The flooring in your float rooms is going to be a top priority in the design and construction of your float center, but what about the floors around the rest of your center? You wouldn’t expect a float center to have black carpet, yet that’s exactly what we have running down the hall that leads to all our float rooms.
Earlier this week our vacuum cleaner got jammed and I didn’t have time to troubleshoot it for about 5 days. After a quick fix of pulling out some jammed gunk, I vacuumed our upstairs hall with its black carpet runner and was amazed by how easily this carpet went from funky to almost brand new looking.
Here is a before shot of a highly trafficked area directly in front of our Tranquility Room. What we have found is that the salt tends to burrow in between the fibers of carpet. The picture above shows a lot of salt, but that is after 5 days of no vacuuming. Carpet will actually absorb quite a bit of salt before showing it on the surface.
Because of the salt shifting to the bottom, it can take some very thorough vacuuming to get everything up, but surprisingly that’s all it usually requires. There isn’t a ton of scrubbing a working at salt stains.
Here you can see that there is a salt stain that is not coming up from the vacuum cleaner.
I took a wet rag and lightly rubbed the salt stain.
Seconds later the carpet is looking great and ready for customers!
While this is a fairly simple concept, I think it lends itself well to one thinking of the bigger picture of their float center. That it can be a cozy, homey place for your customers, and that the salt factor doesn't have to be an overwhelming concept as you start your float center. If we can have black carpet still looking fresh two years after opening, you can have that rug, those drapes and that carpet you want in your center as well.