trimmed the frays, etc. Looked really nice in most areas, but the looseness of some rooms made things not so great.

They seemed really happy and gave me a good tip, but I didn't think it was all that great and spent too much time on it for the money. Not the best business approach, but at least they were happy.

At least it was the only job of the day. Not many business owners would say that, but the last few days were long hours and late nights. I could use some time to recharge.

That effort is the difference cleaners that get
repeat customers and those that dont

I thought you were kidding when you said you killed the filter, how did you kill it again ?
I thought what you meant was the socks got out of the basket and ended up on the bottom of the metal basket ?

The weight of the filter full of sandy soil / mud along with the suction broke one metal tab and bent the other down in the housing that holds the filter basket. I found the basket sucked to the bottom of the filter and the tab in my waste tank.

They weren't rusty either and this was a new filter liner when the job started. Just filled it and blew it up in 2 hours of work.

Wow, that's bad ! I hope you find the broken tab ?
I'm always big on using filters on the outside ( RC99 ) and inside the waste tank or the pre filter box on my everest 650, I don't care if they restrict my vacuum, that's less important than my $ 5000+ blower.

I still keep my filter bag in the waste tank as well. I hate the dang thing as it is a pita to remove, but it only picks up a little bit of debris after the inline filter. In this case, the metal tab.