Cleaning Your Inflatable Water Slide is Mission Critical
Inflatable party rentals can be a tremendous source of enjoyment for people of all ages on hot summer days. But big smiles and lasting memories aren't the only things your commercial inflatable water slide might bestow on your event or party guests. And unfortunately, we're not talking about anything pleasant.
Unlike a bounce house or inflatable obstacle course, an inflatable water slide is meant to get wet and remain wet throughout the entire duration of play. But getting something wet does not make it clean. In fact, a water slide being wet makes it more prone to germs, bacteria, mold, and mildew than a dry bounce house or obstacle course.
Extra care needs to go into cleaning your inflatable water slide each and every time it is used. And skipping any of these important steps can and undoubtedly will result in your customers, your employees, and/or yourself getting sick. There's also the less important factor of your water slide itself getting damaged by mold and mildew, too, or becoming so filthy that a more extreme cleaning regiment is necessary ... one that would likely also cause harm to your water slide.
Thankfully, cleaning your commercial inflatable water slide isn't going to be as difficult as it may seem at first glance. And it becomes easier still once you settle into a routine, too. There will be times when cleaning your inflatable water slides will be tiring or even frustrating, but always try to remember that a dirty piece of rental equipment can make a person sick. Cleaning them is more than just a part of the job ... it's the most important part.
Step I - The Visual Inspection
Your first step toward a cleaner, safer commercial inflatable water slide is also one of the easiest: you'll need to carefully and thoroughly examine the water slide from top to bottom—every square inch—to inspect for trouble and get a strong sense of how much cleaning it will require. This is best done while it's still on the job site and inflated, if your customer isn't in too much of a hurry to get your equipment off of their property anyway.
You'll want to search for and remove any loose debris you see. Sticks, leaves, toys, jewelry, crayons, bits of food ... if you can pick it up with your hands, do so now. Always be sure to return any property you find to your customers, too, especially things like toys and jewelry or anything else that might have value, personal or otherwise.
During this inflatable water slide inspection, you should be looking for all of the following:
- Loose objects
- Dirt or grime; dirty or filthy areas
- Fading colors or worn out spots
- Physical damage including tears, rips, scuffs, punctures, or stressed areas that may rip/tear/puncture soon
- Mildew and mold
- Areas retaining moisture where there shouldn't be any
Be especially wary of existing damage. The cleaning process can make damaged areas a lot worse, especially if you're in a hurry, so be sure to take your time and try to spot damage before accidentally worsening it.
Step II - Onsite Rinsing
This may not always be an option; it depends on the property owner's demeanor, the event's schedule, and a host of other factors. But if it's possible, try to give your inflatable water slide a good, thorough rinsing while it's still inflated.
The water slide is already inflated. The ground is already soggy from hours of play. Rinsing down the bounce house now, before you load it into your van or truck, makes sense. And it may just knock loose something important, like lost jewelry or toys, so you can turn them over to their owners while you're still on the premises.
Once your inflatable water slide has been given a good rinse, deflate it and roll it up like you normally would. If it being wet bothers you, grab a few towels and give it a nice once-over. But this really depends on how much time there is before your next party rental booking.
Step III - Rinsing back at Home Base
Once you've gotten your inflatable water slide back to home base, it's time to give it a more thorough cleaning. And this will involve setting it up and re-inflating it once again. You can do this with it rolled out and deflated, but we strongly recommend inflating it at least the first few times you clean it so you get a better sense of which areas need the most attention. It can also sometimes be easier to clean when it's inflated; you're not tugging on flaps and struggling through creases when it's blown up.
With the water slide back up, go over the full inflatable (including the underside!) and give it a nice full rinse. It's a good idea to reinspect the water slide during this process, too. Yes, you already inspected it, but the extra look-over isn't going to hurt.
Use this rinsing process to break up any caked on mud and rinse away the debris. Don't worry about scrubbing anything down, though; that will happen shortly. You just want to spray away whatever can come off easily. Try to use light and medium water pressure. It's okay to use a pressure washer at its lowest setting, but never use an amount of water pressure that's too forceful or might damage the vinyl. Blasting your equipment with water cannons will likely do more harm than good.
Step IV - The Inflatable Water Slide Deep Clean
For this next step, we're going to need some cleaning solution. And don't worry, we aren't about to try and sell you anything. The cleaning solution we're going to use is one you can make yourself at home! You can buy a professional vinyl cleaner if you want to—there are surely some high quality products out there—but in our experience the following works just as well and is significantly cheaper.
We make our cleaning solution with three parts water to one part vinegar, to which you'll add a sensible amount of mild dish soap. If that vinegar smell bothers you, add more dish soap and less vinegar. Just make sure you include at least some larger quantity of vinegar, though ... it does a lot to help with the cleaning process.
As for dish soap, we strongly recommend Original Dawn dish soap. As a testament to its quality, animal rescuers use original Dawn to clean birds and turtles in oil spills, so it will be more than powerful enough for your inflatable water slide.
Important Note: DO NOT use dish soaps containing bleach! We'll explain why shortly!
Once you've got your cleaning solution ready, apply it to your inflatable water slide. You should focus on areas where people go; steps/ladders, slides, landing areas, etc. Douse those areas well, and if you have any cleaning liquid left over, you can use that during this next step.
