Can we get a hall stripped and sealed inside a two-week break?

That is the standard scenario the equipment is chosen for, and the limiting factor is usually coating dry time rather than machine speed. The ST2100 gas stripper is built for that compressed work on large hard floors, and a GAZ burnisher brings the corridors back afterwards. Plan the sequence with your distributor before the break rather than during it.

Can we run a gas machine indoors in a school hall?

Only where ventilation is genuine, and that is your call to make against your own site rules, not ours. The Closed Loop engine emission technology on the GAZ range and the Gas Shark is designed with that duty in mind, but the sensible default in an occupied school building is a battery or mains machine, with gas kept to docks, undercrofts and carparks.

What should we use on the timber gym floor?

Not a wet scrub. Timber sports floors go on a screen-and-recoat cycle, and the sanding needs to be dust-controlled given the equipment and line marking in the room. The Sandivac SV25 and the higher-speed SV30 Supervac are built for that work, and it is usually a holiday-period job.

Our cleaning is contracted out. Should the school own the machines?

Both models work, but they fail differently. Contractor-owned equipment leaves with the contractor, taking familiarity with your gym floor and your seal with it; school-owned equipment means you carry the servicing relationship. Either way the machine should be one your local distributor supports, since a breakdown during a shutdown has nowhere to go in the schedule.

Education Floor Care Machines

Floor care in Education runs on two clocks: a term-time routine squeezed around timetables and after-school activities, and a short holiday shutdown when strip-and-seal, gym floor work and deep extraction all have to happen at once. Surfaces range from sports timber to sealed concrete, grit-loaded from the oval.

Find Distributor

Polished corridor floor in a school building

WHAT MATTERS

Floor care built for education

Two calendars, one budget

Machines that sit in a store room for most of the year still have to justify themselves in a two-week shutdown, so versatility beats specialisation on a school site. The ST2100 gas stripper and the GAZ burnishers, plus the DA32 and DA42, exist for exactly the compressed hall-and-corridor work a holiday period demands. The MM1700E automatic scrubber covers the term-time routine on the same floors, and larger campuses often add the Mitchell BRUMBY ride-on, an imported machine POLIVAC supplies rather than builds.

Grit tracked in from the oval

Sand and grit are abrasive, and scrubbing them across a sealed floor grinds the finish rather than lifting the soil. The order of operations matters more than the machine: vacuum first, then scrub. The WOMBAT canister vacuum handles entry matting and hard floors, the KOALA backpack moves down rows of desks and under furniture faster than an upright, and a suction polisher captures what the pad lifts instead of throwing it back into a classroom.

Sports timber that cannot be flooded

A gymnasium timber floor is the most expensive surface on most school sites and the least forgiving of water. It needs screening and recoating on a cycle rather than a wet scrub, and the sanding has to be dust-controlled because line marking, equipment and ventilation are all in the same room. The Sandivac range is built for that work, with the SV25 slow speed for controlled passes and the SV30 Supervac where the area is large and the window is short.

Cleaning while the campus is occupied

Term-time work happens around timetables, after-school care and, on a university campus, a library that never really closes. Battery machines are the ones that can be started and stopped around a room becoming free, without a lead crossing a corridor students use. Gas machines belong on loading docks, undercrofts and open carparks where ventilation is genuine, and the Closed Loop engine emission technology on the GAZ range and the Gas Shark is about that duty rather than about running a machine in a closed classroom.

Canteens and food technology rooms

Canteen servery floors, food technology rooms and hospitality training kitchens carry cooking grease onto quarry tile, and grease on a grouted floor is a slip risk that a pad simply polishes rather than removes. These rooms need brush agitation into the joints and a machine that recovers the water rather than spreading it, on a frequency set by service times instead of the cleaning roster. The C27 GEN2 with brushes covers the servery and prep areas, with the A23 Mini for the tighter spaces behind benching.

Machines shared across a campus

A school is several buildings, and the machine gets trolleyed between them, up ramps, into lifts and occasionally down a set of stairs by two people who did not lift it correctly. Build robustness matters more here than in a single-floor site, as does compactness, which is where the A23HS and the C25TS earn their keep on primary campuses. Because POLIVAC builds in Melbourne and sells through 225+ distributors nationally, a machine that gets rough treatment for a decade can be repaired locally rather than written off.

A school is a light-duty cleaning job for forty weeks and a heavy one for two. During term, access is the constraint: classrooms free up at different times, after-school care runs in the hall until evening, the library is open late on a campus, and nobody wants a burnisher running past an exam room. Then the students leave and the entire deferred programme lands in a fortnight, with a hall to strip and seal, a gym floor to screen and recoat, library carpet to extract and every corridor to bring back before the first day of term. The machines have to serve both patterns, which is a harder brief than either one alone.

The second constraint is grit. A school sits next to an oval, a sandpit or a construction zone, and abrasive soil gets tracked across every hard floor daily. Grit does not just look untidy, it scours the seal and shortens the interval before the floor has to come back to bare. That makes the vacuum pass the one that protects the asset and the scrub pass the one that follows it. POLIVAC has been building for this kind of duty in Kensington, Melbourne since 1949, and holds ISO 9001 certification.

What actually gets cleaned during term

Term-time cleaning is high-frequency and low-intensity: classrooms vacuumed and spot-cleaned daily, toilets and change rooms on their own regime, canteen and food technology floors handled after each service because of what gets dropped, and corridors given a machine pass when the timetable allows it. The library and staff areas are usually carpet and are more about spot extraction than scheduled deep cleaning. The one piece of periodic work that pays for itself during term is burnishing corridors after hours, because it delays the point at which the seal has to come back to bare, which is the expensive job. On most campuses this is contracted work, and the contractor’s roster rather than the school’s preference determines when a machine can be run.

The surfaces on a school site

Vinyl sheet and vinyl tile dominate classrooms and corridors, but almost nothing else on a campus matches it. Sealed concrete runs through undercrofts, walkways and covered outdoor learning areas and takes abrasion rather than chemical attack. Timber sports floors in the gym need their own equipment and their own cycle. Quarry tile in canteens and kitchens has grouted joints that a pad skims over and a brush actually cleans. Science laboratories have chemical-resistant flooring that should not be treated like the corridor outside it. Libraries, staffrooms and admin are carpet, usually broadloom or tile, and want scheduled extraction with the Terminator or Auto Terminator Plus rather than the improvised approach that works in a classroom.

How schools, TAFEs and universities actually buy

Purchasing here splits three ways and the split matters. Some schools own their machines and employ their own cleaners; some have a contractor who brings equipment, which means the machines change when the contract does; and many sit on a departmental panel arrangement that constrains what can be bought and from whom. In the second case, familiarity is worth specifying for, because a new contractor’s staff operating an unfamiliar machine on your gym floor is a risk the tender does not price. POLIVAC machines are sold and serviced only through distributors, so a school or campus dealing with a local distributor gets someone who can attend during a shutdown, when a stopped machine has no slack in the schedule at all. The imported Mytee and Mitchell lines POLIVAC supplies sit alongside the Australian-built range through the same distributors.

RECOMMENDED MACHINES