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Carpet cleaning is chemistry and physics... Is YOUR current carpet cleaner REALLY a professional?

10/25/2012

Typical 3 bed 2 bath home that has not had the carpets cleaned in 5+ years.

If you are a carpet cleaner, you have seen this picture to the left before. If you are a client looking for a carpet cleaner, you may have moved out of a place that looked like this after you had moved all your belongings to your new place and looked at the carpet and thought..."I am not getting my deposit back..."

This post is an in depth look at the role that physics and chemistry play in the carpet cleaning process that Restore Your Carpet implements in the jobs that we complete for our clients. When we get the initial phone call, most of the time it is not for a maintenance cleaning, people have a problem that they want us to solve. I always approach these types of jobs with a chip on my shoulder and take them as a challenge. There have been jobs in the past where the cost of cleaning the carpet exceeds the current value of the carpet, or else the cost of cleaning it exceeds 65% of the cost to buy new carpet. We always inform the client if this is the case and allow them to make an informed decision. The carpet we are discussing today is not in as bad of shape as at first glance.

Frieze style carpet, needs a good scrubbin'. Wave hello to my vacuum RICCAR.

You may be wondering what is up with the square shaped area in the picture to the left. This is a living room, and the folks that moved out had an area rug with some furniture around it. A lot of people do not get their carpets cleaned because they simply do not want to move their furniture out of the rooms. We provide our clients with the option to either move their furniture on their own, or for a nominal add-on we can move it out and back for them. Obviously this carpet is dirty. What is it going to take in order to get this carpet into a 'restored' condition? Understanding how carpet is made, and the material that it is made of is a great place to start. In short, carpet is recycled plastic bottles... Weird huh? You are walking around on extruded recycled material that has been melted down into liquid and twisted into fiber strands. If you could view carpet through a microscope, you would see that it has a uniform shape, its shiny, and mostly transparent. It just happens that I brought along my microscope today with me on this job with the intention of writing this blog...

Carpet strand fibers through our microscope.

This picture to the left is an actual photo that I took today on this job of the very carpet in the picture at the beginning of this post. The carpet is not manufactured with all those flecks and spots. That is dirt, and soils and etc... In order to diagnose and properly inspect your carpet before it is cleaned, we get a good idea of what (if any) the problem is before we get started. One way to do this, is to look at the carpet fibers really closely like you see here with this shot through our microscope camera. You can see that this carpet is really heavily soiled. I took this picture after I had vacuumed with our super special vacuum cleaner. On second thought, I should have taken one before to compare, oh well, next time. This shot was in the middle of the room in the major traffic area where the soiling was apparent with the naked eye, but I wanted you all to get a closer look...

Another view through the microscope, this time not in the middle of the room. This strand however still shows some soiling. Gives you a different perspective doesn't it?

I searched far and wide in this house for a strand that was not too soiled. This shot is back in a closet where there was little to no traffic. This is what it is supposed to look like. In other words... UN-soiled.

This is a shot of the major traffic lane in the house. Note the pinkish red stain at the bottom left that has been scrubbed into the carpet face fibers.

PH pen reads the water in this bottle to be slightly alkaline.

This little device that I am holding in my hand in this shot is called a PH pen. It measures the PH(percentage of Hydrogen) level of anything that you can get the little electrode to touch. It also gives a temperature reading. Here I have filled up a 2.5 gallon solution bottle with water. I rinsed it out a couple times and the reading I got was a 7.36. Water is close to neutral, which is a 7. 7 is neutral. Most soils are slightly acidic, so less than 7, somewhere north of a 6. Why does this all matter to the client? It all depends on how the carpet is used really. If you have a cleaner that uses really high alkaline cleaners and does not neutralize their detergents or the carpet after cleaning them, your carpet will soils really rapidly following the cleaning process. Also, high alkaline or high acid concentrate can irritate skin, mostly in kids and infants, and that is not good for anybody.

This is a shot of the reading that I took after mixing up a high alkaline cleaning solution. Due to the soil level of the carpet, I made a choice of which detergent to use and how much, added it to some hot water, mixed it up, and took a measurement. This reading shows 11.52 @ 95.3 degrees F. The PH scale goes from 0-14 so if 7 is neutral, This solution mix is 5,000 times more alkaline than neutral. For each increment whole number above or below 7, it is measured by ten times. Head spinning yet? Read on...

After applying the cleaning solution to the carpet face fibers, I took another reading of the fibers to see where my PH level was before I scrubbed the carpet. You can see that it read 11.46 on the alkaline side @ 73.7 degrees F. This solution did not lose its alkalinity immediately after the application to the carpet fibers.

This is a shot of the living room after agitating it the cleaning solution known in the industry as a pre-spray. It really helps to perform this step and makes the extraction process work a lot better if this step is utilized. It doesn't look all that much better, but it will in a minute.

This reading was taken on the same spot as the prior reading. This was after the scrubbing process. Note that I lost some temp, as well as some alkalinity. Now reading a 9.70 @ 63.9 F.

Next step is to get the encapsulation cleaning solution mixed up. Here I am taking a reading of the 2 gallons of hot water in my bucket before adding the detergent. Reading a 7.46 @ 108 F.

The temperature of the cleaning solution has lowered my overall temperature, and increased the PH level to a 9.32. This should help to neutralize the alkalinity of the pre-spray i scrubbed in earlier, as well as encapsulate it into a crystal as the final step in the cleaning process.

