Greg Bloor of The Barber Room in Coventry has spent a sizeable chunk of his lockdown time in researching rigorous methods of shop sanitisation. “We thought about where the cleanest environments existed and looked in to how they disinfected and sanitised their spaces. We researched methods of operating theatre sanitisation and I found a company in Sweden that has a full room UV sanitisation robot. It looks kind of like a sunbed but moves around the room. UV light doesn’t actually kill viruses and bacteria but it renders them harmless by mutating them and only on surfaces where the light falls, so there can be no shadows,” explains Greg. The Swedish equipment was 4000 watts of UV and cost thousands but Greg worked with a friend that is an electrician to calculate the amount of wattage that would be required to sanitise his shop and source the bulbs. Together they created a bespoke network of lights that will sit on the workstations and in high traffic areas and work on a timer every night. Great says “You cannot spend time in the shop with the UV lights running, so they will be set up to run every night after we clean down,” says Greg.
Greg also took a ‘belt and braces’ approach and looked at how other businesses further along the pandemic path were coping with cleaning their spaces after reopening. “Some of the Asian countries were using foggers, a kind of fumigation process. I found one that is much like a humidifier to which you add a cleaning agent to the water. It’s hospital grade and will be part of our cleaning regime. You cannot be in the shop for 20 minutes after the process has completed. Once done, we will set up the UV lights and leave,” says Greg.
Greg is holding off to see what the Government guidelines on reopening will be before sharing all the ways in which he is staying safe for his clients. Let’s hope we get news soon!