Carpet Cleaning in Colorado with a Home Cleaner or Portable Machine by Keith Wroblewski

Carpet Cleaning in Colorado with a Home Cleaner or Portable Machine
by: Keith Wroblewski

How do I make my home portable steam cleaner or Home Shampooer work?

Many of you may be asking yourselves why I would teach you how to not need me? The answer is kinda simple. I am in the service industry and we are supposed to serve. I am also hoping that when you need a Colorado carpet cleaner in the future that you will remember me and call or if you have a friend in need you might refer Colorado Carpet Cleaning Masters to them.In this article I will try to answer the most common questions I have received in regards to carpet cleaning with a home machine.

Lets get started. The first step in carpet cleaning is to remove as much of the carpet load or dry soil from the carpet fibers as possible. What happens to dry dirt when you add water? It becomes mud and mud is a lot harder to get out than sand. A sq. yard of carpet may contain up to 8 lbs. of dry dirt. A thorough vacuum of the carpet is the best first step to cleaning the carpet yourself. If you need help in choosing a vacuum, see our free choosing a vacuum guide.

Now that the carpets are thoroughly vacuumed, we want to prespray or precondition the carpet.

This may be the most important step in the carpet cleaning process and it is often overlooked by the "professional carpet cleaning company." Many Colorado carpet cleaning companies will only precondition the spots they see and not the entire carpet. This is akin to taking very dirty jeans and placing detergent on the ketchup spot and ignoring the general grime that the jeans are covered in. After the jeans dried you would have very dirty jeans with a clean spot where the ketchup used to be. To insure that all the carpet gets as clean as possible we must prespray all the carpets before we clean them. We also want the prespray to sit or dwell in the carpet fibers for at least two to twenty minutes before we clean them. It takes the soap bubbles time to pry the dirt off the carpet fiber. If we heat our preconditioner before we apply it, the preconditioner will be more powerful and effective. Once we reach 118 degrees every 18 degrees hotter will double the ability of the detergent to clean. Make sure that you are heating only detergent and non combustible chemicals. This is one reason why you can never get the carpets as clean with a portable cleaner compared to a high heat truck mount carpet cleaner.

After you prespray a section of carpet you can agitate the carpet with a carpet rake and this will help the detergent break the dirt free from the carpet fiber. You don't want the prespray to dry before you rinse the carpets with your home cleaner. You can use a fresh water rinse or a slightly acidic rinse to flush the detergent and dirt out of the carpet. If you can create airflow and warm air the carpets will dry faster. It is preferred for the carpets to dry within 24 hours. The faster the carpets dry the less wicking or traveling of dirt from the carpets backing will occur. A quick recap:

Vacuum carpet thoroughly.
Precondition all the carpet to be cleaned
Heat the prespray if possible and agitate it into the carpet fibers.
Let the preconditioner sit or dwell for 2- 20 minutes
Rinse the carpet with fresh water
Dry as fast as possible

If you have any other questions regarding carpet cleaning please call 303-655-1660 or find your answers at http://www.colorado-carpet-masters.com

About The Author

Keith Wroblewski is an IICRC Master Carpet Cleaner who has been in the cleaning industry for 20 years. His carpet cleaning company Boulder Carpet Cleaning Masters has been cleaning carpets in Boulder Colorado for 17 years. He has produced several free help guides to help his Boulder carpet cleaning clients and now offers these guides( carpet cleaning, carpet buying, choosing cheap carpets, choosing wool carpets, cleaning wool carpets, and many others. You can find them at http://www.colorado-carpet-masters.com