Diversifying

[gjennings]

I am considering adding on a new service possibly in '07 or no later than '08 to my carpet cleaning service. It will either be air duct cleaning or water restoration. I see some affordable, portable machines that perform both these services on your (Steam-Brite) site. Which service would be a more reasonable, profitable add-on? Do you offer any training materials for these machines so one can get started, or is it all about personal research?

As far as restoration or flood work, can one get a decent machine (portable) to get started doing legitimate business in this industry. I know they are used for back ups to TM units, but can I do small to medium size jobs with the portable flood pumper only? I had a friend call me because his basement was flooded due to the faulty plumbing in his bathroom. I had to refer him to someone else because my portable (good machine) is not built for this work.

Thanks,

Gary @ Omni

[Donald]

water damage VS air duct cleaning

If you want to perform flood work with a portable, please consider using a machine with 6 or 8 stages of vacuum that contains waste tank mounted auto dump.
There are 3 basic types of auto dump portables. Portables with the auto dump pump located inside of the waste tank and sub mounted dump pumps, where the pump is located in the motor box along with the vacuum motors and pressure pump. Motor box mounted auto dump pumps are fine for carpet cleaning because they can handle up to 5 gallons per minute (gpm), while waste tank mounted auto dump units can handle 20 to 46 gpm. The third are machines that self flush, like in the DrainVac brand. These machines electronically turn themselves off, dump, and turn themselves back on all in about 15 seconds while you never even put the wand down.
Some examples of machines that use motor box mounted dump pumps are Mytee, Breeze, Sandia, US Products, and Olympus. Some examples of waste tank mounted auto dumps are found in Truckforce (20 gpm), Ninja (20 gpm), Enterprise (33 gpm), Octavac (46 gpm), Eclipse/Whisper (except Whisper/Eclipse machine uses a mini pump that is low flow 5 gpm), and Kleenrite (20 gpm).

For air duct cleaning you also should use a portable with at least 6 or more stages of vacuum with at least 200 cfm. Some examples are Mtyee, Breeze, Special order Sandia, Enterprise, Octavac, DrainVac or Recoil 3HP. You can use either the TurboAir attachment or the Turbobrite attachment. Your average billable man hour charge is going to be the same as carpet cleaning and average $60 to $75 per hour while your initial investment is quite small.

You defiantly would have to purchase more equipment for water extraction work like meters, air movers, LGR dehumidifiers, carpet installation tools, demolition tools, carpet skidders, lift buddies, sanitizer, wall pressurization equipment, and possibly a HydroX or similar extraction wand. Nothing pays better than water extraction. The average billable hours collected is about $400 per man hour with flood work so your return on your equipment investment is quite fast. We have numerous videos and books for training. The main key here is if you have the means of acquiring the work.