Most commercial building operators have never used a sanitizing mat, so they’re not very familiar with what they are like to actually have in practice. One of the common questions about them is if they splash the disinfectant around while in use.
The short answer is: yes and no!
The “yes, they splash” side is the most-common type of sanitizing mat that you’ll see on the market today: open tray style sanitizing mats. These are the typical one-piece, moulded rubber mats that you see advertised on janitorial supply and industrial supply company websites. These open tray mats have tall walls around all sides – usually at least 2 to 3 inches tall – and usually hold anywhere from 4 to 20 litres of sanitizing solution. These mats are designed for employees wearing completely waterproof footwear to step into these deep pools of sanitizer and have their feet fully submerged to the ankles.
Of course, it’s not hard to imagine that stepping into a 4 gallon puddle is going to create a fairly big splash! And if the mat is filled right up to the top, it’s probably going to overflow the sides and spill all over the floor. Even if people step in and out of the mat very carefully, it’s still likely to create waves and sloshing around in the mat as people use it. These types of mats are meant for areas that are designed to be hosed down completely, so keeping the sanitizing solution contained simply wasn’t a design priority for them.
Fortunately, there’s still the “no, they don’t” side of things, and that’s the other type of sanitizing mat on the market: the sponge style. Sponge style mats still sanitize incoming foot traffic, but they do it in a much neater, much less messy way. Sponge style sanitizing mat systems – like Grizzly Sanitize – use nylon fibres to keep the sanitizing solution contained within the mat itself, and only release it on to footwear with direct contact. A fully-charged and fully-filled sponge-style mat still gives that characteristic “squish” when people step into it, but not so much that it drowns people’s feet (and ruins shoes!) Sponge style mats only dispense as much sanitizer as required to get the job done at hand, and keep the rest of it safely stored in the mat itself for the next pair of shoes to be treated.
Sponge style sanitizing mats also prevent the splashing and waving that happens with deep-walled open-tray style mats too! Because there’s not an open pool of sanitizing liquid to step into, there’s no splash-back on pant legs or shoes – and no overflow over the sides of the mat and onto your floor. And a completely sanitizing mat system will also have a second mat after the wet one to dry shoe bottoms as people enter – you don’t to solve the problem of sanitation and inadvertently create a new one with a slippery floor hazard!
If you want to avoid the splashy mess, it’s easy to do – use a sponge-style sanitizing mat system like Grizzly Sanitize!