Why Restrooms smell the way they do?

In this episode we discuss why restrooms smell and the processes of cleaning restrooms. Mike & Joel also discuss the importance of finding the source of that restroom smell. This discussion includes Joel Craddock, President of Docs Facilities Consulting and Mike Zanche, Operations Manager for Gabriel First Corp.

You’ll find the full transcript, below

 

[00:00:03.800] – Ray

Welcome back. We are back with Keep It Clean, a podcast with Mike Zanche and Joel Craddock. The topic is, why do restrooms smell the way they do? Guys, I cannot freaking wait!

[00:00:21.460] – Joel

Well, why do they smell the way they do? One of the things on a consulting level, and even when I’m going on good walk-through I ask questions of people, How many people do you have in your facility? Why do I know this next piece of information? I don’t know. The average person will use a bathroom in a commercial setting about four times over an eight-hour period of time. If you have 100 people in the building, one eight-hour day, that means that that bathroom gets 400 uses over the course of the day. If you only have two restrooms, it means that each restaurant on average is getting 200 uses a day. And then you have a client say, “Well, I only want once a month cleaning.” So, you try to get people to understand task and frequency is important because how often are they cleaned? How often do they get used? Because we know that things are going to happen in restrooms just via the use. So that’s one of the big things.

[00:01:13.190] – Mike

Well, that leads into the fact of the two types of smells that you typically run into because out of those 400 times it’s going to be used, it’s not always the same occasion. So, what is typically when we’re going in, we’re working with clients, going in facilities to do the job, what are we running across? You got typically either a lingering-type smell. We’ve all walked into that gas station like, “Oh, boy”, which is like a lingering or constant smell, or you have temporary in the sense that a lot of times, again, how much usage, the type of cleaning They’re doing the intervals and all that. That’s something that when the soil loads and all the body oils and the fluids and stuff like that build up with just regular grease and grime in soil itself to create that and the bacteria that eats that gives off the gas, it’s got a lot of food-source compared to temporary, where when you have a situation, it’s clean. But at the end of the day, we are human beings. And some of the functions we do in the restrooms do tend to leave a little bit of odor, but they’re temporary. So, you’re talking within a few minutes.

[00:02:13.590] – Joel

So, once you determine, is it the lingering is what we really want to more-or-less focus on because, you become a detective. Well, what’s the source of a smell? Well, different things put off different odors. So, let’s talk about milk. It’s sweet and sticky, and you’re going to find this maybe more in a locker room situation or rooms that have showers. So, you might have mildew that’s starting to build up underneath the rubber mat. We have the smells that come out of the floor drains. A big problem right after COVID, when people were going back to buildings that had set vacant for two years, where nobody was going in and making sure that water was being run through the traps of the sinks or even the toilets. (Floor drains, too.) That’s the floor drains. Those types of sewer gasses, some of the flies and things that will come into a restroom as well based off of those, and the surfaces themselves. If they’re not being cleaned properly off. One of the big things is in typically a lot of men’s rooms where they have ceramic tile floors and ceramic tile walls. Let’s face it, gentlemen, we live in a world where guys, for whatever reason, tend to miss.

Those uric acids will get down into the floor and sometimes soak into the subfloors. It gives it what most people call a restroom smell. Most typical people, even that don’t know anything about, oh, it smells like a restroom. When you can smell those, I’ve worked in buildings where you can smell the restroom all the way out in the parking lot. But you have to find the source. You have to start being that detective. Where are the odors coming from? What are they? Because each one of those situations is going to bring about a different solution that has to be done.

[00:03:52.090] – Mike

The factors in the bathrooms as well. A lot of older buildings sometimes don’t have good ventilation. Being a detective is a core point of anything Everything we do in the cleaning industry. When you get to that point, so we’ve gone in the bathrooms, we flush the toilets, we’ve assessed what’s going on and all that. Now we’re going to start looking to develop either the program or remediate that. We have three core tenets you’re looking at to approach, and this can be in a general cleaning approach, but especially in the bathrooms. Your chemistry approach: Your cleaning product has a big part of it. I have a lot of times, even this morning, I was with a client working with them, and it was in a bathroom because bathrooms are always a key issue. Many times, enzyme products. Every tool has its place, but you need to understand. But before we just jump to the whole end and end up with 37 different things in our cadre, what are we looking to do? Some of the PH factor comes into what are the typical soils you find the bathrooms in that. So, the chemistry is a big approach in finding an effective cleaner.

