WHY CARPETS DIE YOUNG
A report by Steve Carter, a trained professional carpet cleaner since 1982.
In this short report, I will attempt to explain why certain procedures used by many professional carpet cleaners are doomed to failure before they even start on the carpet because they violate certain important principles. I will then try to explain why we at A 1 Painless have used the "Spin-Bonnet" Method exclusively since 1982 on every kind of application with superior results and restoration of carpets rather than deterioration from the cleaning process.
"Steam" Cleaning (hot water extraction) - spray 1½ -7 gallons per minute of cleaning solution into the carpet and suck it out. It rinses out dirt that has collected in spill residue or suds residue (from spotting attempts) while leaving the spill residue and suds residue behind to collect new dirt. More importantly, it always saturates the backing of the carpet. Despite assurances by "noteworthy carpet care professionals", there is no known way to effectively remove dirt and stain residue from under a carpet! A wet backing means that the dirt layer that accumulates on top of your pad will be turned to mud and will wick up into the fibers as the carpet dries, long after the cleaner has collected his money and gone his way. In a recent study, 100 square yards of 24-ounce nylon pile carpet over a 6-pound, 7/16" bonded urethane pad was saturated with 344 gallons of water to determine extraction efficiencey of different extraction tools for truck-mounted "steam-cleaning". The "light wand" used most commonly by professionals left 54% of the water behind! It is much worse for 90% polypropylene(olefin)/10%nylon berber over the same pad. The light wand left 66% of the water in the carpet/pad! Now you know why it takes so long to dry.
Shampoo - scrubbing a sudsy solution into the carpet with a brush to slide soil and stains off of the fibers like you slide dirt and grease off your hair. Then what? After you shampoo your hair, you rinse it. Sometimes you use a conditioner to kill suds residue in your hair and avoid a build-up. If carpet cleaners were able to do all this without getting the backing of the carpet wet, we would call them magicians. (I can do it, but I have been called a magician). But then, sucking up dirty suds with a commercial wet vacuum, or worse, trying to rinse up dirty suds with an extractor is another step. I've talked to guys who used shampoo and figured out you can skip the extraction step. Just scrub the dirt in.
Dry-foam - same as shampoo, only the solution is "sulfonated." This is supposed to mean that, after you scrub the dirt up into the suds (you just apply the suds, not the liquid - its supposed to be drier - only, the wetter you work, the faster you go), the suds dry to a powder which you just vacuum away. I had one of these machines. After testing about a dozen "dry-foam" sulfonated shampoos, including having the solution from the machine's manufacturer shipped 2000 miles, I never found one that did not leave a sticky suds residue.
Encapsulation - This is some new chemistry that sounds very good (like dry foam) and I'll know more after I've had more time to test it. The formula works exactly the same as "dry-foam" only it dries to a crystal which is brittle and should easily break up and vacuum away. Assuming that is the case and I can confidently leave a job with all the dirt still in the carpet knowing that the first time the customer vacuums, they will remove it, only one more thing must be checked out. I adjust my formula or procedures to the particular job and type and quantity of soil and stains. With a formula such as is used with encapsulation (or dry foam), I must rely on the formula to handle every kind of soil situation, because, how do I know that the solvent or enzyme I prespray with to handle a situation involving say, restaurant grease or pet urine, isn't going to foul up the crystalization feature. What if my pre-spotting formula combines with the encapsulation formula to form cottage cheese instead of crystals? If it will still crystalize even where I have used other chemistry, it could be a great time saver. If not, it will have to stand on it's own under every type of soil condition. (I kinda prefer scrubbing all the dirt out before I leave. I like the "what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach).
Dry powder - do-it-yourself method based on the same principal as our methods: absorption rather than flushing. They charge a powder (think of a fine kitty litter) with a solvent. You spread it onto the carpet and scrub it in with a rotary brush. The solvent goes out into the carpet and dissolves the soil and stains and then reabsorbs into the powder. Then the solvent evaporates into the air, leaving the soil in the particles to be vacuumed away. Does that sound bogus to you, too? I tested two of these systems on an area with both traffic soil and spots. I was not impressed. Then I pre-sprayed the area with my solution, which I knew would release the soil and spots. I reapplied the powder, worked it in with the brush, and went my way. About 6 hours later, I came back and vacuumed up the powder and was very impressed. I don't know what professionals who are trying to employ this system are doing while they wait for the powder to absorb up soil and stains and then dry so they can vacuum. Actually, they are vacuuming the powder immediately, which defeats the system. It was developed as a do-it-yourself system for that reason. The difference between this system and mine is best described as the difference between passive absorption and active absorption. Here, you scrub the powder in, wait, vacuum it up, and see how you did. If it looks OK, you're done. If not, you start over. That's what I call passive absorption.
The "Spin-Bonnet" method is the method I have used exclusively for over 25 years. I've used it on hotel banquet rooms (I call the beer suites), lounges, restaurants, as well as residential carpets. For years, it has been the method of choice among hotels, schools, other government buildings, office buildings, etc. We spray down a light mist of a dilute detergent especially formulated to be effective on a wide variety of food, drinks, dirt, and grease while being non-sudsy and low residue. Then we take what looks like a string mop, only round (the industry calls it a bonnet), flop it down and spin it under a floor machine to actively scrub and absorb the solution and soil that has been dissolved in it. When I have finished scrubbing, what little moisture is left will usually flash off in less than an hour. By first removing the accumulation of dust above the backing using my "mega-vac" system, and scrubbing all the soil and stain residue off the fibers, the carpet looks beautiful and dries quickly with no reappearing spots. Here's the trick. By going after carpet soil in the same way you would ideally on your hands and knees with a terry cloth towel and a bottle of spotter - no suds, no flushing - we "spray and blot" the stain away without saturating the backing or going down into the pad to "reactivate" spill residues, thus avoiding reappearing spots that wick up out of the pad and rapid re-soil because of a sticky, sudsy residue that was too foamy to blot or rinse out.
When I first started, I had a booth in 5 home improvement trade shows where I demonstrated this method to many who had never seen anything like it. At that time, I had a 3 foot square piece that came out of my closet when I laid the carpet a year and a half earlier where there was a built-in dresser. Since the carpet was laid, for a year and a half, that square laid on my front porch as a wipe-off mat. I figured that, among all the samples that I had used in those 5 shows, that particular piece had been cleaned around 1500 times. Between shows, it went back out on the front porch. After the last show, I brought it home and laid it down in the middle of the living room. The pile looked better than the rest of the carpet in the living room because it had been cleaned and had its pile restored by this method. I had customers who laid carpets more than 15 years ago that never had anyone else clean them and were very happy with the current condition of the pile after more than 15 cleanings. This method restores carpets. It does not deteriorate them. Because of our patented formula, carpets don't re-soil prematurely because of residues. I have used the same "Miracle Juice" since I discovered it in 1984. It has been very popular as a spotter because it is so easy to simply spray and blot. If it won't take the spot out, you are dealing with a stain that will require professional assistance. There are very few stains that can be removed by any special procedure that can't be removed with this formula by standard procedure (spray and blot). Of course, that's why I've been using it with my "spin-bonnet" operation since
I discovered it. If there were a better solution for "spray-and-blot", I would use it.
If you have any questions, or would like to talk about having your carpets cleaned the way I clean my own, please call:
A 1 Painless Dry Carpet Care at (309) 647-6316 (Canton/ Macomb)
(309) 344-6316 (Galesburg)
(309) 671-8999 (Peoria)
