How Often Do You Have to Clean a Pedicure Foot Spa in North Carolina?

The short answer

Each cleaning is its own row on the Board’s Whirlpool/Foot Spa Sanitation Form, with its own column: After Client or Daily.

After each patron

The one that happens all day. Paragraph (p) asks that after use by each patron the water be drained and all debris removed from the basin, that the basin be disinfected by filling it with water and circulating a surfactant or enzymatic soap with a disinfectant, used according to the manufacturer’s instructions, through the unit for ten minutes, then drained and rinsed with clean water, and wiped dry with a clean towel. The ten minutes is circulation time, with the pump running, not the time the whole procedure takes. Every one of those is a row with After Client. The steps in the rule’s order are in our guide to how to clean a pedicure foot spa in North Carolina.

At the end of the day

At closing, every whirlpool or foot spa gets the breakdown paragraph (q) asks for: “At the end of the day each whirlpool or footspa shall be cleaned and disinfected”. The screen comes out and the debris behind it is removed, the screen and the inlet are washed and rinsed, the screen is totally immersed in disinfectant before it goes back, the inlet and the area behind the screen are cleaned with a brush and surfactant soap and water, and the system is flushed with low-sudsing surfactant, enzymatic soap and warm water for at least ten minutes, then rinsed and drained. It is in addition to the after-patron cleanings, not instead of them, and it is its own row. The form’s word for it is Daily; the rule’s is “at the end of the day”. They are the same cleaning. The sentence names no condition about use; ReadyPedi expects the Daily row on a unit that logged a patron that day, the day the row would otherwise be missing from.

There is no weekly cleaning

Owners who have worked in another state look for the third schedule, and it is not there. Texas asks for a deeper disinfection every two weeks; California, Florida and Georgia name a weekly one. North Carolina’s rule has two paragraphs of procedure, (p) and (q), and nothing weekly, biweekly or monthly anywhere in it. The Board’s form matches: two columns, After Client and Daily, and no Weekly column. A shop may do more than the rule asks, but the record the rule describes has two reasons, and a weekly row would be a row the rule never asked for. ReadyPedi refuses one for a North Carolina shop for the same reason: “North Carolina's rule has no weekly cleaning; log the After Client or Daily cleaning on its own.”

Which units: “any basin using circulating water”

Paragraph (o) defines the equipment the rule covers in one sentence: “‘whirlpool’ or ‘footspa’ means any basin using circulating water.” That is wider than the word whirlpool suggests. A pipe-less unit, the kind with a footplate or an impeller and no pipes, circulates water, so it is a footspa under the rule and takes both schedules on the same terms as a piped chair. The Board prints the same sentence on its form, so an inspector reading the sheet has the definition in front of them. In ReadyPedi a North Carolina chair is set up as Whirlpool or Pipe-less, and both get the same two rows.

A bowl without jets

Here the rule goes quiet. Non-circulating bowls, portable tubs and disposable liners are not mentioned anywhere in Subchapter 14H. On the text, a basin that does not circulate water is outside (p) to (r): the two cleanings and the record are written for “each whirlpool or footspa”, and a still bowl is neither by the rule’s own definition. What the text does not settle is whether an inspector applies the rule to one anyway; the research behind this guide marks that as not verified, and the right move is to ask the Board before an inspection rather than argue the definition during one. ReadyPedi offers the two circulating kinds for North Carolina, because those are the units the rule’s words reach. The rule also names no not-used day: a unit with no patrons has no after-patron cleaning and no After Client row, and the Board’s form has no column for a quiet day.

If you ran a shop in Texas

Texas has three schedules (after each client, end of day, every two weeks), a sixty-day retention, a Not Used box on a form the rule mandates, and the full name on each row. North Carolina has two schedules, ninety days, no not-used notation, a form the rule does not name, and the staff member’s name in a signature column. The two cleanings themselves map one to one: After Each Client becomes After Client, End of Day becomes Daily.

Where it is logged

Both schedules go on the Board’s Whirlpool/Foot Spa Sanitation Form, one sheet per unit, one row per cleaning, with the date, the time, the reason (After Client or Daily) and the name of the staff member who did it, kept at least ninety days and shown to a patron or an inspector who asks. Our guide to the North Carolina footspa sanitation form walks through the form column by column. ReadyPedi logs each cleaning at the chair in three taps and prints the Board’s form for any unit and any date range. The rule next to the app is on the North Carolina page.

Frequently asked questions

This guide explains North Carolina’s foot-spa cleaning schedules in plain language and is not legal advice. The North Carolina Board of Cosmetic Art Examiners’ rules are the authority on North Carolina foot-spa cleaning and recordkeeping requirements.