Microfiber Do’s and Don’ts for Cleaning Companies

Episode 21.

 

Ray

Joel, we’re back. We’re talking about microfibers. Now, I know we have another longer piece on microfibers, but you want to talk about good care.

 

Joel

Yes. We need to focus on the care of microfibers. They are one of the workhorses in our industry because of how they’re designed, how they encapsulate and remove the soils from surfaces. So, we have to make sure we maintain those so that they can work at an optimal level. And there’s a lot of best practices that we need to do in order to keep these towels working for us the right way. First thing is when you go to wash them, you want to make sure you do not use bleach. Bleach will damage them. And that is the worst thing you can do. The next thing is heat. So where does heat come from? Well, the hot water we wash it in. We need to make sure that hot water is not too hot.

 

Ray

Okay, so a medium temperature.

 

Joel

A medium Same temperature because we don’t want to melt the fibers because of the way that the fibers are designed, which we talked about in the other episode. Once they melt, they don’t work right. And the same with your dryer setting. You can’t put them on a hot heat there because they definitely will melt because they’re in a tumbling action and they’re on that heat.

 

Ray

So medium or low (heat)?

 

Joel

Medium. And no dryer sheets. Dryer sheets will damage them to the point that they will not allow them to collect. Because they work on static electricity. We need to help pull the soils off the surface. And by using a dryer sheet, we negate all of those static properties of that microfiber by using a dryer sheet.

 

Ray

That’s the softening process that damages that.

 

Joel

Yes

Ray

Okay. So one quick question. Assuming that someone’s actually committed that sin. They threw the dryer sheet in there. Can they save it?

 

01:49 Joel

Not necessarily.

 

Ray

Okay, so it might be done.

Joel

It might be done. There’s sometimes, and you can tell, if you touch the microfiber with your bare hand once it’s completely dry and you don’t feel it on the skin on your hand, then it’s done. So that’s the way that you can tell if the water has been too hot, if the temperature in the dryer has been too hot, if you accidentally threw a dryer sheet in. And we do all of our microfiber at our own office. We don’t buy dryer sheets. So, there’s never an issue with that. And we only buy a product that’s designed to wash microfibers. So again, that we don’t have to worry about the pods. Oh, did that have something in it that we shouldn’t have used? So, by using the right chemicals and making sure that other things that would tend to cause a problem are not in our office, that allows us to have a lot of control on what’s being used.

 

Ray

Just good maintenance on your tools, man.

 

Joel

Correct.