I've heard that about too much soap. I can imagine
that being the case, and the reasons you state.

As for different kinds of dirt. I have seen plenty
of buckets of mud come out of carpets that were
recently vacuumed. Different kind of dirt? I can't
be sure, but I can be sure that shampooing and
extracting (one then the other) sure does remove a
lot of dirt.


..
Christopher A. Young
Learn about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

On 8/20/2013 12:29 PM, nestork wrote:


But, if it were me, I would stretch the carpet first, and then VACCUUM
it, and then shampoo it.

That way:
1.) you're not trying to shampoo a wrinkled carpet, so the work will go
easier
2.) you're not kneeling down on a damp carpet when you're stretching it,
and
3.) the vaccuum cleaner removes all the SOLID dirt (like skin cells,
pollen, paper fibers and such) from the carpet before that stuff gets
wet from shampooing. Once the carpet and the solid dirt are wet, you'll
have much greater difficulty removing that solid dirt cuz of water's
surface tension. Next time you're at the beach, try removing sand from
wet feet and dry feet and see which one works better. It's the same
with carpet. The water film on the carpet pile makes the solid soils
stick like glue to the carpet pile.

Contrary to popular belief, a carpet shampoo'er doesn't clean a carpet
better than a vaccuum cleaner. They are two different tools meant for
removing two different kinds of soils. You need to vaccuum regularily
to remove the solid soils, and shampoo periodically to remove the dried
up liquid spills.

if you don't read anything else in this post, read the following three
paragraphs.

Also, if you're planning on renting a carpet shampoo'er to do the
shampoo'ing yourself, then use only 1/5th of the carpet shampoo that Rug
Doctor or whomever recommends. That's because Rug Doctor (and that
other company too, forget their name) recommend using 5 times as much
carpet soap as the companies that make the carpet soaps that
professionals use. And, if I was a suspicious person, I'd suspect the
reason for that is because they know that if you follow their
instructions, there'll be a lot of soapy water left in that carpet after
you finish shampoo'ing. As the carpet dries, the residual soap will
form a film over all the carpet fibers which solid dirts will stick to,
causing the carpet to get dirty much faster than it otherwise would, and
making regular vaccuum cleaning ineffective at removing that dirt.

Under those conditions, the ONLY thing that will remove that solid dirt
stuck to the soap film on the carpet will be to shampoo the carpet
again, thereby simply replacing that soap film with a new one. And,
when people see how much dirt is being removed by shampoo'ing, and how
much cleaner the carpet is, they're impressed with how clean the rental
machine is getting the carpet. Truth is, most of that dirt wouldn't
have even be in the recovery tank water were it not for the residual
soap left behind the last time the carpet was shampoo'ed; it would have
been removed by vaccuuming. The only reason it's there is because it
stuck to the soap film on the carpet fibers.

But, if you feel compelled to follow Rug Doctor's instructions to the
letter, then at least do a SECOND pass over the carpet with just clean
hot water in the solution tank. That way, you remove that residual soap
film from the carpet so that you break that cycle of having to shampoo
all the time to keep the carpet clean.