What Are Electrostatic Sprayers, and Why Are They Better Tools for Disinfecting Your Workspace?

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses everywhere have been taking a fresh look at their office cleaning plans. Business cleaning these days isn’t just about making sure dust doesn’t accumulate on the printer and the windows are free of fingerprints. These days, we’re all fighting to stop the spread of COVID-19 and keep our businesses healthy. 

One of the best ways to keep your office clean and healthy is with electrostatic sprayer cleaning. Read on to learn more about this method and the benefits it can bring to your business.

What Is Electrostatic Disinfection?

Electrostatic disinfection is a method of cleaning that helps ensure every portion of a surface gets cleaned. It can be challenging to make sure every nook and cranny of an object gets sanitized, especially if it’s oddly shaped or complex. But germs can lurk everywhere, and in our pandemic-ridden world, we’ve learned more than ever how important good cleaning practices are.

Electrostatic disinfection uses a special spray device that is safe for most objects and surfaces. It ensures that every piece of a surface gets evenly coated with disinfectant, killing all germs and viruses. You can be confident that your business is clean and safe for employees.

How Does It Work?

As the name suggests, an electrostatic sprayer uses an electrostatically charged mist. An electrode inside the sprayer creates a disinfectant mist that is charged with static electricity.

Static electricity creates a positive charge. This draws the charged surface towards other surfaces that have a negative charge. This is the same force that makes your hair stand up when you rub a balloon on it or that shocks you when you touch a metal surface on a cold morning. 

Like your hair clinging to the balloon, electrostatically charged mist clings to any surface it comes in contact with. This additional pull helps objects in your office to quite literally draw the disinfectant towards them.

Is It Safe? 

The idea of turning disinfectant chemicals into a mist that will zoom towards any nearby surface may seem a little frightening. Is this process safe for your office and for the cleaning staff who use it? And will it harm any of your office products during the disinfection process?

Because electrostatic particles are drawn to any surface, it’s important for cleaning crews who are working with them to wear proper personal protective equipment. It may also be a good idea to make sure your office is empty when you clean it this way. You can also look for special solutions that are a little less irritating while still remaining effective.

Electrostatic Sprayer Cleaning and COVID-19

Of course, the big issue on everyone’s minds when it comes to office cleaning these days is COVID-19. COVID-19, also known as the novel coronavirus, is a virus that travels through respiratory droplets. This means any surface someone has breathed, coughed, sneezed, or spoken near within the last three days could be infected.

Since the onset of COVID-19, electrostatic cleaning has become more important than ever. Respiratory droplets could be anywhere, and the virus is very good at finding its way into small, hard-to-clean areas. Electrostatic cleaning is a great way to battle this virus and keep your company safe and healthy.

Where Can You Use It? 

One of the best things about electrostatic cleaning is that it can be used nearly anywhere. The mist covers a large enough area that it makes sanitizing entire offices much more manageable. Many schools, manufacturing plants, and businesses have begun using this for disinfection.

Electrostatic cleaning mist is light enough that you don’t have to worry about it harming computer systems. Of course, if you have a particularly delicate system, you may want to double-check on cleaning recommendations for it. But you also don’t have to worry about wiping this solution away; simply spray it on and let it go to work killing bacteria and viruses.

Why Is It Important?

You may be wondering why you should bother with having your office electrostatically cleaned. After all, is it worth the cost of these cleaning services to keep one or two people in your office from having to take a couple of sick days? But in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, electrostatic cleaning has become more important than ever. 

Let’s say just one person in your office has COVID-19 and they come to work for one day. During that time, they could infect their desk, the break room, restrooms, door handles, the printer, the coffee pot, the water cooler, and any other departments they visit. They could infect one or two other people, who could each infect two other people, and so on. 

It can take up to two weeks for symptoms of COVID-19 to appear, and then they continue shedding the virus for up to forty-five days. That means that every single one of your employees who contracts the virus will need to be out of the office for at least two months. When you start adding up that lost productivity, the cost of electrostatic cleaning starts to look very reasonable. 

How Long Does It Last? 

You may be wondering how often you’ll have to get your business cleaned using the electrostatic method. There’s no one right answer to this question; it will depend on how much risk of infection your business faces.

Most electrostatic cleaners do not form any sort of a protective barrier on the surfaces they disinfect. This means that as soon as the virus touches these surfaces again, they’ll be reinfected.

If your business has a lot of employees, a lot of exposure to the public, or a higher exposure to infected populations, you may want to consider daily disinfection. But for most businesses, disinfecting every two or three days should be enough to keep your employees safe.

Different Sprayer System Styles

There are a few different styles of electrostatic sprayer systems. The simplest of these is a handheld, battery-operated sprayer. These usually have tanks smaller than ten ounces, and they can cover about 5,000 square feet per hour.

