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VCT Flooring

8K views 7 replies 8 participants last post by  crist 
#1 ·
After getting my feet wet literally and figuratively, by scrubbing/stripping/waxing a small 1,000 sq. ft office for a client with a rented 17" 350 RPM floor buffer and some supplies from a local hardware store, I want to branch off into the larger commercial jobs.

I have bids on three grocery stores in my area. All of which are 20,000+sq.ft and currently have weekly service. I did a walk through of two of the stores to try and get an idea for what I would quote them at before meeting with the store managers. The first store had an Encore floor scrub with wet vac pickup and a newer Aztec model that had to be at least 27". They get a 20,000 sq. ft area done in about an hour and a half I was told. From the looks of their setup all they do is go over everything with the Encore spreading a cleaning solution which has two 10" scrubbers and a wet vac pickup. Followed directly by the Aztec which all they had was a stockpile of white pads which tells me they just burnish/polish after the Encore.

My question is this; am I getting in over my head if I anticipate going through these stores manually spreading stripper via mops and scrubbing/burnishing with a one maybe two: 20" sub 1000 RPM rented floor buffer? Or should I look into renting or leasing some bigger equipment from Aztec? I figured I'd ask here first before contacting an Aztec rep. and trying to get sold on anything and everything floor related they sell.

Does anyone submit bids to larger commercial jobs for floor maintenance? I have concluded that .40-.50/sq.ft. for strip and wax is reasonable to charge out here for large residential/small office jobs and roughly .20-.25/sq. ft for cleaning and burnishing and .35-.40/sq ft. for top scrub and recoat. Unfortunately I don't think this will translate for the larger jobs if I expect to be competitive... any idea on pricing?

Any help is greatly appreciated!
 
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#2 ·
The All Clean Team,

I do just floor care such as what you've mentioned. I've only been in business a few months but I've researched the type of equipment you're talking about. I've gone to the Aztec website and have looked at all their equipment and have viewed all the videos on them, they look really nice! I went with similar equipment from Eagle Solutions, located in Adairsville, GA only because it was local to me.

The propane stripper machine is really powerful, in fact you WILL damage the floor if you leave it running while not moving. It is a whole lot nicer having to not deal with cords while working with propane or battery powered equipment.

Your prices seem right on for smaller facilities and offices, but like you said, you'll have to charge a lot less per square foot for larger buildings. I read on here to charge around 6 cents for janitorial services for skyscraper buildings, I'm not sure how that would translate into cleaning grocery stores but the price may or may not be in that neighborhood. As far as maintenance (auto-scrubbing & buffing) goes I know that for several Walgreens in my area a company charges by the service which isn't that much only $135 per visit although it is only 6000 square feet.

I would recommend calling a company that does those grocery stores and ask them what they charge, I did that with a local company and found out I charged 5 cents more per square foot but I didn't lower my price just because I found that out, besides that company is known for horrible quality (they got what they paid for.)

Anyway I hope some of this info helps, there's money to be made out there!
 
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