“EPA Declares DIRTY Carpets, Rugs and Other Soft Surfaces a Health Hazard”
Critical Factors you must know before letting someone clean your carpeting
Carpeting is the largest air filter in your home and usually the 3rd largest investment you own. When this large filter fills up, every time someone walks across it, some of this contamination becomes airborne and you breathe it in. In addition, some of it is abrasive and causes premature wear and tear. When we clean your carpeting it will be healthier, stay clean longer and we are experts at stain and odor removal.
Most cleaning companies are “misinformed, uneducated or downright unscrupulous”
These other cleaners are leaving much of this behind! It’s what you don’t see that makes us sick! Lead, Mercury, Asbestos, Pesticides, Herbicides, PFOAs, Formaldehyde, 1000’s of trace chemicals…
Dry Soil / Contamination Test
- We agitate the carpet to loosen the crusty contamination and Biofilm
- We use a black cloth at the end of a vacuum hose to trap contamination between it and the crevice tool.
- We consistently do the same size area to ascertain how much contamination is hidden inside the fibers
- This helps us determine what level of cleaning is needed.
Sample Before Vacuuming
After Vacuuming
After Cleaning
After Sanitizing & 2nd Cleaning
How Carpet is Cleaned
How do we know how contaminated carpet is? Soil test with a vacuum and the white towel tests!
White Towel Test
- Spray or apply a general spotting solution to a 3” circle of carpet
- Gently agitate this area
- Place a twice folded new white cotton spotting towel over the spot
- Apply a lot of pressure for at least 30 seconds
- Repeat if very soiled
- Helps determine the level of cleaning that will be needed
Our different levels of clean, currently we highly recommend Platinum or Gold. We can do some on-site testing to see if you only need Silver or Bronze. The Silver and Bronze can be just as clean as Platinum if the carpet only needs a maintenance cleaning.
What we depicted here for Silver and Bronze was the carpet that was too soiled to begin.
Chet’s Platinum Cleaning
Chet’s Gold Cleaning
Others– No vacuuming, little pre-conditioning, no agitation, and wand cleaning
Rotary Steam Cleaning
What makes it so much better than all other systems?
- The CDC recommends Washing carpeting with soap and water, and Steam Cleaning is the only way to accomplish this with carpet.
- Rotary Steam Cleaning is up to 5 times more thorough than all other methods.
- As many as 750 combination Rinse and Flush operation per minutes
- Cleans fibers from all directions
- Builds more heat on the carpet where it helps clean away Biofilm and other unhealthy contamination
- Dramatically more agitation help dislodge stubborn soil and contamination. And it’s adjustable so it can be very gentle on delicate fibers.
- Has a clear sight tube so we can see the soiled extracted water become clean so we know how we are performing.
- It is self-propelled so our technicians don’t get tired, the machine is doing the hard labor effortlessly
- Consistent cleaning from the beginning of the job to the end.
- Lightweight and easy to carry
- The vacuum is always on, we only control the flow of the solution, so it is almost impossible to over-wet the carpet.
- Rotation allows up to 750 combination Rinse flush operations per minute.
Why It Cleans Hotter
Let’s say the carpet is 60 degrees, each pass of 200° solution increases the temp somewhere in between the two. So the first pass is 130°, the second pass is 165°, the third is 177° and it makes about 10 passes so it is cleaning at nearly 200°
The cleaning heads are also enclosed to help keep the heat contained.
Side note: We turn down the heat on Wool.
What’s Wrong With a Manual Wand or Zipper?
- They only clean in 2 directions– forward and back, if you want to clean from different angles you need to move your entire body along with the 2 hoses attached to the tool.
- Require a great deal of physical labor to operate, hard on your back, legs and wrist
- They are manual so it is easy to do it wrong, and besides technicians get tired, (how long can you push a broom or rake aggressively)?
- Water temp cools down quickly when you only make 1 or 2 passes across the carpet.
- ON average only 30 Rinse Flush sequences per minute?
- Most Technicians push while on the trigger so you at first you Soak, then Rinse Flush. Instead of a proper Rinse Flush
How Most Commercial Carpets Are Maintenance Cleaned (Polishing)
The top of the carpet is getting cleaned so it looks clean to the naked eye when in reality most contamination is lurking down below.
Remember:
Sanitizers are consumed or neutralized by soil and Biofilm – that’s why it has to be properly cleaned and rinsed first!
If we use our Platinum Cleaning process we get
as close to this as possible.
To use any Sanitizer it needs to be as close to this as possible.
Pile Lifting & Vacuuming—Why is It So Important????
First of all carpeting, upholstery and all soft goods act like filters for the air we breathe and play the most important role in indoor air quality! And carpeting and rugs are the largest air filter in our homes and business.
Virtually no one vacuums properly or often enough or even uses a quality properly maintained vacuum. The commercial janitorial staff I’m sorry to say are probably the worse offenders and housekeepers aren’t far behind.
Before Cleaning– a neglected carpet will have a lot of loose soil, Biofilm and hair.
If you don’t remove the dry soil and contamination first; Even with Rotary Steam Cleaning, we are unable to remove all of the soil!
The carpet looks clean but in reality, it is still contaminated.