The gym is more than the heart of a school. It’s the heart of the entire community, supporting much more than school sports and assemblies.

Gyms are often the biggest enclosed space in any neighborhood. They are large enough for schools to host sporting events, whole-school pep rallies, or multiple fitness classes at once. After hours they transform into important public spaces, allowing room for different groups to gather and hold events. 

Multi purpose by nature, gyms are built for heavy use. And more often than not, hardwood is the flooring most architects and designers choose for this space. In fact, maple shows up on 70 percent of the sports floors in the U.S., according to the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association, with more than 17 million square feet installed every year. 

This choice makes sense for a lot of reasons. A glossy hardwood floor looks great. When well maintained, that hardwood is robust enough to handle all of that foot traffic and keep shining. But servicing such a large expanse of floor can be a challenge to your janitorial staff. 

Luckily there are gym floor cleaning machines that work well and do not strain a school’s tight maintenance budget. 

The Problem with Old Cleaning Methods 

Some school custodians rely on dust mops for gym floor cleaning. This is a good strategy to pick up fine dirt and soils that can mar the finish, but dust mops just remove dust. They do nothing to remove sweat, spilled drinks, or other fluids that can build up on the floor.

Left uncleaned, these liquids can leave floors sticky, attracting more dirt and grime that will eventually damage your floors finish. 

Traditional mops can remove some of that soiling, but they come with plenty of other problems. Mops and buckets leave water standing on the wooden floor, which can soak in and damage the surface. They are also heavy, slow, cumbersome to use and just not practical for a large surface floor. 

A floor scrubber machine might seem like the logical answer, but—much like an ice rink Zamboni—these tools scrape off a tiny bit of the upper surface each time it’s used. After multiple passes with an auto scrubber your hardwood gym flooring can lose its protective finish. 

In addition, the heavy weight of an auto scrubber can further damage the flooring not to mention the catastrophic damage that can occur if your janitorial staff accidentally uses the wrong cleaning pad. 

Auto scrubbers have other disadvantages. They are very expensive to buy and tend to need a lot of service. They are also complicated machines that require extensive training.

This can put a strain on cleaning staff especially when the gym floor is in constant use and the cleaning tool is in the shop. Or the cleaning tool is available but the one person who knows how to use it isn’t. 

In order to keep your floor in top condition, you’ll need a gym floor cleaner that picks up solid dirt, removes dried fluids, and doesn’t leave puddles of liquid on the surface.  

A New Alternative

Kaivac’s AutoVac Stretch is a powerful wood floor cleaning machine that is also gentle on delicate gym floors. 

The system works by applying cleaning solution through a microfiber application pad and spreading it on the floor. A perfectly angled squeegee removes the fluid and dissolved soil, aiming it toward a vacuum hose that removes it and stores it in a tank for disposal.

The now clean floor is also perfectly dry and safe to walk or play on.

Small in size, but big in power, the AutoVac is simple to store and small enough to get into tight corners or around barriers. The technology is easy to learn and simple to use. Its price is 10-25% of an equivalently sized auto scrubber. In fact, it costs less than the average yearly maintenance costs of an auto scrubber. 

The tool also works fast. Performance tests show that the AutoVac Stretch is three to four times faster than mopping and even faster than some auto scrubbers. It can service more than 20,000 square feet per hour and doesn’t require before cleaning or trail mopping. 

A Cleaner Floor

 A study at the University of Massachusetts showed that during floor cleaning trials, the AutoVac Stretch removed 98.3 percent of the available soil, while a brand new microfiber mop on the same floor only removed 50.9 percent of the same soil.

In addition, the microfiber mop left significant moisture on the floor, meaning you’d need to use “Wet Floor” signs in order to avoid troublesome a slip-and-fall hazards. The AutoVac Stretch, on the other hand, removed virtually every drop of moisture during its cleaning process, leaving the floor dry to the touch and safe to walk on immediately after cleaning. 

The system is so effective the National Floor Safety Institute certified the AutoVac for providing High Traction. 

The machine’s powerful battery allows it to clean sealed hardwood, hardwood tiles or virtually any gym without needing recharging. Removing the cumbersome cords means your crew can clean a gym floor as fast as they can walk behind the machine, cutting down on maintenance time and leaving floors cleaner and safer.

Clean Better with Less

If your school is interested in saving resources like water or cleaning chemicals, the AutoVac Stretch uses 75% less water and more than 66% less cleaning chemicals than a similarly sized auto scrubber.

Stretching these resources lets your cleaning crew be more productive without sacrificing performance. The tool can clean 25000 square feet an hour before requiring a fill up. This is far longer than comparably sized auto scrubbers.

The system’s gentle, non-abrasive cleaning action will not hurt your gym floor’s finish. In fact, gloss meter testing showed that floors were 25% shinier after use.

The AutoVac Stretch costs far less than those auto scrubbers but still is so effective that it meets LEED requirements for sustainable cleaning equipment.