Street Cleaning Methods
Four methods are used in American cities for street cleaning, hand sweeping, machine sweeping, flushing by machine and hose and squeegeeing.
All experts advocate the sweeping of streets by hand, commonly called the patrol system. The implements used in patrol cleaning are broom, pan scraper, squeegees, can carrier and cans. The broom is usually one which has a 4 × 18 inch block, filled with split bamboo, rattan, hickory, steel wire or black African bass. The block is usually fitted with a steel scraper. The pan scraper is constructed like a dust pan, turned up sides and back. It is about 36 inches wide by 15 inches deep. The squeegee is a board about 36 inches wide fitted with a rubber strip which extends below the lower edge of the board. Brooms, pan scrapers and squeegees have handles about 66 inches long. The cans are made to hold about three cubic feet of dirt and taper 19 inches in diameter at the top to 17 inches at the bottom. The can carrier has two large wheels and two small, and a platform upon which the can or cans rest.
A new carrier has been devised which carries two cans and is so balanced that the two cans are more easily manipulated than the one. Some cities are now substituting canvas bags for cans.
Whinery says that when street surfaces are of such character as to admit it, hand sweeping is the most effective method.
J. W. Paxton says that hand cleaning work is capable of better distribution than any other method, because more attention can be given to dirtier areas by increasing the number of men who only clean the portions of the street which are dirty and work on those portions until they are clean. There is a fine scum which is not apparent when the pavements are dry but rises up in a thin sheet of mud when moist, making the pavements very slippery. This and fine dust cannot be removed by hand cleaners, but by washing about twice a week in addition to hand cleaning, these troubles can be eliminated.
Very believes that this method of cleaning is fairly effective but is a dust raiser and the ability of the man to cover areas is very limited, especially since the automobile has come into such general use, as it interferes with the sweeper and his work. He says that there are hand machine brooms built on the principle of the carpet sweeper which are not dust raisers and which as a matter of fact do much more effective work. The pan scraper is only valuable to remove manure and mud and coarse litter, and its use should be limited to the time necessary for such work, and the broom used for dust removal.
The area a sweeper can clean depends upon the existence of local conditions. A test was made in New York City for one week and it was found that the area one sweeper was able to clean in a day of eight hours varied from 2,212 square yards to 16,075 square yards, with an average over the whole city of 5,745 square yards. The efficiency division of the Civil Service Commission of Chicago reports: “From an analysis of the findings of the time and motion studies of street cleaners the following table has been deduced, upon which are based the relative difficulty of cleaning different pavements under varying conditions and the standard and equivalent areas to be cleaned by one man in one eight-hour day.”
| Pavement | Condition | Square Yards |
|---|---|---|
| Asphalt | Good | 21,500 |
| Asphalt | Fair | 19,300 |
| Asphalt | Bad | 17,200 |
| Creosote Blocks | Good | 21,500 |
| Brick | Good | 16,000 |
| Brick | Fair | 14,400 |
| Brick | Poor | 12,800 |
| Granite | Good | 13,400 |
| Granite | Fair | 12,100 |
| Granite | Poor | 10,700 |
In Philadelphia, which cleans its streets by contract, block men are assigned to sections designated by the chief. The area to be covered depends upon the character and amount of traffic. The duties of block men consist in patrolling the areas, gathering all papers and refuse and sweeping dirt as fast as it accumulates, and putting it into dust proof bags ready for loading into special wagons and hauling to a dumping station. The equipment used in hand patrol work consists of hand machines, bag carrier, burlap sacks, push brooms, hand scrapers, special cans and shovels. The dirt collected is placed in sacks and left at convenient points to be collected by special wagons and taken to the dump in sacks, these being returned by the drivers. Sacks are used in preference to cans because of the weight, bulk and noisiness of the latter.