Can you get your trailer inside the space? Water supply? With a 21" reclaim surface cleaner pulling around feed hose and reclaim hose going to take you frigging forever. The reclaim surface cleaners are slow because of the suction. Got to look at opportunity costs. You’ll be on that job for a month.
And 26’ high walls around 260k feet is a ton. Why would you give that away? You’re looking at a building that is roughly 430 by 600 ft. - so that’s roughly 2050 perimeter * 26 so that’s 53,000 sq ft of wall you’re doing for free. That’s the equivalent wall space of 15 -2400 sq.ft houses. Never done that much interior walls but around here going rate is about .06 - .07 per sq ft of building for exterior walls on industrial.
Commented with a disclaimer haha. IMO if your cleaning that much concrete surface you should invest in a huge surface cleaner and a lot of gpm. It’ll pay for itself in days finished early.
Have you ever made that video of the mondo? @Racer
Hydro tech is calming that I can clean 20,000 square ft an hour of flatwork. I called and spoke to them and they assured me that those are real numbers? Hard to believe. The space is very clean basically they just want a routine cleaning of once a month or so.
Maybe your reclaim equipment has that much capacity but you’re not going to clean that much, that quick, with that machine. But hey, don’t let us discourage you. Go for it. I’m all for reaching, but just be prepared.
There are companies out there that specialize in this type of cleaning, who just like @Innocentbystander has done in the apartment end, that have refined their processes and efficiencies over the years along with their equipment that makes it tough to break into certain markets if you’re doing on price. But if you have an inside or personal relationship or the decision maker just likes you better, then you have a chance. My feeling has always been, that if I’m doing an outsized job, then I’m going to make some serious money on it, at least enough to upgrade my equipment to be prepared for the next one. Otherwise, why bother.
So figure up your realistic costs, build in enough profits where you can walk away with enough to go purchase the equipment to knock it out in 1/2 the time it takes you the first one, after paying yourself a nominal salary.
I will take pic of my set up. I have not actually bought the new surface cleaner and reclaim yet. Waiting to get job first but have all my ducks in a row to pull the trigger. My machines are two gx 390 it’s actually spec at 4200 psi at 4gpm I made the units myself bought two new engines and two pumps and mounted them in my trailer running off of a 275 gallon water tote. 300 ft of pressure hose 300 foot of flexilla hose. The machines both have a 5000 psi one way valve to prevent back pressure from entering the pumps. I also have a bandit soft wash machine with 250ft of hose.
The point is, you said you had reclaim, but you don’t. You said you had an 8 at 4k. You don’t. You said you had two 4 at 4k. You don’t. You said you had two 4 at 4.2k. All of those combinations are physically impossible with the engines you have
Just because a pump specs at 4/4200 doesn’t mean it’s gonna put out 4/4200. Got to have the hp to pump it. Also, those backflow valves will, in fact, cut down your gpm and psi. I daisy-chained two 4gpm pumps (actually 5.5’s geared down to 4 gpm with the pulley setup and Honda 24 hp engines) myself the same exact way to get by before I bought an 8 gpm - which I should have bought waaaay sooner. The 2 4’s put out nowhere near what my 8 puts out. Didn’t even lift my 20” gp off the ground. It was closer to 6 gpm output after going through backflows and what not. Also ate twice the gas. My 8gpm pump does roughly 2,000 sq’ an hour on a nasty driveway with no pretreatment, other than wetting it beforehand. Definitely do a bucket test with the appropriate nozzle before you do anything else. You need to know what your actual flow is. Another thing to consider: if the floor is all enclosed, there’s nothing that won’t come up with a tile scraper, and if it’s not a food processing floor that requires hot water, then a ride-on floor machine is probably a much better option.
I think it’s great that your here and are about to start your business. I think this job your looking at is bigger then what you need as your first job… I have pretty good equipment and to be honest I wouldn’t feel comfortable even bidding your job.
If you let them know you appreciate the opportunity but you think it’s just a little more then your able to take care of they will respect you a lot more then if you bid the job, spend a few days trying to get it done before you realize your just out of your depth. Some of this stuff isn’t as easy as it looks on YouTube. I wish you the absolute best. I just think you don’t realize how long that job will take you.
Not to be a pessimist, but realistically speaking, at .115¢ a square, do you really think they want to pay $30k a month for cleaning? Also, if you ran a true 8gpm machine, you might get 10k-12k sq’ done in a 10 hour day, especially since rinsing, reclaiming, and moving equipment around will take much more time than actually washing. That’s almost a full month.
Video a bucket test with both machines daisyed up with a nozzle for about a 6 gpm machine, post it here, then try telling us we’re wrong. We have no reason to lie to you about numbers, unlike the pump salesman.
