Germs on handles. Germs on chairs. Germs on toys. Germs carried even by you.
Classrooms are infested with germs and chances are once one child sneezes or coughs, it is inevitable that many others will fall sick within a week.
And when illness spreads, children must stay home. Not only does that compromise their health, it also reduces their time spent learning in the classroom. Here’s how steam cleaning can solve this problem!
What is steam cleaning?
Before we begin, let’s get this cleaned up (pun intended 😉 )
Steam cleaners are not the same as vacuum cleaners. In fact, they are designed to deal with the dirt and debris that vacuum cleaners tend to miss.
This is how it works…Steam, as we know it, is made of tiny vapour molecules. Because of their size and solubility, they have the ability to penetrate a surface’s pores to force out dirt, grime, and hard to remove stains.
As a matter of fact, steam cleaners are touted to kill 99.99% of germs and bacteria in just 15 seconds! This makes it a safe, healthy, quick and eco-friendly way to clean your centre from top to bottom.
What can a steam cleaner tackle?
- Bathrooms
- Kitchens
- Rooms
- Upholstery and mattresses
- Curtains and carpets
- Glass and mirrors
- Windows, screens, sliding glass doors
- Floors and tiles
- Ceramic and metal fixtures
- Cracks and crevices (common place for bacteria colonies too)
- Kills dust mites and mold
- Unclogs drains
- Removes stains and odours
- Removes toxic dry cleaning solvent and other odours from clothes
Benefits of steam cleaning
Schools are always expected to provide clean and healthy environments for children.
It’s easier said than done, isn’t it?
The fact is most schools are struggling with insufficient resources – not enough labour, not enough time, not enough cash…and many schools end up compromising on their cleaning and sanitizing practices. Get some help with that with steam cleaning!
- Chemical free
Since water and heat are the only elements required for steam cleaning, cleaning and sanitizing your home has never been safer and more environmentally friendly.
There are no sodium tripolyphosphates, or other hard-to-pronounce compounds, to worry about. After all, does it really make sense to prepare food on your countertop that you’ve cleaned with chemicals?
Or imagine the catastrophe if you just forgot to clean off that little bit of sanitizing liquid near the play area and a child touches it. It’s not going to end well…
Furthermore, by not using chemicals, you help our environment by limiting the amount of chemicals that get washed down the pipes and recycled back into our water supply.
Read also: 6 Things That Are Naturally Anti-Bacterial To Safely Disinfect Your Learning Centre
- Cleans, sanitizes, deodorizes
If you didn’t know, odours are caused by bacteria breaking down substances. That’s what gives unpleasant body odour (breaking down of sweat), that’s what gives rise to stale smelling laundry etc.
Because steam cleaners can use as little as 5% water in hot jets of steam, this “dry steam” is able to disinfect porous materials without posing an additional risk of mould or bacteria growth.
It’s especially effective in slow-drying areas such as furniture, carpets, and other upholstered places. Steam cleaning upholstered furniture will remove odors and disinfect, all without the added use of solvents.
The normal procedure would be to send these for washing and then dry them in the sun (which is, if you think about it, exposure to heat, in the hope of killing bacteria), and then spraying with some deodorizer (which is yet another chemical absorbed into the fabric).
Is there really a need for such long tedious processes? Why not just use a single steam cleaner? 15 seconds on one spot and you’re done. It’s really that simple.
When children lie on these fabrics, they won’t be inhaling large amounts of chemicals into their lungs too. Less respiratory issues, healthier body, stronger immunity system, higher class attendance. Brilliant!
- Spend less on cleaning supplies
You’ll never need to spend money on bottles of floor polisher, glass sparkler, metal shiner, oven cleaner, tile blaster, or have the buff guy in the white lab coat hanging around your shelf again (for those who didn’t get that reference—Mr. Muscle).
You won’t even need to put your hands in those sweaty rubber gloves to protect yourself from harsh solvents…which if you think about it is terrible. If you have to go to this extend to protect yourself, how safe can it really be for childre?
Owning a steam cleaner means you now need only one super cleaning and sanitizing tool to tackle a variety of needs around your learning centre. That’s a whole lot of cost saved month on month, year on year.
What will you do with all the extra money? Think about how much more can you be investing back into education materials…
…Or providing better quality food, better equipment and more exciting excursions for the little ones?
- No dirty rags, blackish water, heavy buckets and falling mops.
With attachments for cleaning every area of your childcare centre, it’s never been easier. You’ll end up cleaning things you’ve avoided for ages.
There’s less scrubbing, less struggling to change water, less crouching and tip-toeing to wipe low or high places, less sweating! All around, steam cleaning is hassle-free.
And there’s another icky thing about mopping…
This is the typical process for mopping; you sweep the floor, then you wet the floor, mop with soap and then mop up with water again. If that’s not enough, you mop yet again to dry up the water.
And each time, after the mop picks up dirt and gross substances, you’re putting it back in the same bucket of water. That’s not very hygienic.
Let’s say you do change the water after every mop, it doesn’t solve the problem of you spreading bacteria from one part of your childcare centre to the rest. Because bacteria remains in the tiny pores of your mop head. And sometimes even after mopping, there’s a sticky residue on the floor.
That can all be solved with steam cleaning. The steam cleaner releases a little bit of hot water vapour, does its job and evaporates quickly soon after.
With your staff spending less time on these manual tasks, they can spend more time on what matters. Alternatively, you could get a professional cleaner to come in to sanitize your space for you
- Eliminate even the trickiest and nastiest germs
When steam penetrates surfaces, it destroys microscopic mold, spores, germs, viruses, dust mites, and bacteria.
A childcare centre is susceptible to outbreaks. From the dreaded Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) to Rozeola and Influenza, steam is a wonderful sanitizer restoring the environment back to being infection-free.
Read also: How To Sanitize Your Centre During HFMD Outbreak (Plus Equipment Checklist)
Not all bacteria, spores, mold and viruses and die at the same temperature because each microorganism group has a maximum growth temperature, an optimum temperature at which grow and multiply and a minimum growth temperature.
- Except for some thermostables, most cells will be killed at 161 F or 71 C in 16 seconds ( pasteurization temperature and time for milk).
- All bacterial cells will be at 100 C or 212 F within 5 sec.
- Except for heat resistant spores, all types all spores will be killed at commercial sterilization ( depend on time and temperature combinations).[ over 100 C under pressure].
- All spores will be killed by sterilization (121 C for 15 min)
Since most steam cleaners operate at about 175C, you can be assured that almost all the harmful stuff will be killed.
Want to learn more about steam cleaning and how it can increase the productivity of your childcare centre? Talk to our experts or you could get one of our professional cleaners to come into your centre to o the cleaning for you!
