ABOUT MCC BUILDING MAINTENANCE

• Floor Finish: 2,000–2,500 sq ft/gal
• Stripper: 700–1,000 sq ft/gal at 1:4 dilution
• Cleaners: 700 sq ft/gal through auto scrubber
• Spray Buff: 25,000 sq ft/gal
• Water-based Gym Finish: 425–625 sq ft/gal

MCC Building Maintenance has performed all types of floor care related projects in the last 25+ years including but not limited to, VCT (Vinyl Composition Tile), wood, stone, concrete, rubber (mondo floorings), marble, terrazo, and marmoleum floors.

No, that's old school. The mill finish that is currently applied to VCT at the manufacturing companies is different from what was put on years ago. The new procedures are; after the VCT is laid down, the floor should be protected, to do this clean the floor using a damp (not dripping wet) mop and neutral cleaner. Do not strip the floor at this time. Apply 2 protective coats of floor finish until the new construction is done.

You should only lay down a maximum of 3 coats in one night; otherwise you run the risk of improper drying, which may affect the appearance of the top coat.

No, there is no way to strip the hard-wood floor of the finish. It would require sanding.

Most modern floor finishes don't yellow on their own. They no longer have "yellow wax" and other components that traditionally yellowed. The main reason floor finishes appear to yellow is that soil is ground into the finish surface under heavy traffic or use of soiled cleaning and burnishing pads.

If a proper cleaning program is in place and this type of discoloration appears, it's most likely "asphalt tracking". This is a result of asphalt sealer on the parking lot attaching itself to shoes of patrons, who then, track it into the building. It's important to keep this area as clean as possible. If the area is allowed to become discolored. there is a possibility that the asphalt sealer will work its way through the floor finish and into the tile, permanently discoloring the tile. These areas should be deep-scrubbed and recoated more often to keep discoloration at manageable levels.

Floor finish needs to properly cure after it's been applied to the floor. Generally a finish will be applied to the floor and immediately after the floor finish is dry to the touch, the walk-off mat will be put back in place. Floor finishes have a variety of chemicals that need to evaporate in the curing process to give the floor finish the positive characteristics it was developed for. If a walk-off mat is placed on the floor finish immediately after drying, these chemicals will not evaporate at the expected rate. This may cause color to be drawn from the mat which discolors the finish.

In these cases, generally the burnishing pad is too aggressive for that particular finish. Also, moving the burnisher too slowly may leave behind swirl marks. Different pad types require different machines. If too slow of a machine is used with a given burnishing pad, the film may actually become scratched, rather than being smoothed.

Adhesion failure is generally the culprit here. Floor finishes are designed for a specific appearance, maintenance program, and formulated to adhere to a specific type of substrate. For instance, if a floor finish is formulated for use on Vinyl Composition Tile, it may not properly adhere to marble, granite, terrazzo, or ceramic tile. Adhesion failure can be the result of improper floor preparation or surface contamination.

Floor finish is applied over subsequent coats that weren't properly dry. Other causes could be applying too many coats of floor finish in one day (MCC recommend 3 coats maximum in 24 hours) or applying the finish too heavy. Less common reasons that contribute to streaking would be the use of contaminated mops or improperly preparing the floor before coating.

Most spray buffing liquids are designed to cover about 25,000 square feet per gallon. The idea behind spray buffing is to spritz very little on the floor, then buff it out using three passes. If you have to use more than three passes, there is a good chance you are applying too much spray buff liquid to the area. One spritz should be enough to cover 6-9 square feet.

Sometimes acid-etching is used to prepare concrete floors prior to coating. Diluted hydrochloric (muratic) or phosphoric acid is spread over the floor and etches the concrete to give a rough profile that can improve the adhesion of some coatings. Acid-etching will only work on uncoated concrete floors.

MCC Building Maintenance, LLC a full-service commercial building service provider that has been in business for over 27 years is proud to announce and introduce "MCC Landscaping Service." We are now the only janitorial and building maintenance company in the San Francisco Bay Area that is a licensed C-27 Contractor (License # 960754) and is able to build and maintain landscaped portfolios. MCC Building Maintenance and MCC Landscaping Service both operating subsidiaries of the LLC are based in Novato, CA with satellite locations in San Francisco and Petaluma. We are dedicated to serving the growing demands of the commercial, municipal, institutional, resort, multi-family, HOW and estate markets. We now offer a comprehensive landscape service solution including but not limited to landscape maintenance, landscape installation, irrigation installation, athletic field colorscaping, landscaping construction, and seasonal flowering. Our goal at MCC continues to be the same, "to provide professional, quality and dependable service to all our clients."

