Backpack Vacuum Cleaner Maintenance Do’s & Don’ts for Cleaning Companies

Episode 23.

 

Ray

Joel, we’re back and we’re talking equipment maintenance, backpack vacuum cleaners.

Joel

Not just the equipment maintenance on a backpack, but even the effectiveness of the tool that it actually is.  Because backpack vacuums can cost, depending what you get, a corded one or a battery one, a little under a thousand, a little over a thousand. They are designed to be able to clean much closer with corners and edges around the carpets, behind doors, up under desks, which eliminates the use of upright vacuum cleaners. You might have to buy a smaller one called a Mighty Mite or something like that to do all the detail type vacuuming. Back when I first started, it also eliminates the need of toy brooms because of all the moving parts on an upright, you might damage phone cords, electrical cords, computer cords. So, backpacks are so versatile. They can vacuum off hard surface floors with the right attachment. So, you’re eliminating dust mops, you’re removing the dust and not putting into the air. So, they’re one of the most versatile machines out there. Now we get to the maintenance. Got to look at the bag. Once the bag is more than 50 % full, you need to dump it. And they usually have a paper liner that’s got some type of a cloth filter on the inside of it to help keep the dust reduced.

You want to make sure that at the end of every shift that you’re dumping that out. Depending how dirty your building is, you might have to do it a little more. But then there’s that cloth liner, too, where it slides into. That cloth liner should be being washed and set to dry upside down once a week. So, if you’re cleaning Monday through Friday, Friday nights, part of that should be wash that cloth liner it and allow it to drip into the utility sink so that the water doesn’t get all over the place and that it cleans all the pores in that cloth bag. Then you reach down inside of the backpack vacuum, and there’s usually other filters that have to be washed out and set to dry. And a person then should take a cloth, a microfiber cloth or paper towel with some cleaner, and clean out the inside of the housing to get rid of all the dust, wipe it all down on the outside. And also, most backpack vacuums have reusable filters that can be then also cleaned and flushed free because the more particulates that are in those HEPA filters that are captured, the less effective the vacuum cleaner becomes.

So, if you work in a building that’s very dusty, you’re going to want to wash those filters more than once a week.

 

Ray

Okay, quick question on those the two items. How long should it take an experienced person to complete this process for cleaning out the weekly clean out for the vacuum?

Joel

A minute.

 

Ray

A minute, okay. Is there a particular product that should be used in cleaning out the cloth bag filter?

 

Joel

You can use just warm water out of the tap to get most of the dust out. There are some people that will actually use the all-purpose cleaner to help break that, but then you got to do a good rinse job on it. And then some of our dustier facilities, what we do is we bring new cloth bags out once a week, and we bring the old cloth bags back, and we run them through our washing machine to really, thoroughly get them cleaned in accounts that have high dust or high needs for reducing dust in their facilities.

 

Ray

Got it. Thanks for the tip, Joel.

 

Joel

You’re welcome.