You may be wondering why I am posting a picture of a piece of clean looking carpet that is lying on a driveway.  I wanted to shake things up a bit and post the after picture first in order to be well, dramatic.  This carpet has had about 6 months of use on it, and judging from this picture, one would have to agree that it looks like lightly used, yet clean looking carpet.  The story behind this carpet in a nutshell is that this is out of a rental town home in Alpine, Wyoming.  This rental had renters in it for about 6 months and these renters allowed some pets to totally trash the place.  There was cat and dog feces, urine, and vomit.  Not to mention the traffic areas that were ground into the fibers with greasy foot soils to boot!  Now that I have painted the picture of what it looked like, let me describe how it smelled.  When you walked into this town home rental, the smell was so pungent and sour that there was no mistaking that is was cat damage.  There were some doggy deposits too, but somehow cats really take the cake when it comes to pet odors in carpet.  It really took your breath away when you walked through the front door.  It is hard to describe the smell, but it was in the top three of nasty odors for me the first time I went in.

Here is another angle of this piece of pet damaged carpet.  Keep in mind that this carpet has only had about 6 months of use on it.  Now the obvious question is why is it out on the driveway?  This piece is out of the living/dining/hallway area on the main level.  The urine damage was so severe that the carpet padding was saturated and had to be thrown out.  We even took steps to seal the wooden sub-floor with a special pet barrier odor coating that is applied to the floor.  This barrier is the most effective product that I have found for blocking the smell of urine thus saving the additional cost of tearing out the wood.  It works better than KILZ, although that would be better than nothing at all.  I always tell our clients that have pet damage that if we can clean/restore the carpet at less than 65% of the cost of replacing it then it is cost-effective.  After measuring the place and doing the math, the client decided to let us try it.  I told her that if at anytime during this process we felt that it was a lost cause I would only charge her for the cost of the chemical and I would eat the labor.  With that in mind, I wanted to pull out all the stops on this one.  After inspecting the carpet and determining that it was sound structurally(meaning that the carpet material could withstand being put through the gauntlet), I decided that I would not just clean it in place, I washed it like it were a wool rug on a wash floor.  Since the pad and subfloor had to be taken out anyway, this is the method I chose.  Here is what the process basically looked like....

This was just the pics of the Living room carpet.  We performed the same process on the master bedroom carpet.  The rest of the house did not require new pad so we cleaned it in place like normal, but used the same chemical cocktail mentioned earlier.  Removing pet stains and odors from carpets is not a job for any old carpet cleaning company.  We are called Restore Your Carpet for a reason.  As long as there is sound material there to clean and it can make it through the gauntlet that we will put it through, we can Restore Your Carpet.

If you or anyone else you know is in need of our services regarding pet damage stains and odors, give us a call.

RYC, out.

Carpet cleaning/restoration services in Jackson Hole, WY
307.774.0223

Carpet cleaning/restoration services in Star Valley, WY
307.887.0223

Our next project that we are currently working on is a pretty challenging pet urine/odor restoration job.  This picture is symbolic in that I have only peeled back the corner of this one room, as I am only going to do a couple of paragraphs for this post until the job is completed. 

Pet damage is such a common problem in this part of the country.  Our winters are long, and people want to keep their animals indoors which results in pet stains and odors on the carpet more often than in a warmer climate.  I am not here to blame the renters themselves as every family has reasons as to how and why this could happen to a carpet.  I always tell our customers that we are not here to judge you or your pets.  We just want to fix it so you can avoid the potential cost of replacing it.

Did you know that flooring is typically the most costly component of your home?  If you do the math, on the low end with carpet, carpet pad, and installation your cost can range from $2.50/square foot on up and for a 1,000 SQ. FT home, you are into it $2,500.00 

When we get a phone call about this type of a job, we always want to thoroughly inspect the damaged areas in order to give a proper audit of the condition/potential costs of the job to be done rather than just quote a price per foot over the phone.  The process, and some important information on these procedures is to follow after this particular job has been completed.  We are in the middle of our busy season for this type of work.  In fact there are two more just like this that we are scheduled to do in this coming week.  Stay tuned...

