This post about rugs is one of many to come. To make a long story short, I have always wanted to blog about my adventures out there as a carpet cleaning company business owner. I however have not found the time to do so, but I have so much fun doing what I do, that I thought I would do it anyway, just so I can check it off my list. These posts will not be in chronological order, but I will strive to add my personality into them, and give all of my fans, current customers, prospective customers, lost customers(be they few...), and/or any other category not named the opportunity to join me in the adventures that I embark on. Here goes...
Today we talk about rugs. Not carpet, Rugs. First of all, rugs should not be cleaned in the carpet cleaner sense of the word, they should be WASHED! Sorry to yell, but this is important. If a carpet cleaner shows up to your house, bids your wall-to-wall carpets and notices that oriental piece of artwork on your floor and attempts to add it to the bill, and says that he/she can clean it while they are at your house.... Do me a favor. Run in the opposite direction screaming and yelling as fast as you can. This is the rug washer snob coming out, so hold onto your shorts. If I were to get into all of the reasons in this post as to why the suggested reaction, it would never end, so I will just say read on...
The above picture is a shot that I snapped earlier today and to the silent/casual observer, one might ask, what is the white napkin doing there? A closer examination would reveal one of the many reasons your favorite carpet cleaner should not be allowed to clean your wool rug while at your home. This rug is owned by a nice young couple who shall remain unnamed. This massive rug weighs in at ~108 square feet. Its a big one, it is old, it is worn, and it is a bleeder. Look at the napkin above. Can you see the red lines? Here at RYC(Restore Your Carpet), we test each and every rug that we wash for colorfastness. That is a fancy way of saying, whether or not it will bleed. When I inspected the rug at the owners home, I noticed that some of the reds had bled prior to my inspection. How could this happen? Here are some possible reasons:
1) It was steam cleaned.
2) It was cleaned with carpet cleaner solution/soap.
3) The fibers were colored with too much dye in the first place.
4) Animal contamination(urine) saturated the fibers and cause the bleeding.
These are of course not all of the reasons for this to happen, just a few. Let's talk about a few of them. Heat, like steam cleaning heat, is not good for these types of rugs as a general cleaning practice. Wall-to-wall carpets are normally cleaned with solutions that are really high on the PH scale. They are mostly made of plastic, so that is not necessarily a bad thing. I won't get into the others in this post. I really just wanted to show some of the process that we utilize here to show to the world that we sort of know what we are doing when it comes to washing rugs. Rugs are an art form. They are art, therefore(in my twisted mind) they need an artist to care for them. This was not however the first step. I vacuum/vibrated this thing for about an hour prior to the colorfast test to get as much of the dirt out that I could. I pulled probably 1.5 quarts of dirt and dust out, I would have posted a picture, but I forgot to take one...oops.
Moving on...
I hope that this post was entertaining and informative. If we can help you with your rug washing chores, give us a call at 307.887.0223 in Star Valley, or 307.774.0223 in the Jackson Hole area. Till next time.
RYC