Ever wondered why people hire a professional carpet cleaning service. What is it that makes professional carpet cleaners a professional in their own accord.
The real purpose of professional carpet cleaning is to remove dirt and filth that accumulates during the regular course of use. Regular cleaning also helps in minimizing the potential damage to the floors on which carpets are laid. It is also an established fact that professionally cleaned carpets last longer than usual and are healthy also. Another point to be considered here is that your regular housekeeping staff can only clean the carpet superficially and that is often not helpful.
How do professionals approach this? Before the cleaning method is decided a small survey of the condition of the carpet is conducted. We need to check the kind of carpet used, the nature of the floor, the amount of dirt that it attracts and has accumulated over time. All this information is vital for planning an exceptional carpet cleaning regime. Next comes the crucial decision whether to go for dry cleaning, steam cleaning or any other professional method of cleaning.
As mentioned earlier in the article, it is just not feasible for a regular housekeeper to take care of professional carpet cleaning needs. Reason! When cleaning, there are principles, which can only be gained through effective training of technicians, not through experience alone, to be employed during the cleaning process which make it effective. If adherence to these principles is ignored, the effectiveness of the cleaning can be greatly compromised.
Professional carpet cleaning methodologies
When it comes to professional carpet cleaning two methods are widely used. They are dry carpet cleaning & steam cleaning. Either of the two techniques may be used to get the job done.
Dry Carpet Cleaning
Dry carpet cleaning systems utilize lots of specialized equipment. VLM or very low moisture systems are employed using dry compounds along with chemical cleaning agents. This is the preferred choice of cleaning for establishments which run 24/7. Dry carpet cleaning system provides for rapid cleaning of carpets with a high level of efficiency. These systems are also less labor intensive when compared to wet carpet cleaning systems.
Heavily soiled areas require the application of manual spotting, pretreatments, preconditioners, and/or “traffic-lane cleaners”, (commonly sprayed onto carpet prior to the primary use of the dry-cleaning system) which are detergents or emulsifiers which break the binding of different soils to carpet fibers over a short period of time.
For example, one chemical may dissolve the greasy films that bind soils to the carpet, and thus prevent effective soil removal through vacuuming.
The solution may add a solvent like d-limonene, petroleum byproducts, glycol ethers, or butyl agents. The amount of time the pre-treatment dwells in the carpet should be less than 15 minutes, due to the thorough carpet brushing common to these “very low moisture” systems, which provides added agitation to ensure the pretreatment works fully through the carpet. The benefit of dry carpet cleaning, over wet solutions, is that dry chemical compounds don’t attract dirt, like dried shampoo. While dry carpet cleaning is more expensive and more time consuming to clean than bonnet or extraction, dry cleaning formulas put less stress on the carpets themselves. (source: Wikipedia)
Hot Water Extraction Method
Most of the carpet manufacturers vouch for this method. Hot water extraction does give a deep clean to the carpet. The cleaning is also deep and generally takes care of bacterias and dust related pathogens also. The process of hot water extraction starts with preconditioning of the carpet. Alkaline agents like ammonia solutions are used for synthetic carpets and acidic chemicals are used for woolen carpets. These chemicals are sprayed on the carpet and are left to soak. After some time the carpet is agitated using a scrubber. This process can either be done manually or by machine. Then hot water is introduced into the carpet. This water is further extracted using a vacuum. All this is done in a short period of time hence giving a great carpet cleaning experience.
The process may even take more time depending upon the state of the carpet. There are many more steps to this process which are beyond the scope of the current blog post.