RYC, out.

Nothing like peeling back the carpet and finding all sorts of smells and stains after a few rounds of pet urine deposits to brighten your day.  This job was a large undertaking and in order to get us to where we are, I will provide some pictures and explanations of the processes and will attempt to entertain the reader at the same time.

This job is for ~1325 Square feet of carpet that is in a staircase and a basement.  The owner hired us initially to clean the carpets after the previous renter had moved out.  We were informed that there were 'some' pet stains and that a regular cleaning was all that was required.  In this situation there are a number of routes that a professional carpet cleaner can take. 
1) Clean the carpet like the customer asked.
2) Ask additional questions about the condition of the carpet in regards to odors/stains.
3) Turn down the job for liability or lack of experience reasons.

In this case I informed the customer that I am happy to clean their carpet, however I do also specialize in pet damage, i.e. Stains, odors, etc.  It may be best to not steam clean the carpet so as to not disrupt any smells that may be in the padding and/or carpet backing.  In some of the upcoming photos for this post, you will see what I am describing. 

The customer agreed that in order to make sure that the previous renter would receive as much of their deposit back as possible let's just start with the low moisture cleaning and I offered to apply a deodorizer afterwards that could possibly mask any leftover smells.

Urine can hide anywhere, even along walls, and baseboards.  This is at the base of a staircase where a few animals had deposited urine, vomit, and various other pet wastes...

This tack-less carpet strip is deteriorating due to urine salt build up that had started to rot the wood of the board.  Lots of bacteria and smells can hide in these tack boards.

This is a shot of some carpet padding that has been completely saturated in pet urine that has dried into salty residue.  The odor coming off of this pad was pretty intense.  I however do use a respirator when performing most jobs like this because its well, disgusting, that's why. 

When urine is deposited, it comes out alkaline and dries into an acid salt, which can attract bacterias and cause sickness for kids and adults.  It is ALWAYS a good idea to replace carpet padding when the urine stains are larger than a few puddles here and there.

After pee-ling back the carpet padding, you can see that the urine damage was so bad, that the concrete floor was even stained and salted with residue.  In this case like others before it, we can seal the floor with an odor barrier product that is similar to lacquer.  It seals in the smell and reduces the chances that the next dog that moves in will urinate here in the future.

This is shot is a great example of what i mean by urine salts.  This is a pile of a mixture of urine salts, and carpet backing residue.  Most carpet manufactures make their backing out of latex.  Friction can break down latex and urine stains can accelerate this process.  This powder is in your carpet if your animal lives inside the house and has urinated.  This builds up over time and attracts bacteria and can irritate allergies if not properly removed.

This is what the carpet backing in the hallway looked like after we pulled it up.  This is one of the most severe cases of pet stains that we have been asked to clean up.

This is another example of the urine salt build up in the carpet padding in the hallway.

In all cases where pet damage including urine stains, vomit, and odors are concerned.  I always recommend that the backing be treated as well as the pile side of the carpet.  This makes sure that we are dissolving the urine salts and bacterias that are embedded in the carpet.  The chemical is applied with specialized equipment that allows us to control the mixture to make sure that it is as effective as it was intended to be.  We do not "Water-down," the chemical to make it go farther when we apply it.  This chemical is not cheap.  We tell most customers that if we can clean and deodorize the carpet for less than 60% of the cost of replacing it then it is considered cost effective.  We will know whether or not this will work before too much cost is incurred.  Usually after this chemical application process is complete it is evident if it has worked and we can either proceed with the deodorization process or start with new carpet.  Normally we only ask for the labor completed plus the cost of chemical to this point so that the customer will not be charged for our service in addition to the cost of new carpet.  In this case, the customer was going to buy new pad anyways, so that cost would obviously be considered if the treatment were not effective.

This is an AFTER shot of the same room as a few pictures before.  You can see the difference it made in breaking down the stains, salts and odors.  Well you cannot actually smell the difference, but since I was there, you will have to take my word for it...  It smelled lots better.



This job was performed on Star Valley Ranch, Wyoming.

RYC, out.