On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:11:08 +0000, nestork
wrote:


For anyone that's interested, here is some information on cleaning
carpets you probably won't find anywhere else:

1. Solid dirts like skin cells, road grit, pollen, etc. will gradually
accumulate in a carpet over it';s lifetime. No matter what anyone tells
you, once that dirt works it's way deep into the carpet pile, no vaccuum
cleaner or carpet shampoo'er is going to get it out.

2. The way to tell when your carpet is ready for the dumpster is if you
shampoo the carpet and it smells like a wet dog for a week or two
afterward until it dries out. What's happening is exactly the same
thing that happens when you give a dog a bath. All of the bacteria deep
in the carpet pile suddenly find themselves in bacteria heaven because
the moisture that's been added to the carpet gives them mobility to move
around, and there's plenty of food for them to feed on in the form of
dead skin cells, pollen, etc. So, you get a bacterial population
explosion inside your carpet, and that's what makes it smell just like a
wet dog until it dries out and the bacteria go dormant.

3. Professional carpet cleaners are well aware of this and when they
get called to shampoo an old carpet, they add a bacteriacide to their
solution water so that the bacteriacide kills all the bacteria that gets
wet, thereby avoiding the smell which would otherwise occur afterwards.
They do that simply to avoid customer complaints about them "causing the
carpet to smell up the house", but that don't mean the carpet doesn't
need to be replaced.

4. If you rent a carpet shampoo'er, and you feel compelled to follow Rug
Doctor's or Easy Off's instructions to add 5 ounces of carpet soap for
each gallon of solution tank water, then go over the carpet afterwards
with just clean water to remove the excess soap from the carpet.

Most professional carpet cleaning soaps will tell you to use 1 to 2
fluid ounces of soap per 5 gallons of solution tank water. By following
Rug Doctor's or Easy Off's instructions, and using 5 ounces of soap per
gallon, you're using much more soap than you really need. And then,
when you consider that most rental carpet shampoo'ers don't have all
that much suction (see PS below), you end up leaving too much residual
soap in the carpet after shampoo'ing it. That soap leaves a sticky soap
film over the surface of all the carpet fibers as the water evaporates
and the carpet dries out, making the carpet "sticky" so that it gets
dirty faster and making normal vaccuuming ineffective at removing that
dirt. In fact, the only effective way to remove that dirt is to shampoo
the carpet again to dissolve the sticky dirty soap film. But, when
people do shampoo the carpet again, they'll think to themselves: "Wow,
look at how dirty the recovery tank water is. This carpet shampoo'er is
really geting this carpet clean!", and that's bogus. All that's
happening is that your're dissolving the dirty soap film on all the
carpet fibers, and if you followed Rug Doctor's or Easy Off's
instructions, all you did was replace that sticky soap film so your
carpet will be just as dirty in another year or two.

You can avoid this problem by either using less soap in the
shampooer to begin with, or doing a second pass over the cleaned carpet
with just clean water in the solution tank to recover the residual
soap.

PS: Just in the same way that gasoline engines are rated according to
their number of cylinders and the horsepower they produce, vaccuum
motors are rated according to number of stages they have and the "inches
of water lift" (which is a measure of vaccuum strength) they produce. A
normal single stage vaccuum motor like you find in a Hoover upright
vaccuum cleaner will typically have only a single stage vaccuum motor
and provide 30 inches of water lift. A good quality wet/dry Shop-Vac
style vaccuum cleaner will typically have a two stage vaccuum motor and
provide about 60 inches of water lift. An entry level professional
carpet cleaner will typically have either a single three stage vaccuum
motor or two two stage vaccum motors piped in parallel and provide from
80 to 100 inches of water lift. My carpet shampooer has two three stage
vaccuum motors in parallel and provides 183 inches of water lift
according to it's specifications. And, you can get gasoline powered
truck mounted units that use a gasoline engine to run 6 to 8 three stage
vaccuum motors simultaneously that will suck a golf ball through a
garden hose.

The more suction your shampoo'er has, the more dirty soapy water you
will get out of the carpet with it, and the less soap and dirt will be
left behind in the carpet once it's dry. It's the fact that rental
carpet shampooers typically only have a single two stage vaccuum motor,
and the fact that Rug Doctor and Easy Off tell you to use too much soap,
that results in them leaving too much soapy soiled water behind in the
carpet, and that sticky soap film remaining in the carpet when it's dry.
It's that residual soap that makes the carpet get dirty faster, and if
I was a suspicious person, I'd say that both Rug Doctor and Easy Off are
intentionally misleading people to use too much soap when cleaning their
carpet SO THAT their carpets get dirty faster and the only effective way
of getting that dirt out is to rent a carpet shampoo'er again. And,
that's not even accounting for people's tendency to use twice as much
soap as recommended to ge the carpet "twice as clean".

People can decide for themselves if they agree with me or not, but I
believe there's a scam going on here.
I often do an intermediate or final run with vinegar in the water -
and on wool carpet, a once over with a bit of fabric softener in it.
Gets the soap scum out fairly effectively.