In December 2010, we provided insight on the four types of Janitorial Service providers that are primary servicing the entire building industry. One of the primary was a Type 1 Janitorial Service provider which is basically a nationwide franchises. Names of these franchises can be googled in by typing "commercial cleaning franchises." At the end of this blog, I will give you a real life example of how I experienced a local franchise bidding on a commercial building which was managed by an owner. A national janitorial franchise will most likely grab as many accounts as fast as the salesman can drive from one building to the next, and then hire sub-contractors or Franchisees to do all of the work at a minimum price. When you begin to realize that the cleaning service you receive does not measure up to the salesman's pitch you are left with an office that is not clean, the company has your money in their pocket, and you are left with a dirty office, scrambling to find a reputable service to come in right away. You do not need this kind of trouble.

Do not hire a National or Franchise Company to clean your office or building. If you do some quick research via google, you will find that they have minimum employees and usually they have is the salesperson! Also, when doing a google search type in words like reviews, lawsuits, complaints in front of the name of the company. Additional information can also be found at http://www.unhappyfranchisee.com Although their advertisements may claim to offer the ability to staff your building with their employees, most of these companies utilize small franchisees as owner operators! An account is sold to these franchisees (owners) for 3 to 4 times the monthly amount. This means that they have no control of the day to day operations and actually have no one from their company on your site. So, do you really know who is in your building? Can you be sure that they are insured, registered or legal?

Why you should avoid Franchise Cleaning Companies. Most franchise cleaning companies do NOT make their money from the cleaning contract they have with you. They make it by selling your contract to a franchisee. They anticipate and actually expect some of the franchisees to fail! It allows them to re-sell your contract to another franchisee.

If you have any questions regarding utilizing a franchise company, ask them to pass this simple test, I have the facts for you: 1. Ask for a list of cleaning clients that they have been servicing for 5 or more years. Fact: Probably NONE. 2. Ask for a list of franchisees that have been owners of a franchise for more than 5 years. Fact: Probably NONE. 3. Ask what the background is of the franchisee that will be cleaning for you. Fact: Any John who can pay 3 or 4 times the monthly account value, the royalty fees, and any other franchise fees. 4. Ask them how much of the invoice you pay will actually be received by the franchisee and then consider this; would you run a business for that low a rate? And how long? Fact: Variates from franchise to franchise (ranges from 1o to 25%). A franchisee would be running a business at extremely low wage after paying for all the expense. Now you figure out how long would that last!! Not too long. 5. Ask them to introduce you to the franchisee owner who would actually clean the facility? And ask them, if he or she can be your contact person for any issues. Fact: They will never introduce you to the franchisee owner neither would he/she would be your contact person at any time. Reason being, they want to control and be able to sell their accounts to different franchisees to maximize profits. 6. After you've done all of this then check with the Federal Trade Commission and see how many former franchisees have litigation pending. Fact: You will find many litigations out there, google them!

There are many things to consider when it comes to choosing a janitorial service. We have already made some of those clear for you. Here are a few others: Smaller to large (Type 3), local, and family owned private companies that have time for you and your buildings. You are the consumer (not a franchisee/sub-contractor) and you will be given the personal attention that you should be getting. Most of the money you spend with a locally owned and operated janitorial service provider will stay within your city or community, and this boosts your local economy. Someone is always available to attend to your needs, answer your questions or run over to your office within hours notice, because you matter to them.

