The Challenges of Cleaning a Drinking Fountain in a School

Wherever students go, germs follow, and school drinking fountains present an especially tough case for cleaning crews. Located right outside the restrooms in many schools, water fountains can be carrying germs from dozens of hands on any given day. Here are the challenges your custodial crew faces when cleaning a drinking fountain and how they can do it right.

The Germiest Buildings in America

Public health officials often regard elementary schools as the germiest buildings in America, and it's clear why they think this. Young children often have poor hygiene and will freely leave germs around the building, while coming into contact with countless types of bacteria. Between diseases originating in restrooms and the bacteria that build up on desks, computers, and water fountains, there's no telling how dangerous a school may be. Worse, students in elementary school don't have fully developed immune systems and are more susceptible to illness.

Instead of trying to change the way children behave, your school's cleaning crew has to address the problem in their rounds. Drinking fountains present so many challenges because they are normally located next to restroom exits. Students who just came into contact with the germs of sinks and toilets will transfer them onto the fountains for other students to encounter. When cleaning crews pass by a fountain, they often don't have the proper tools and technique to remove these germs.

Cleaning a Drinking Fountain Properly

The fundamental goal of cleaning is soil removal, but most custodians only have rags and mops to handle the job. Trying to clean a water fountain with a rag is going to result in germ transfer. Disposable wipes are a better tool, but your cleaning budget will be unmanageable if you depend entirely on disposable tools to get it done. Kaivac's innovative cleaning systems address both issues.

Regarding the possibility of cross-contamination, Kaivac SmartTowels limit the chances that dirty towels are touching surfaces during cleaning. The towels are divided into eight numbered quadrants, so custodians can flip to the next clean spot in a clear sequence, leaving the dirty sections behind. To ensure that there's no confusion, cleaning crews can use SmartTowels in different colors for different jobs. This system keeps bacteria transfer to a minimum. Disposable KaiWipes are another good tool for the job. Unlike costly disposable wipes, KaiWipes are packed dry in refillable canisters, giving your crew the opportunity to add an appropriate cleaning solution to the wipe. This method aims at bacteria removal.

Avoiding cross-contamination during soil removal should be a top goal of any cleaning. With Kaivac's disposable wipes and SmartTowels at your crew's disposal, they will have the tools needed to clean for health. Cleaning a drinking fountain and other parts of a school is hard, but Kaivac's low-cost solutions are up for the challenge.

For more information about Kaivac's school cleaning systems, click here.

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