Dirt is a fact of life. It\u2019s also an expensive problem for facilitydepartments.<\/p>\n
It costs more than $500 to remove just one pound of dirt after it\u2019s tracked throughout a building. That may not sound like a lot of money, but consider this: 1,000 people coming through an entrance over a 20-day period can bring with them 24 pounds of dirt. That $12,000 in cleaning costs.<\/p>\n
The good news? There\u2019s a way to minimize dirt in a facility. Entrance matting acts as a first line of defense, preventing as much as 80 percent of dirt from accumulating. That means an investment of a few hundred dollars could reduce those cleaning costs to $2,400.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more soil you trap at the entrances, the cleaner your building will stay,\u201d says Steve Spencer of\u00a0Spencer Consulting<\/a>, and former facilities specialist at State Farm Insurance. \u201cMats are a very positive addition to the building.\u201d<\/p>\n About 80 percent of the soil in a building comes from outside, tracked in on people\u2019s shoes. How much matting does it take to collect and stop all that dirt? Experts agree that facility cleaning managers should create a \u201cwalk-off area\u201d that includes exterior and interior mats. Exactly how long this area should be is up for some debate.<\/p>\n On the high end, Spencer suggests 35 to 40 total feet of matting.<\/p>\n \u201cThat will collect over 90 percent of the soil that\u2019s coming in from outside, whether wet or dry,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n A slightly lower number comes from Bill Fellows, owner of\u00a0Fellows Custodial Consulting<\/a>\u00a0and author of\u00a0Creating Your Place In The Cleaning Industry<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cAn exterior scraper or wiper mat should be followed by a minimum of 10 feet of a walk-off matting,\u201d he says.<\/p>\nChoosing The Right Matting<\/h3>\n