This is a real bid analysis and estimates that I got from a building owner here in San Francisco, California. He obtained 4 bids for his Class A commercial building, three from privately owned local companies and one from a national janitorial franchise. Bid # 1: $2,950.90 (competitor's bid) Bid # 2: $2,540.00 (competitor's bid) Bid # 3: $2,650.00 (MCC bid) Bid # 4: $1,800.00 (Janitorial Franchise) Fact # 1: Note the significant low bid by the janitorial franchise company. Fact # 2: They will sell this account for at least 3 times the value (minimum $5,400) prior to even starting this building. It will take the 3 private bidders at least 16 months to make that kind of profit. Fact # 3: They will find something negative about the franchisee and take the account away and sell it to another franchisee to make additional $5,400. By doing this 2 to 3 times per year they have made enough money that their least concern would be the client. Fact # 4: You are dis-satisfied with the service, try giving them a termination notice or try getting rid of them. It will take you a minimum of 6 months to terminate them + be prepared for their legal team to be pointing towards the signed contract and potential litigations on failure to abide by the signed contract. Fact # 5: They purposely underbid this job (or any job as a matter of fact) because they make money selling their accounts to franchisees. Finally, now that all their tricks are exposed... please do not hire a janitorial franchise for the cleaning and/or maintenance services for your facility. As we indicated to the owner of this building, he can hire MCC Building Maintenance or one of the two other bidders (privately owned company) to provide services to his building. To my utter surprise, we were selected for this building and we are proud to say this building owner is on our long list of happy clients.

Sometime back I talked about things to look for when hiring a building service provider for proper care and maintenance of your facility, and I briefly touched the topic of "types of commercial janitorial service provider". There are four types of companies offering janitorial and building maintenance services, and they are as follows: large nationwide or statewide franchises large area wide privately held companies small, medium or large sized privately held companies micro individually owner owned & operated companies WARNING! what you need to know about the 4 different types of commercial cleaning and maintenance companies, before you choose one! Please do not be surprised of what you will read or learn from this blog. It's important to feel good about choosing the right building service provider, and to help you make this decision, you need to know about the different types of commercial cleaning services available. Compare the 4 different types of janitorial service provider below, and you'll see why MCC Building Maintenance, a Type 3 full service one-stop janitorial and building maintenance company, is your best choice.

This type of operation usually has plenty of man-power to staff accounts (usually selling accounts), but only a one-style-fits all cookie cutter "franchise" formula. This may or may not be the best thing for your particular needs. In addition, this large, nationally spread out type operation could diminish the personalized "local" attention, flexibility, and customized cleaning your facility may need. Some franchisors may have full service janitorial capabilities, but service levels may be inconsistent from city to city. Periodically, there is franchisee turnover on accounts after their failure to meet the scope of work and lapse of good service, and the "re-selling" of your cleaning contract to 3rd party franchisees is a standard and common practice that many people aren't aware of. I will be writing another blog as to "what practice the large cleaning franchises use to earn their clients," and provide the readers with many reasons not to hire a nationwide or statewide commercial cleaning franchises. Please stay tuned.

This type of operation are usually companies that are covering large territories or one to few States in the region. Depending on who you hire as your building service provider, most of the time they sub-out all their clients to Type 4 service providers. Once again, majority of the companies falling in this category also have spread out operation thus diminishing the quality of work. Such companies have a good 'sales force' out there who pulls clients only to realize they would not be able to service the client's best interest. Having said that, I would say that there are some providers in this group that have developed area managers and employees to service the large territories that they cover. However, 9 out of 1o times, this may or may not be the best thing for your particular needs.

MCC Building Maintenance falls into this category, and we feel it offers the best of what you're looking for in a professional cleaning and maintenance service. MCC Building Maintenance is a locally based company that's been serving San Francisco and surrounding cities since 1984, and you get the stability of a larger, established cleaning company with plenty of man-power that can provide experienced fill in help at any time, along with the flexibility to expand as your business needs expand. Plus, you get local responsive ownership and that extra personal attention. Full service janitorial capabilities are always available with MCC, as well as top notch quality control measures. Any building service provider that falls under this category, chances are that you will be in good hands at all times. Although, do make sure to check out their experience in this industry, references, insurance/workers comp documents and if possible check to see if they can provide a "waiver of subrogation" for you to protect your building and its' tenants.

This type service can give you good personalized attention, but often has little back-up if someone is sick or no-shows, so you might have more missed cleaning days. Small mom & pop's may be unable to expand and keep up with your expanding business needs, and oftentimes don't have adequate insurance coverage. Many small mom & pops and husband & wife cleaning teams lack full service janitorial capabilities, and advanced quality control measures are frequently absent. Additionally, some mom & pop's are splinter companies of a large company meaning they went around the company for which they were working and decided to take over some of their clients. It is alwaya wise to stay away from this group of companies due to the reasons indicated above.