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Steam has been used to clean on railways, ships and power stations for around 150 years. Mainly cleaning machinery and the grease and oil that goes with engineering, usually with a long lance and armoured gloves. We all know that because of high temperatures steam will dissolve fats and oils and will kill bacteria (most die at 85ºC) So its only a question of control and safety.

Steam is safer in terms of use at a higher temperature where the water particulate is smaller (dry steam) and cools more quickly, the "saturated steam" from a kettle can scald faster than dry steam.

We are poisoning our planet with waste chemicals that we use for cleaning. Just in Australia we pour thousands of litres a day down the drain and back into the environment. We use water at an alarming rate, most people think it's ok because rain falls from the sky and we have lots of it. It is not and we have not. Every year we have droughts and more pipe bans. We are reducing our resources.

The use of steam to clean reduces the use of chemicals by 80% to 90% and reduces the use of water by 90% to 95%; it also reduces the use of resources for heating the water at the same time.

Mops and buckets use chemicals which are left smeared on the floor or walls along with whatever is in the bucket, shuffling dirt into corners, edges around legs or supports on the base of the equipment.

The bucket contains water, chemical and dirt, and the mop was probably dirty to start with. We know that water evaporates, the chemical goes hard and traps the dirt, leading to a build up in grouts on the floors and walls and within the surface of safety floors, because they are not perfectly flat. This makes the floors slippery and slow to dry.

Steam cleaning removes the dirt cleaning and sanitising at the same time. By cleaning at 130º to 180º C on every millimetre of the surface it touches, releasing dirt and dissolving grease. The residue left is only pure water (damp not wet) which will dry quickly.

There are no residual deposits to contaminate foods - 85% of accidents start with a slip caused by spills or chemical residue. Steam cleaning on a daily basis means taking off the dirt one day at a time.

Cleaning walls and canopies can be achieved standing on the floor, so compliance with health and safety at work is assisted without climbing.

The cost of cleaning in mops and buckets and machinery using chemicals along with the cost of water and sewage as well as heating the water, the man hours used to achieve, in general, unsatisfactory results in terms of quality.

To achieve better results it usually means more chemicals and more man hours and an increase in costs.

Steam cleaning removes most of the costs except man hours, although in the short term these can be reduced and in the long term considerably reduced.

"Laboratory and hospital based evaluations into the effect of super-heated steam on hospital superbugs have taken place in Yorkshire's largest Hospital Trust using steam vacuum machines from Steam Australia.

The laboratory evaluations initially established the rapid killing of laboratory grown hospital infection strains using superheated steam only in less than 2 seconds, including the antibiotic resistant superbugs 'MRSA' and 'VRE' which proved to be just as easy to kill using steam as 'normal' infection microbes.

Validation of 'in use' situations in the domestic environment and in the hospital were carried out by Mr Jonathan Kite who is the Operations Manager/Director of Hygenica (UK) Ltd and the microbiological work was done under the auspices of Dr. Peter Kite who is lead clinical microbiologist for this project in Leeds on behalf of Hygenica (USA) Ltd who sponsored this study.
This work was necessary to determine the effective killing of microbes in their own natural environment in which they embed themselves within adhesive self generated slime (Biofilm) in moist conditions such as bath, taps, showers, tiles, grouting etc.

The protective biofilm can resist powerful chemical agents for prolonged periods but the condensing superheated steam transfers its heat energy totally into the slime as it is composed of 97% water and the heat kills the organism underneath. Up to 500,000 germs can be present on one sq.in. of washbasin, shower tile or grout. Typically 90 - 100% of germs were killed in the bathroom environment in a 30 second exposure of toilet rims, washbasins, shower tiles and grouting.

The additional value of a powerful vacuum system is that it removes bacteria and dirt into a dust free liquid container in the body of the machine, preventing aerosols which otherwise might put microbes back into the atmosphere.

Further trials were then undertaken on mock hospital training wards and the main evaluations were carried out on patient inhabited geriatric wards over a three month period. These conditions are the most challenging due to the frequent soiling of these areas and difficulty of working, with minimal disruption, in busy working hospital wards and in patient sensitive areas.

Despite all the adverse conditions 80 - 90 % microbial kill efficiency was achieved when measured at 30 minutes after steam vacuum cleaning.

These high quality disinfection processes are very necessary to help prevent cross infection in hospitals, doctors' surgeries, nursing homes and children’s nurseries in particular, and is also of vital importance in food preparation sites.
According to Jonathan Kite, "The advent of super heated steam/vacuum systems mark a major advance in the constant fight against disease-causing microbes."