The middle tier of electrostatic sprayers cleaning is a backpack style that’s battery operated. These usually have a one-gallon tank and can cover about 55,000 square feet per hour.

The largest electrostatic sprayer systems come on a roller cart. They can be battery-operated or mains-operated, and they usually have tanks between one and five gallons. Like the backpack sprayers, these can usually cover about 55,000 square feet per hour.

Reduce Chemical Waste

One of the biggest benefits of electrostatic disinfection is that it can help to reduce chemical waste. Most cleaning methods require you to manually spread disinfectant across surfaces. This takes a lot of cleaner and coats your entire office in a heavy layer of chemicals.

Because electrostatic cleaning adheres to the disinfectant, you can use less cleaning solution. You get a lighter coat that is just as effective at killing germs and bacteria. Not only do you save your staff exposure to harsh chemicals, but you also save money on cleaning solutions. 

Improve Your Environmental Impact

Electrostatic cleaning can improve your environmental impact. No matter where we spray chemicals, they wind up finding their way back into our natural environment. If you’re using heavy layers of harsh cleaners, you’re going to wind up with more of those dangerous chemicals in your local water systems and soil.

Because electrostatic cleaners use a lighter layer of disinfectant, not as much of it winds up seeping back into the earth. This helps create a safer environment for your community, which is reward enough in itself. But your company can also build a stronger relationship with customers if they know you’re working to make their world a safer place to live.

Save Money

Every business owner wants to find ways to save money on their overhead costs. Electrostatic cleaning can actually be more effective than traditional cleaning measures.

Electrostatic cleaning is significantly faster than traditional cleaning methods. This means you won’t have to pay as much in hourly cleaning costs.

Electrostatic cleaning can also use the thinnest possible layer of cleaning solution. This helps you to stretch your supplies further, which decreases your cleaning costs.

Spend Less Time Cleaning

When you’re cleaning using traditional methods, your staff has to take time to manually wipe down each and every surface in your office. Countertops, desks, file cabinets, doors, sinks, toilets, windows, walls, printers, computers, coffee pots, mugs, chairs – the list goes on. This takes time and can make it both more expensive and less convenient to clean your office regularly.

Electrostatic sprayers Cleaning generates a wide mist that covers every surface in an instant. It will take a cleaning team about three hours to thoroughly disinfect a 5,000 square foot office using traditional cleaning methods. With a handheld electrostatic sprayer, they can do it in about an hour.

Reduce Staff Contact with Infected Surfaces

When you’re arranging for office cleaning, one of the things you need to consider is how exposed your cleaning staff will be. Yes, your regular office staff will be safer, but your cleaning staff may experience more exposure to the virus.

Caring for all of your employees is an absolute priority. The more you can distance your cleaning staff from infected surfaces, the better.

Electrostatic cleaning makes it possible for cleaning staff to stay a safe distance from potentially infected surfaces. With traditional cleaning methods, you have to get at least within arm’s reach of a surface, and sometimes closer. Electrostatic cleaning lets your staff stand several feet away and still ensures your office gets disinfected.

Cover More Areas 

If you’ve ever tried to clean a surface by hand, you’ll know how hard it is to make sure every single area gets clean. You can’t keep track of whether you’ve wiped this particular square centimeter of the desk versus that one. Imagine trying to handle cleaning every single part of an entire office building.

Electrostatic cleaning can help you cover every single area of your office in a layer of disinfectant. Because of the adhesive nature of this cleaning method, there’s no “forgetting” to clean a spot. Infected areas will have a different charge than those that have already been cleaned, attracting the disinfectant particles to them.

What to Wear When You’re Electrostatic Cleaning

It’s important that you make sure your cleaning staff has appropriate personal protective equipment when they’re doing electrostatic cleaning. For one thing, they need to be wearing face masks over their mouths and noses. Not only will this protect them from inhaling the cleaning solution, but it will also prevent from them potentially reinfecting surfaces. 

It’s also a good idea for your cleaning staff to wear eye protection to protect them from potential irritation or eye damage. Hand coverings can protect their skin from harsh chemicals and keep them from spreading bacteria on their skin. You should also check on whether your electrostatic cleaner manufacturer recommends any additional PPE be used with their equipment.

Get Electrostatic Sprayers Cleaning at Your Business 

Electrostatic sprayer cleaning can be a great way to keep your office a safe and healthy place to work. It’s much faster than traditional cleaning methods and uses less harsh chemicals. It can also get into every nook and cranny of your office, tackling hard-to-reach germs and fighting the spread of COVID-19.

If you’d like to get your office cleaned by the best in the business, get in touch with us at Pro Cleanings Our technicians use the latest technologies to clean and disinfect businesses. Request a quote today and make sure your business stays healthy and productive.