Now you'll use a soft bristle brush, a sponge, or a rag and scrub those areas with dirty build ups. Be sure to scrub any area you think hands, feet, or faces went more than occasionally, too. High traffic areas should always be thoroughly scrubbed. And if you want to give lower-traffic or no-traffic areas a once over, that's always a good idea as well.
Once everything has been cleaned and you're all done scrubbing those areas that needed it, give your inflatable water slide a good and thorough rinsing from top to bottom. Be sure there's no soapy residue left behind, either. If you concentrated a larger quantity of your cleaning solution on one particular area, you may want to soak a towel or rag and scrub it with water just to be sure you get all of the soapy homemade vinyl cleaner out.
Step V - Disinfecting Your Inflatable Water Slide
If not taken care of properly, an inflatable water slide can quickly turn into a breeding ground for germs, bacteria, and viruses. Failure to clean your equipment properly can (and oftentimes will) result in users transmitting cold and flu viruses, allergens, and even scarier stuff, like MRSA.
The steps we've gone through thus far have done a pretty good job of cleaning the water slide and removing a lot of bacteria and germs, but there can still be lingering issues. Issues we'll nip in the bud with a round of disinfecting.
For this phase, you'll want to use bleach-free disinfecting wipes. Lysol makes some great disinfecting wipes that are trusted and used daily by experienced party rental business owners all around the country. Those come very highly recommended.
Use your wipes to thoroughly scrub everything a child might touch on the inflatable water slide. Be sure to wipe down railings, guide rails, landings, and sidewalls. And do not rinse the disinfectant away, either, unless specifically told otherwise by the manufacturer.
Step VI - Drying Your Inflatable Water Slide
This final cleaning step is perhaps the least messy of them all, and it might also be the easiest. It's also the most important step in terms of protecting the water slide itself from mold and mildew. So to wrap things up, we need to let the water slide thoroughly dry.
Use soft, dry towels to wipe down areas with excessive water. You may be able to shake excess water away, too. And if you're in a hurry, you can use a leaf blower to dry much of the water slide as well. But we strongly recommend allowing the unit to air dry and sun dry. It's time consuming, but it's the best way to guarantee the water slide is thoroughly dried.
Sunlight does a great job of drying your commercial inflatables. UV sunlight is also a decent weapon against water pathogens, too. Though we do need to take a moment here to dispel the urban legend that claims sunlight is all the disinfectant you need. It's not. Sunlight DOES NOT disinfect your equipment. It definitely helps, but you still need to carry out all of the other steps to make sure the bounce house is truly disinfected.
Patience is the name of the game here, especially if you plan on storing your bounce house for longer than a few hours. FEMA says mold can grow in as little as 24 to 48 hours, and mold continues to grow nonstop until it's dealt with. It can eat fade and even eat its way through vinyl, even the mold-resistant commercial vinyl we make our equipment with. So do not phone in your drying efforts, folks!
How to Remove Mold and Mildew from an Inflatable Water Slide
There's really no point in sugarcoating this: mold and mildew will usually result in your commercial inflatable getting damaged. So when we find mold and mildew, we need to break out all of the stops to kill it dead and prevent it from getting worse than it is.
We've said not to use bleach a few times in this article already. That's because bleach tends to cause varying degrees of color fading, and for general cleaning, there's really no value in using it. It'd just damage your bounce house without actually making it any cleaner than what we've suggested here. But when it comes to getting rid of mold, bleach is a mandatory cleaning product.
The inflatable water slide must be entirely dry before attempting to clean mold. Don't just amend this onto your cleaning regiment, and don't pre-rinse it. It doesn't help and can actually make things worse!
Get a bucket and fill it with fifty percent water and fifty percent bleach, and mix it a little. Then apply this new mold killer solution to the moldy areas of the inflatable water slide. Be generous with the application, too. Once those affected areas are soaked well, use a soft brush or a rag and scrub the mold away vigorously.
Once you've finished scrubbing away the mold, rinse those areas thoroughly, then use towels to dry them as much as you can by hand. Then let your equipment sit out, preferably in the sun, and air dry thoroughly. Take your time, too. In most cases, rushing is what led to the factors that allowed the water slide to become infected with mold to begin with. Be sure to take your time and avoid another mold outbreak down the road.
Protecting Your Customers is the Most Important Work You Do
This was a long article, but the summary is pretty brief: rinse it onsite, rinse it at home, clean it with the homemade solution, rinse it again, disinfect it, and let it dry. Once you get into that routine, cleaning your inflatable water slide will be easy peasy.
One negative experience using your rental equipment is all it takes to bring down your company's whole reputation. A single customer seeing that your water slide is dirty, messy, smelly, or moldy can harm your party and event rental business forever, if that customer decides to write a bad review or otherwise tell lots of other people about what they saw. And how terrible would you feel if children got sick using your inflatables? Yikes!
Taking the time to carefully and methodically inspect, clean, and properly dry your inflatable water slide can prevent any number of catastrophes. And it's not just about your liabilities, either. It's just a good moral and ethical thing to do, you know? We hope we helped you do that. And if you have any questions about cleaning inflatable water slides, or if you have suggestions that might help other party rental professionals with their own cleaning efforts, be sure to comment below and let us know!