Getting Your Carpets Cleaned Properly
Posted on 04/03/2014
What Is the Best Method of Cleaning Carpets?
With the popularity of carpets throughout homes in Great Britain, it is a bit of a wonder that people don’t wash their carpets properly that often, preferring to give them a hoover every now and again. You will find that you can get a carpet looking pretty spectacular if you are clever about it, and that simply means choosing the right technique for washing it. There are a few to choose from, and they range in price as well as effectiveness. For the best results, you should certainly be going for a professional cleaning service, but given that the prices can be quite steep, it is understandable that you would want to see your other options!
First off you have the most popular method and the one that you may have seen advertised on the television. Home carpet shampoo is a great way to give your carpets a once over, especially if there has been a spillage. You will no doubt want to ensure that your whole carpet gets cleaned at the time though, to ensure that there is no unevenness in colour across the pile. The shampoo is simply sprayed across the area that you want to clean, and you then scrub it in with a brush. Be sure not to use anything too stiff though, as it can damage the pile of the carpet! Once the foam is dry, it can be vacuumed out. The scrubbing and the soapy solution of the spam will lift the dirt from the fibres and suspend them in the foam, meaning that the dirt is taken with it when you vacuum after. However, there are some issues that can come of this, and they tend to revolve around the residue. Sometimes the powdery residue can be a little sticky, and not be vacuumed out properly, which in turn makes the fibres a little sticky, attracting more dust as it builds up. You obviously need to avoid this, so be thorough with the vacuuming after the foam has dried properly.
There is a process called steam cleaning, which does not actually involve any steam at all. You will find that the process in fact uses a large amount of hot water, which is blasted into the pile, and then extracting very quickly. The vigorous action of the water combined with the heat will remove dirt with ease, though it is quite a dramatic process! You need to be sure that the equipment being used is up to scratch, however, as otherwise there could be some water left in the pile, which can encourage damp and mildew to grow in the carpet, effectively ruining them.
Dry cleaning involves the same process as when you get your clothes dry cleaned. Of course, no one really understands that process either! A dry compound is spread over the carpet and scrubbed in. It is then given a couple of drops of a solution, whose reaction with the compound causes it to draw dirt from the fibres, without affecting the fibres at all. If a scrubbing machine is used on the carpet, then a great deal more of the pile will be cleaned than if you were to do it by hand. Once the compound has done its work, it can be vacuumed up from the pile, leaving your carpet looking as fresh as it did when you first laid it!
