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The April Contractor of the Month is Industrial Cleaning Solutions in Blue Springs, MO.
Industrial Cleaning Solutions provides dry ice cleaning in a variety of industrial facilities, residential and commercial construction projects, and in commercial and industrial kitchens. The company extensively cleans production and processing equipment, such as vacuum tanks and tubing, radiators, heat exchangers, and all types of equipment with a variety of surfaces like stainless steel, galvanized steel, and painted steel. They also pre-treat surfaces for coatings and painting with dry ice blasting.
The company focuses on cleaning facilities during shutdown periods, emergency cleaning, fire and mold remediation, paint removal, and USDA compliant cleaning.
Adding dry ice blasting to their business
The company incorporated dry ice blasting into their business after a project where they cleaned duct work in a food packaging plant. Previously, the company used manual cleaning methods and water-based cleaning solutions. The amount of time it took them to clean the duct work by hand during this project encouraged them to look for other options to safely clean the plant.
Before the use of dry ice, Industrial Cleaning Solutions performed the cleaning with scrapers, scrub brushes, rags, and a spray bottles that contained a hot water and vinegar mix. Because the company was using water in the cleaning process, it caused brown liquid to drip all over the floor of the plant. This required the company to have employees on the ground with mops and buckets to clean up the secondary waste. The workers would also have to wear water-proof body suits and full face respirators due to dust that was created from the residual food.
The previous cleaning method took the company five days with 14 hour work days. After incorporating dry ice blasting, the project time was cut significantly.
“Labor time was nearly cut in half,” said Weston Bennett. “The cleaning was done so well with dry ice the first time that there was virtually no touch up cleaning to be done. None of the workers had to wear special clothing for the job and the jobsite was dry the entire time.”
Finding success in many applications and industries
Industrial Cleaning Solutions is finding success in many different industries and in many different applications. One successful application has been removing the residue left behind on finished material from spray foam insulation. Spray foam insulation is used extensively on roof lines and to seal exterior penetrations from the inside of a structure.
“When the spray foam expands and gets on to a finished surface, dry ice blasting effectively removes the spray foam residue without damaging the finished surface,” noted Bennett.
The company also has been successful in cleaning projects that require a gentle touch, such as cleaning the interior of packaging machinery. By turning the PSI to a very low setting on their machine, they can isolate one line at a time and clean every component of the machinery with minimal hours of downtime.
“Dry ice is allowing us to maintain machine parts unlike we have ever had the ability to do before,” said Bennett.
Another application in which the company finds dry ice blasting to be superior is in the detailing of heavy construction equipment. They safely remove all of the surface residue on heavily soiled pieces of equipment in a fraction of the time compared to power washing and hand cleaning.
The company sees great opportunity in a new application, which is cleaning industrial and commercial kitchens. They believe that dry ice blasting is the most effective technique to clean any type of kitchen appliance, especially grease ductwork, grease traps, and hood systems. Before dry ice, the company relied on scrapers, solvents, bags of rags, and multiple other tools.
“Now that we have dry ice capabilities, kitchen cleaning is so effective and quickly done,” said Bennett. “The savings and quality of work is recognized by us and passed to the customer. It is a win-win situation!”
Industrial Cleaning Solutions has successfully added dry ice blasting to their business offerings and they plan to continue to use it extensively into the future.
“We are going to use dry ice blasting in every cleaning application as well as all prep work for concrete safety markings, refinishing and resurfacing, and repair in our industrial, commercial, and residential businesses.”