The right hand side of this hallway/traffic lane has been OP extracted. you can see how the fibers look separate and springy again like when they were new. The left side is still dingy and matted down.

After the living room had been OP extracted, you can see the the color, dinginess, and stains were all removed. All that remained visible to the naked eye were the wear patterns where the material has been damaged from soil and friction.

Same room different angle. Note the dimple imprints in the carpet from the easy chair.

Final reading in the traffic area where the heaviest pre-spray was applied. As the encapsulation solution dries and crystalizes it will settle back down to 7.5-8 leaving the carpet clean, and ready for skin contact from you, your kids, babies, etc.

You didn't think I would leave without showing the after of the fiber strands did you?

Hallway cleaned up nice.

White square is gone, stains are gone, carpet PH level is safe for everyone, vacuums nicely, and ready for the next renter.

The bottom line is this. In order to get carpet REALLY clean and safe. You really need to choose a professional with the proper know-how and tooling to get the job done safely and efficiently. Restore Your Carpet is a full-service flooring company that is committed to education in the industry, certification, and the latest technology to ensure that we can continue to not just clean your carpet, but to RESTORE it.

RYC, out.

For professional carpet cleaning in the Jackson Hole, WY areas call-
307.774.0223

For professional carpet cleaning in the Star Valley, WY areas call-
307.887.0223

Rental unit pet damage on new carpet...RESTORED!

9/9/2012

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.

The shot of the damaged carpet with all manner of pet damage before the total restoration we performed.

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....

Started out by treating the backing of the carpet. Here you can see the the numerous pet urine deposits that are not visible on the front. We treated the backing first.

Here is a shot of one of my guys completely saturating the face of the carpet with a garden hose. With the carpet wet first, its more effective to get a full use out of the chemicals we were about to apply.

After saturating the carpet, we treated it with a cocktail of urine neutralizing/oxidizing/deodorizing chemicals, then gave it a real good scrub with a CRB machine.

This is a close-up shot of the CRB(counter-rotating-brush) machine that we use for restoring carpet when we do pet damage jobs. It is an amazing machine.

After one pass the chemical cocktail is starting to work. I think that we scrubbed this piece for about an hour.

Here's me running over the carpet with the ROTOVAC 360 doing the final steam extraction rinse before drying it.

Look familiar? This how it looked before we re-installed it. It smelled fresh and looked shiny and new again.

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

Asphalt driveway=Dark, soiled, traffic areas.

7/14/2012

Does this hallway to the left look familiar? This post is about traffic areas and how we clean traffic areas here at Restore Your Carpet. You can see that this carpet was freshly vacuumed using our Sanitaire Commercial Vacuum prior to snapping this photo. I received a call from a local customer that had clipped our ad out of the local paper and wanted to give us a try for the first time. This job was ~700 SQ. FT of really nice, white frieze carpet, that had about 6 years of traffic on it. This home has an asphalt driveway which is really popular in this part of the country. Although this is a cheaper alternative to a concrete driveway, this can and will create the condition that if not properly maintained, could ruin your carpet. Especially a white carpet like this one. Luckily, this customer had a higher-end brand of carpet installed in their home. If I had to guess, this was a Mohawk Frieze, probably the Beale Street line.

I decided to use a different approach to cleaning this place than I have been doing lately. I have been doing a lot of low moisture cleaning that I have been having some fun with, but due to the severity of these stains and the fact that I had not used my Rotovac 360 with my truckmount machine in a while I decided to perform the following steps:
1) Pre-vacuum all the carpet.
2) Pre-spray the really bad traffic areas with a special high alkaline mix that I will not divulge here.
3) Pre-spray the entire house with FLEX. This is a Bridgepoint product that does really well with oily restaurant carpet. I have had lots of success with this product in other residential jobs so I used it here too.
4) Agitate both pre-sprays with the bonnet attachment for my Rotovac 360 to really scrub it in to make sure that I "tried everything."
5) Steam/hot water extract all of the carpet with my Rotovac 360 and my Amtex truckmount machine.
6) Apply carpet protector to reduce the possibility of the severity of the asphalt soils from happening again.
The following are some more before shots as well as some after shots of this job... Enjoy!

This was in front of the couch. The customer pulled the couch back so that we could clean as much carpet as possible. Of course this is the before shot.

This is where the living room and the dining room meet. you can see the tile transition into the kitchen in the top left. There was a gas stove to the left of this traffic area.

This is a close-up of the hallway picture at the beginning of this post, where the kitchen transitions into the hall into the bathroom.

This is a shot of my Rotovac 360 floor machine while I was bonnet-agitating the pre-sprays into the carpet fibers.

This is the "Money-Shot." You can see on the left where all of the stains have been extracted out of the carpet with my Rotovac 360 and my Amtex truckmount. It does not get any better than this!

This is the transition area i mentioned before where the dining room and living room meet. I was really happy with how this turned out.

This is the same area from the money shot mentioned earlier. Needless to say, ALL of the asphalt stained traffic areas now are totally white and clean and the customer is happy.

This job was performed on Star Valley Ranch, Wyoming.

If you or anyone you know has this kind of problem in the high traffic areas of your/their carpet, give us a call, we can Restore Your Carpet.

Star Valley, WY-307.887.0223
Jackson Hole, WY-307.774.0223

RYC, out.

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Carpet cleaning is chemistry and physics... Is YOUR current carpet cleaner REALLY a professional?

Rental unit pet damage on new carpet...RESTORED!

Asphalt driveway=Dark, soiled, traffic areas.

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