Are walk off mats helpful? Preventative Maintenance
Walk off mats protect interiors of commercial buildings, help preserve floor covering warranties and help insure against costly slip/fall claims. Strategically placed interior and exterior walk off mats are essential to a complete commercial building maintenance program. If maintained properly, these mats can add years to the use life to your interior hard and soft floor coverings.
Dry particulates are any floor coverings nemesis. Almost half of the soil in a building is made of sand, quartz, dolomite, clay, feldspar and limestone. A single grain of sand has 32 cutting edges and equates to 120 grit sand paper. The constant abrasion from particulate soil prematurely wears carpet fibers, causing light to reflect differently, i.e. dull appearance. Hard Floor surfaces do not hold onto this particulate like a textile, however, particulate soil will dull your freshly polished Italian marble and even the hard stones like granite.
80% of soils trapped in carpets and spread onto hard surfaces is brought in from outside. Studies show 1,000 people entering a building for 20 days can bring in 24 pounds of soil. The correct size, type and placement of walk off mats can reduce this up to 90%, or about 20.6 lbs of this soil. A good rule of thumb is a minimum of 12 paces on the mat for them to be effective. Outside or exterior entrance mats are more aggressive at removing the dry soils and tend to be heavy duty. These can be power washed by building staff.
Once inside the building the challenge is not over. Interior mats are necessary. Many times these are placed down during inclement whether (rain & snow) to prevent costly slip & fall accidents. Soil can be tracked throughout your office space. In addition to your own staff, foot traffic from clients, tradesmen, couriers and vendors inherently move these soils throughout your interior spaces. Placing additional interior mats at service elevators, kitchen entrances/exits and inside mailrooms will continue to help trap additional dry particulate soils. These mats will also trap soluble soils such as food, drink and grease. Interior mats are generally more pleasant to look at and can be maintained by a professional company such as Eco Interior. Clients can customize these mats to color size and add logos or slogans.
All mats should be vacuumed at least daily, possibly more depending on the season and outside building conditions. Mats should be placed on a meticulous deep cleaning (water extraction) schedule as well. Do not let “unsightly & neglected” walk off mats damper the visual appearance of your building entrance lobby or freshly renovated café area? We will gladly recommend, purchase and maintain your customized walk off mats saving valuable asset replacement dollars. Call 410-647-2800 for more information.