Oooooooh That Smell
Are smoke, pet, or just unidentified (but totally unacceptable) carpet odors keeping you from renting vacant apartments? Worse yet, are you dipping into your cap-ex funds to replace foul floor coverings when your units turn? Straight from the National Apartment Association Educational Conference and Exposition floor last week, Dalton, Ga.-based Beaulieu Flooring and Milwaukie, Ore.-based CriterionBrock bring Magic Fresh to the multifamily industry. The bonded-agent carpet treatment “attaches, traps, and destroys” odor molecules from the air, the makers say, and they proved it at NAA by applying ammonia to treated and untreated sections of carpet. After 20 minutes, this Quick & Quirky nose could barely detect a scent on the Magic Fresh remnant, while a whiff of the untreated carpet would have cleared just about any hangover in Vegas. “Research shows that multifamily units allowing pets turn 10 percent faster than units that do not,” says CriterionBrock president Cathi Brock. “Magic Fresh helps to eliminate odors—not just mask them—to make sure carpets don’t negatively impact positive pet policies.”
There’s No Telling Where the Money Went
Cockroaches beware: Dirty Harry is on the job. At the National Apartment Association's Educational Conference, Bayer Environmental Science unveiled Maxforce FC Magnum, which the Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based company says is the most advanced cockroach bait available. The new “Simply Irresistible” trademarked formula has five times the active Fipronil ingredient as regular bait, meaning cockroaches no longer need to consume the bait to die—they simply need to touch it. Maxforce FC Magnum delivers noticeable results within 24 hours, which Bayer says makes it an excellent choice for resident sensitive environments like multifamily housing. The company also used NAA as occasion to unveil the Suspend SC bedbug insecticide and is offering a free bilingual poster that helps property managers and maintenance staff better identify the signs of a bedbug infestation.
Darling Won’t You Ease My Worried Mind
In 2006, a 2-year-old girl fell from an unsecured fourth floor window and miraculously survived, drawing attention to defenestration dangers and resulting in the first legislative act regarding window safety enacted in the United States. “Laela’s Law” goes into effect July 1 in the state of Minnesota and calls for the installation of fall prevention devices in newly constructed multifamily buildings to safeguard children from accidental window falls. To meet the new standard, window and hardware manufacturers are scrambling to create window opening control devices that are sophisticated in design yet simple to operate: Orlando, Fla.-based Mighton USA, for one, is already offering the Angel Ventlock opening control device. “The Angel Ventlock fulfills both of those needs, and it’s available right now,” says Mighton director David Warr. “We developed the device specifically to address the very serious problem of child injuries due to window falls. That’s why we named it the Angel Ventlock—we believe it can help parents safeguard their children and significantly reduce the number of such incidents.” Good heavens! Let's hope so.
Quiz Answers:
1) Lynyrd Skynyrd's “That Smell”
2) Robert Palmer's “Simply Irresistable”
3) Derek & the Dominoes' “Layla”
Editor’s note: Send your offbeat multifamily news leads to [email protected].
