Lane Maintenance 101
Bowling lane maintenance is more than just pushing a button on a lane machine and applying oil to the surface. Its also requires giving attention the approaches, gutters and capping which all get dusty. Maintaining all of this area on a daily schedule is important to provide the best service to your customer. Your lane machine also benefits from keeping all of this clean.
Here are a few suggestions that should be followed to maintain your bowling center.
One of the first things that should be done each morning is a walk across the approaches, break out the coffee. This is when you find out if the lanes, gutters and approaches were dusted the night before. This is also great time to inspect the approaches for any kind of possible problems that just jump out at you.
Walking the lanes each morning also gives you a chance to see what left over oil looks like in the applied area and what it looks like on the backend as well. It is possible to see many things from unusual amounts of dirt to possible stripping problems with the lane machine, who knows what can be found.
Dust gutters, caps, and division rails each and every day. This will help reduce the amount of dirt that the lane machine pulls in to the conditioning compartment. Its sounds like a lot of work but so what, it just needs done. If you want to provide the best it will take time and besides, it’s just easy to remember if it’s done every day.
Dust your approaches no less than three times a day if not four. Some areas of the world or the country will require this just to keep them from looking like they can plowed to get ready for planting.
Dusting your lanes in-between conditioning is another big bonus that seems to be kind of a lost art. High lineage and dusty lanes are a bad combination especially if your lanes are synthetic. Dust will increase the wear on the surface and reduce the life of your lanes - not including the changes that will result in just the way the lanes play.
The approaches are very important to good customer satisfaction and should be paid attention to very closely. Besides frequent dusting, buffing with a rotary buffer can improve the slide consistency and cleanliness of your approaches when done regularly.
The lane machine should be kept spotless - the only side effects from doing so is finding problems before they become nightmares.
Another thing that affects the cleanliness of your lanes is your pinsetters and ball returns or anything that the bowling ball comes in contact with. All kinds of dirt come from these things along with grease and oil which is very difficult for any lane machine to clean off.