Steam Cleaning For Profit

Steam cleaning involves using commercial, high powered steam machines to clean floors, walls, fixtures, and commercial equipment. Nothing else is used in this process including any harsh chemicals. Your customers will be both residential and commercial. Don't confuse steam cleaning with carpet steam cleaning - they are two totally different things.

Essentially, you will be using a machine that consists of a boiler unit,hose, and a wand with several different tips depending on what kind of job you're doing. The machine is usually on wheels and is easily transported.

Although there have been many consumer grade steam machines appearing on the market, these are limited to very small jobs due to their steam capacity. Commercial units are able to keep up the amount of steam in order to do larger jobs.

If you've ever seen one of these units work, you'll know that there's not too much that can't be cleaned with a good blast of hot steam. Not only that, but it's entirely chemical free. This can be a big seller when you're out marketing your services.

Besides the numerous hand attachments, there are many commercial attachments for cleaning floors. It all depends on the job and how big it is. As an example, using a floor machine on a greasy restaurant tile floor makes sense. Doing the same job with a handheld unit, is going to cost you a lot more in labor.

Expect to pay at least $1000 for a smaller commercial steam unit and $5,000 or more for a larger machine that has the capacity for commercial jobs.

Marketing your business is going to take a little sales ability for commercial accounts. For residential customers, you can always put a classified ad in the local paper, team up with an established housecleaning service, or try flyering the neighborhood offering deep cleaning of bathroom and kitchen tile. Of course, the advantage to teaming up with the housecleaning service is that they are already in the customer's home and can easily refer your services if there is a job that goes beyond their responsibilities. In some cases, you can offer the housecleaning company a small percentage of your profits for every job referred.

Why would a homeowner hire someone to steam clean their bathroom tile? Well, if you've ever tried to clean shower tile, you know how labor intensive it can be. This is a job that would be handled quite efficiently with the commercial steam cleaning unit, and one that the customer would likely pay to have you do. Again, those household steam cleaners are good for cleaning around fixtures and counters, but they lack the capacity for larger jobs.

As with most service businesses, you'll start off slow and gradually build your clientele and referrals over the years - eventually getting to the point where you don't have to worry about advertising anymore.