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Just curious what the people that have bought new tile and grout machine think. I saw the demo at state meeting and was thoroughly impressed. My question is not as much with how it cleans, but more so with are you making money off it? How much are you charging? Do you have a minimum charge for just a tile job, or will you bring it out just to clean a bathroom when you are cleaning carpet in the house also? Do you carry it around in van at all times or only when you know you have a job? If you don’t carry it full time, have you missed out on many add on sales because you didn’t have it at that time and had to come back out to do tile? Any input is appreciated. Wish the machine could do carpet/upholstery in addition to the tile and grout so I wouldn’t potentially have to carry around so much equipment.
Also had the question of do you clean just tile on the floor, or will you do a countertop or shower/tub wall?
Anyone??????
Even though I have little experience with tile & grout, I felt you needed a response. I have room in my van to store the machine, wand and hoses but prefer not because of crowding. I have implimented a $100 min. charge because of the set-up time. I am keeping a list of good customers that want the service and are OK to schedule at my convienence. I hope to make a day of it later this month. I feel a dollar per sqft is not too much. I, as carpet/upholstery cleaning, prefer to achieve $100/man hour while cleaning grout. Price/sqft, like carpet, boils down to the size of the job. My plan is to concentrate on commercial jobs like the Subways, Taco Johns, Banks, ect. Residential seems to be too small for the set-up time and the size of the equipment. The amount of water that you go through is astronomical. On a 400 sqft residential job, I used 80 gallons of water. I spent more time filling and dumping than I did cleaning. I could have set up the power feed/dump but I prefered not to add 2 more hoses to the cluster. I feel it is a great machine for large jobs but way too cumbersome for the small – mid sized residentials. Hope this helped with your questions and hope it generates further response from others!!!!!!!
Thanks for response Brian. Seems like bulletin board has been slow lately. Hopefully people are just really busy as opposed to not wanting to participate or having login issues due to server change. Anyway, so am I reading you right in that you charge a min of $100 for a tile/grout job even if you are already cleaning in home? (i.e. $120 for carpet cleaning, additional $100 min charge to clean tile/grout in bathroom, so $220 total for job?) Definitely not an easy process to set up with all the hoses involved or jugs to fill, plus just the weight of the machine itself.
Also, what concerns/steps should be considered in cleaning regular tile versus natural stones? Lower psi? Different cleaner? More? Would love for Mike Nowlin (where are you mike?) to step in here as he has done a lot of research already on the subject and knows it well. I agree that commercial is where I see the most money/profit in tile/grout cleaning for the most part. Otherwise, for residential purposes, I see it as just another service offered to keep the competition out of my good customers’ houses.
Just a quick response to the $100 min. A small bathroom can be done much faster with the tile/grout cleaner, a scrub brush and the u-mate. So to answer your question, I charge less for a situation like that but if I drag in the entire machine, I will charge $100. I don’t think Mike Nowlin is still with us. (not sure, just heard the rumor)
Thanks for info Brian. Yeah, was afraid Mike may not be as I hadn’t seen him on board for a while. He seemed to take breaks from board, so was hoping that was the case. In my searching of tile stuff on net, I did find a small hand held tool made for cleaning tile/grout on shower walls and counter tops, and could possibly be used in tight spaces around toilets. Cost was around $399 and it looked like a smaller version of tile wand. Made to handle the high psi. Just an FYI for those that get lots of requests for this type of tile/grout cleaning.
Had new machine about a month now I’m impressed works great so far it has cut cleaning time in half 😀
I am ready to puchase the tile and grout system. Too much of it around to ignore. As i have none of the eqipment, I am going to but the new unit for the big jobs and also get the set up for the extraction to use on the small jobs. As my stand up wand is the old style, I will need to purchase a new one of those. All together I am looking at around $4700.00. Its a scary leap but i feel it is necessary to continue to grow my business.
Just my 2 cents, but if you are a single person operation, you may want to consider purchasing a unit that is simply an autofill and autodump unit. Would be much smaller and easier to handle for one person. The new ninja hard surface machine is BIG and HEAVY and may be too hard to handle for one person. Once again, just my 2 cents. Machine works great though! I’d talk to Big John and get his opinion. They have redesigned the Ninja and it’s different now (see bigger).
FYI, here is a picture of the new Ninja. This is what the carpet/upholstery and tile/grout units look like from now on I believe. I like the look and the redesign compared to my old ninja. Once again though, it is larger than the old unit and tougher for one person to handle in my opinion. The tile/grout version is much heavier than the carpet/upholstery version (for both old and new versions) and weights in around 175lbs empty….let your back do the math on that one. Once again though, I am quite happy with the performance.
http://www.century400.com/products/index.php?id=NinjaWarrior
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