October i, 1905.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER AA/^ORLD 



19 



VACUUM AND COMPRESSED AIR CLEANING IN NEW YORK. 



By Frank L. Blancharil. 



AS 1 left the house one evening 1 heard the "chug,' 

 " chug, " " chug " of an engine. At first I thought that 

 firemen were at work putting out a blaze somewhere in 

 the vicinity, but as I had heard no clanging of bells or 

 tooting of whistles, and as the streets contained no crowds. I 

 concluded I must be mistaken. 



Nevertheless 1 asked a policeman on the corner about it, and 

 he informed me that the sounds came from a machine in front 

 of the Academy of Music, in Irving place. So I walked around 

 the block and found a ram like vehicle of the automobile type 

 from which proceeded the sounds I had heard. Running from 

 the car into the theater were two lines of rubber hose. The 

 man in charge told .lie that the apparatus was engaged in clean- 

 ing the walls and carpets ol the Academy by the vacuum pro- 

 cess. 



Being somewhat curious to see' how the work was done, I 

 went inside, where I found two men engaged in pushing over 

 the carpel T shaped implements attached to lines of rubber hose. 

 I noticed that after these had been moved back and forth over 

 the floor a few times the colors in the 

 carpet became much brighter. 



But what had become of the dust with 

 which the carpet had been saturated a few 

 moments before? It certainly had not 

 been blown up into the air, for my nostrils 

 would have detected its presence immedi- 

 ately even though my eyes did not. When 

 I asked one of the workmen about it he 

 held up the instrument he was using and 

 showed me a narrow slit extending across 

 its entire width. I touched it and found 

 that my fingers were pulled against the 

 orifice with considerable force. Noting 

 my surprise the man said : 



" The dust is drawn out of the carpet by 

 the vacuum or suction process and is car- 

 ried through the rubber hose to recept- 

 acles in the car outside. While the press- 

 ure IS only a lew pounds it is sufficiently 

 great to draw the dust not only from the 

 carpet, but also from the surface and crevices of the floor under- 

 neath. After we have finished with the carpets, we will attach 

 a flat brush to the hose and go over the side walls and the mold- 

 ings. For the bas reliefs and statuary we use a round brush. 



The ease with which the cleaning was done was in marked 

 contrast to the old methods of performing such work. For- 

 merly the floor coverings had to be taken up, separated into 

 convenient widths for handling, and carted off to a steam clean- 

 ing establishment. After being run through the renovators 

 the strips were taken back to the theater, sewn together, and 

 again tacked down — all of which consumed much time and cost 

 considerable money. 



There are at present several vacuum or compressed air com- 

 panies in the field engaged in the renovating business, whose 

 work has attracted attention. Among them are the Vacuum 

 Cleaner Co., the Sanitary Compressed Air Vacuum Co., the 

 General Compressed Air House Cleaning Co., and the Amer- 

 ican Compressed Air Cleaning Co. 



Of these the Vacuum Cleaner Co., which is probably the 



MODERN CARPET CLEANING. 

 I5\ the Vacuum Cleaner Co.'s process.] 



largest, owns the David T. Kenney patents. William Locke, 

 the engineer of the company, before explaining to me the pro- 

 cess employed, showed me what it will do. He sprinkled a 

 quantity of flour over the carpet of his office and rubbed it into 

 nap with his feet. He then pushed the renovator across the 

 floor once or twice and in a moment not a vestige of the flour 

 could be seen. 



"You would be surprised," he said, " to see the amount of 

 dust that can be extracted from a rug or carpet by this process. 

 A somewhat skeptical architect was present one day when we 

 cleaned a large rug he had sent us. After we had extracted 18 

 pounds of dust he was so astonished at the effectiveness of the 

 porcess that he gave us a contract for the installation of a largs 

 plant in a new public building he was erecting. 



" Our apparatus consists of an engine or motor, a vacuum 

 machine, and two separators for receiving and separating the 

 dust. We have installed permanent plants in the department 

 stores of R. H. Macy & Co. and John Wanamaker ; in the Me- 

 tropolitan Opera House, Keith's, Proctor's and the Knicker- 

 bocker theaters; in the Hotels St. Regis 

 and Breslin ; in the National Park Bank 

 and the American Exchange National 

 Bank buildings, and in the private resi- 

 dences of Miss Helen Gould, Charles M. 

 Schwab, Senator W. A. Clark, and others. 

 "You can readily understand what a 

 job it must be in these large buildings to 

 clean the floors and carpets of dust each 

 day. To do the work a small army of men 

 and women is employed. Sweeping a 

 carpet with a broom removes only a part 

 of the dust, the remainder being left in 

 the body, or in the air from which it set- 

 tles on the walls, the furniture, and other 

 objects in the room until it is dislodged 

 by the dust rag and sent flying in the air 

 again. 



"With a vacuum cleaning plant the 

 work can be performed in half the time by 

 only a few employes. The dust is abso- 

 lutely removed from every object in the apartment and the air is 

 left entirely free of the substance. The vacuum rubber hose used 

 is non collapsible, being supported by steel wire construction, 

 and yet is perfectly flexible in handling. In a permanent plant 

 outlets from the stationary piping are located at convenient 

 places on each floor to which the rubber hose, which has a 

 diameter of i ,'2 inches, may readily be attached when desired. 

 The separator tanks that receive the dust through the hose 

 consist of two upright cylinders. The first separates from the 

 air current the dust in dry deposit; while the second completes 

 the process of separation by passing the air current through a 

 column of water in which the remaining matter is held in liq- 

 uid suspension." 



The Sanitary Compressed Air Vacuum Co., which has an of- 

 fice in the " Flatiron " building, employs a system that com- 

 bines the vacuum and compressed air processes under what are 

 known as the Lotz patents. John D. Elwell. the general manager 

 of the company, in outlining the diflerences between the vac- 

 uum and the compressed air-vacuum methods of cleaning, said : 