Then from there, the tools: There are many options out there. Many things have pros and cons. Everything is a detective point on that side of it. But whether its flat mops or it’s string mops? Is it vacuums? Can you fit an auto scrubber? Some of these smaller auto scrubbers, the smaller scrubs. Looking at the tools, the one this morning, they had a textured, epoxy floor. So, in that mix came the point of a small scrubber that I was showing them as well. Just because the texture, the nature of that beast, the cleaner can do a lot. But as you can see in the lower valleys, especially through heavy traffic, we were cleaning their most busy restroom in their school. So, the tools plays a point.

[00:05:29.460] – Joel

It could even cause linting of a looped mop. You get a lot of linting left behind because it’s scratching and removing material. So that’s a great point.

[00:05:38.190] – Mike

And you get a flat mop. Understanding the pros and cons because a flat mop has a limited amount of liquid to it. So, there’s pros and cons. You got grout. Everybody has a bad wrap on grout. There is no maintenance floor. So, there’s always going to be a benefit it brings. There’s going to be a downfall. But really grout, when you’re talking about, I’m picking on us men. We have bad aim. If it soaks in, now let’s go back to the tools. How do we soak it out? If we’re not putting enough liquid and what tools will let us do that in a time when we have limited amount of time. Whether it be contractor in house, usually you’re not going to have the personnel or the time to truly do the facility every night. So that’s where the last one is the technique to balance out the chemistry, the tools, and then how you’re doing it, like the wet mopping versus damp mopping.

[00:06:18.560] – Joel

And then the techniques that comes down to training and working with your staff members and having a standard operating procedure. There are programs that you can get from different organizations where it’s already laid You need to clean out. Whatever you do with it, you want to make it very similar so that you’re doing it the same with building A, B, C, D, first floor, 10th floor, 50th floor, it doesn’t matter. You want the same technique to be done by your staff.

[00:06:47.550] – Mike

The soil doesn’t change, but your intervals, like you said, when we started off, you got 100 people, and then now what you do is you do if they got a building that’s got 400 people. So the level of soil can have a factor on there. With a lot of time to see with the technique in bathrooms, of crowding is a very popular thing, even if you have a seam line, you have a bare concrete floor. Nobody really has the time to wet mop a floor every night. In the real world. It’s great in the theoretical vein of things, but in the real world, the time is not there, the ability and the staffing isn’t there. So, you got to get it cleaned so that you can get it cleaned and maintain it to keep it clean. And the intervals, a bathroom that gets 20 people a day compared to a bathroom that gets 2,000 people a day. The process is not going to change. But the amount of cleaning, I might have to do a wet mop than the one that gets more volume than the one that does not. And balancing that out. (Correct.)

[00:07:35.420] – Joel

But the key fundamental is having a system, standard operating procedure that you’re teaching each individual about. And then as these “detectives” that we become, we’re more worried about taking care of those lingering odors because those are the problematic ones. Those are the ones that’s going to get an in-house cleaning operation eliminated from their jobs. It’s going to also be one of the big factors that commercial cleaners get let go. There are most commercial cleaners are let go because of the bathroom. But remember, oh, by the way, sometimes we do have to use fragrances to take care of those temporary odors. But if your cleaning company or your in-house cleaning program is trying to cover odors with fragrances, it probably is not being serviced properly.

[00:08:19.250] – Mike

It goes back to being a detective.

[00:08:21.230] – Ray

All right, well, that wraps us up for why do bathrooms smell the way they do? Gents, thanks. Check us back for more of Keep it Clean. We’ll talk to you soon..