Rosy Future Seen For Carpet Care Products

sanitary maintenance market relates directly to the building industry and the future looks rosy as commercial construction reaches an all-time high, with present and future projects in areas such as the office field, the lodging-hospitality industry and the new trend in airport terminal construction and expansion.

These markets have shifted and are shifting more strongly in favor of carpet instead of hard- surface tile or terrazzo as floor coverings. The sales of carpet care equipment and chemicals will escalate because programmed carpet maintenance will take on added importance with carpet as the largest horizontal "use-surface" in a building. According to airport and aviation executives, "Carpet is in and hard-surface floors are out for present and future terminal expansions!

Article by: Gary Parker

Executive Vice President, Von Schrader Co.

A hole in the ground today means sales for sanitary supply distributors tomorrow. Since new buildings mean more carpet installations, sales of carpet maintenance equipment and chemicals will increase.

Designed and engineered for large-scale carpet cleaning and maintenance in airport terminals and other areas, the wide MACH 12 cylindrical brush reaches down into the carpet to pull deep-down soil and grit to the surface where powerful twin turbine extraction units remove soil before it can dissipate back into the carpet. The MACH12 moves fast, covers more area and carpet dry times are short.

The LMX is designed for smaller - areas such as gate locations, offices, shops and restaurants. Highly maneuverable and rugged, the LMX is made with the same engineered quality as the MACH 12.

Carpet is being installed in large public areas in terminals where it has never been installed before. The reasons: carpet provides more passenger comfort. The Las Vegas airport is installing one million feet of carpet, Miami has a million feet. Orlando has just completed an expansion, now has 800,000 feet of carpet, but will double the size of the main terminal and have a total of 1.6 million feet of carpet, in addition to building an international terminal across the field. Expansions in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Denver, as well as other major terminals, will require new carpet Installations. Because of their sheer size, airport terminals provide the largest single carpet installations .

Logical upsurge

This upsurge in carpet use for new construction is logical. Car- pet does more than hard-surface floors. Carpet adds decor and color, it controls acoustics in the larger areas, provides comfort and attractive safety underfoot and, when maintained properly, will sustain better appearance than hard-surface floors. Building owners and operators install car- pet because it helps improve image.

Amounting now to slightly more than a half billion dollar market, sales of carpet equipment and related carpet products will climb rapidly at a 17-23 percent rate this year and more next year to service the expanding carpet market areas. In two years, sales of carpet detergents alone are ex- expected to reach 120 million dollars.

Carpet styles

Large now, carpeted areas will become larger. Technology and new products provide better wear, more color and good appearance retention. The carpet product has changed from an old fashioned woven carpet to a more serviceable and utilitarian carpet tufted in tight commercial construction to withstand heavy foot traffic.

Today, the end use carpet product can be level or multilevel loop broadloom, modular fusion bonded or tufted carpet squares with several types of backing, sophisticated berbers that look like wool or jet-printed broad looms that resemble fine Axminsters without the cost. The method of installation has changed too. More carpet is glued to the floor, especially in areas where cart use and rolling stock make this method almost mandatory.

Although domestic nylon con- continues to dominate with 80 percent of the market, more expensive, imported wool Axminsters are making inroads within the hotel/motel field for lobbies and public spaces where patterned carpet is a must. In addition, modular carpet squares will increase in use to about 20 percent over last year due to the rotation /replacement concept and the fact that they can be used in conjunction with flat cable.

Widely used within the office industry, flat cable (flat wiring covered with a thin metal strip under the carpet squares) provides power and communications for computers and telephones. Less expensive and more flexible than conventional construction methods of trenching, raceways and ducts for power and communications, the flat cable can be used under modular squares to pass building inspection codes.

New buildings

Although the interiors of new buildings are thoroughly planned to facilitate work flow, changes in work station positions and even whole departments are moved. Flat cable and carpet squares reduce these moving costs considerably.

A success in the office field to feed communications and data to more demanding computers, the flat cable and modular concept can be used in the hotel industry as the guest room becomes more of an office away from home with a need for tie-in with main frames and other computers. Carpet designers are also looking at PCD carpet where power, communications and data fed through fiber optics are woven into the carpet during production as primary services for all three. In addition to the "plastic card keys" now in use in some buildings, the PCD carpet can provide security control. Intruder weight on a carpet will sound an alarm if an area is improperly entered, and the carpet has the potential of becoming a source for heating.

Synthetic fibers

Synthetic fibers have gone through a metamorphosis since nylon was first introduced during the thirties. Cross section configurations have been changed to help hide soil and altered to change light refraction. Chemical formulas have been shifted and stain-resistant coatings added. But, we still don't have the "miracle cle fiber." The fibers are better than the past, but carpet and fibers still get dirty and must be maintained. Acceptable visual performance of the carpet relates directly to the care, equipment and detergents as well as the color of the carpet and not the fiber.

Although carpet specifiers are more color conscious, they sometimes overlook choosing a color for a particular site or location where tracked-in soil can be a paramount problem and effect appearance retention if the carpet color is wrong for the site.

More carpet

Because more carpet is being installed and the carpet installations are larger, faster, more cost effective care and maintenance is necessary to sustain acceptable levels, reduce operational costs and time expended. Adding more crews and small machines only escalates labor costs. Then too, the old concept of carpet cleaning has given way to programmed maintenance to sustain higher appearance. Carpet is not allowed to become so heavily soiled that cleaning is difficult or restoration impossible. More frequent, easier and less costly procedures with wider machines have been found to provide better appearance.

Cost effective

New, wider machines are capable of covering up to 8,000 sq./ft of carpet an hour to reduce large scale carpet time and labor costs by more than 85 percent. Whereas some carpet cleaning systems require two or three personnel, machines with one-pass, one operator procedure cover more carpet and free other personnel for peripheral cleaning tasks and other duties.

Large capacity detergent and soil removal tanks reduce downtime and allow the operator to maintain more carpet without stopping. Such systems remove deep soil, and immediate soil removal prevents dissipation of soil back into the pile.

On-location research and time/ cost studies show good visual per- formance as well as time and cost reductions to provide cost-effective carpet care. Building management is taking a long, hard look at maintenance operational expenditures. Since carpet is the largest horizontal "use-surface" it can consume a big share of the budget.

The future

As carpet installations reach new, larger-scale dimensions, the wide machine concept makes sense to reduce maintenance costs. Plans are on the board for even wider "rider" machines to maintain these areas efficiently and more cost-effectively. The janitor's closet will be replaced with a carpeted mini-parking garage where the machines will be stored when not in use. A gas pump type detergent dispenser will be used to fill the machines and a floor level drain will empty the dirty soil recovery tanks. Simplistic to operate, the operator fills the machine, turns it on and goes. Coverage will be upwards of 65,000 feet per hour depending on speed.

Both the interior and exterior building design concepts will change in the future. Offices will take on a more informal but more efficient work design to take advantage of new technology, fiber optics, flat screen CRTs and acoustical dampeners. PCD running through the carpet will eliminate some carpet maintenance systems that overwet and could cause a power failure or a "crash" in the computer network.

As planners find the open-area concept more useful, carpet installations will increase in size. Future maintenance concepts and products will maintain areas.