Do You Prespray Your Carpets?

Prespraying carpets with cleaning solution can be one way to start the cleaning process off to a good start. If you're dealing with particularly grungey carpeting it can be a challenge to get it clean enough with just a regular carpet extractor.

There are a number of cleaning solutions you can use in your prespray treatment, but generally you want to go for something that will help to loosen the dirt from the carpet fibers. Most detergents and enzymatic cleaners can do that kind of job well. Detergents help to break the surface tension of the dirt that's adhering to the fibers, while enzymes will actively break some of the chemical bonds between the dirt and carpeting.

Another advantage of using a prespray treatment on carpeting is that the cleaning solution has some time to loosen the dirt before coming in with a carpet machine. This waiting period is called "dwell time" - generally the amount of time you let the solution sit on your carpet before extracting it.

What do you use to prespray carpeting? If you don't have a professional type sprayer you can always start off with using a regular trigger spray bottle. However, with a large room your hand will quickly become fatigued.

A better solution than a trigger sprayer is to use a pump type spray bottle. With this kind of device you use a pump to pressurize the container. Then you can simply pull the trigger with a steady pressure and dispense an even stream of solution.

When you have a lot of carpets to clean then a professional electric or battery powered sprayer is in order. This way the tank is always kept pressurized so you can continually grip the spray nozzle and dispense a large amount of solution onto your carpet.

So, if you're serious about doing a deep cleaning job on your carpeting you definitely should consider prespraying with a solution and letting it dwell for several minutes. Your results will be much improved over using a carpet cleaning machine alone.

Your Prespray Options

Add a trigger sprayer to a bottle of your favorite cleaning solution Ready To Go.	A pump up sprayer with a 1 or 2 gallon tank is a great improvement over a trigger sprayer.	For large spraying jobs you may want to consider a battery powered or electric model.

For more information on sprayer options take a look at all of our pump-up, electric, and battery sprayers at CarpetExtractors.com.

Ready to Get Into Green Carpet Cleaning?

The name of the game in green carpet cleaning is to reduce carpet chemical usage. Using "green" or biodegradable cleaners is definitely preferable to the old-school cleaners with VOCs (volatile organic compounds), but you still want to use as little as possible. The main reason, of course, is to reduce the amount of any chemicals going into the air or down the drain. But, you'll also save more money in your carpet cleaning operations by cutting down on cleaning solutions.

In addition to reducing the amount of cleaners you use there are several other factors to consider to reduce your environmental impact. These include using cold water over hot water whenever possible, keeping your carpet extracting equipment in good working order so you get the longest life out of it, and reducing the moisture left behind in the carpet so you reduce the drying time by air movers.

Another advantage of reducing your cleaning solution usage is having less plastic bottles to dispose of. If you have access to recycling this may not be an issue for you, but if you don’t you get the added advantage of the warm fuzzy from reducing your waste stream.

Green Carpet Cleaners

There are several "green" cleaners out on the market now that tout a more environmental ingredient list. The consumer really has to do their homework to determine which products are really green - it's often too easy for a manufacturer to just slap a label on a bottle that says it's green. Looking at the MSDS sheet (Material Safety Data Sheets are standard documentation in the US to list the potential hazards of a product) for a particular product will give you the best idea of its green-ness. Looking at VOC's and health hazard potential are important factors to consider.

Green Seal Certification is another indicator of green products. The Green Seal is administered by a non-profit organization that does standardized scientific testing on products claiming to be green. If something passes muster with their testing it wins the ability to display their seal right on the bottle.

A green carpet cleaner we carry at CleanFreak.com is Ready to Go. Its hydrogen peroxide based formula gives you superior cleaning abilities without the usual VOC's you find in many carpet cleaners. Available in both the quart size (6 to a case) and gallon size (2 gallons per case).

Types of Carpet Cleaning Machines

Some carpet cleaning machines use quite a bit of water during operation. If water usage can be kept to below 1 gallon per minute you're on your way to greener carpet cleaning.

You may think that using copious amounts of water will clean your carpets better, but that's not necessarily so. A more important factor is how efficiently your machine can inject water into the carpeting and how well it can suction it back out. If you end up using too much water and cleaning solution on your carpet and can't effectively remove the majority of it you're stuck with the risk of encouraging mold or bacterial growth. And having to compensate for wet carpets by bringing in several air movers increases your electricity usage - definitely un-green.

Carpet Steam Cleaning

One alternative to using cleaning chemicals (in certain circumstances) is to use hot water. Technically there are no carpet extractors that use just steam to clean carpet, but rather the process of using hot water creates some steam as a byproduct. So when people talk about getting their carpets steam cleaned it's really using hot water.

But, using hot water can give you an extra cleaning boost when you really need it. Any dirt or soil with an oily or greasy element will definitely benefit from using hot, or even warm, water on it. One place you might see this is a car dealership or repair garage. Personnel from the service area walk through greasy floors all day, then when walking over a patch of carpeting in the customer waiting area a bit of that oily substance gets cleaned off their shoes - onto the carpeting.

Restaurants and food service can be another potential area where carpets could use some hot water cleaning. The grease and oil from food gets tracked from the kitchen into the dining area by servers and bus people. Tightly woven commercial carpeting is great for resisting this kind of staining, but sooner or later the soiling will happen.

Cold vs. Hot Water Cleaning

Assessing whether you really need to use hot water is another important factor in keeping your carpet cleaning green. Heating water takes a lot of electricity (or gas if you're drawing from a gas-fired water heater). For the majority of carpet cleaning scenarios hot water really isn't necessary. The judicious and sparing use of a green carpet cleaner, in conjunction with your cold water machine, can be a lot more effective than using gallons upon gallons of hot water.

High Traffic Areas

In most businesses with carpeting (and in homes, too) there will be areas that get dirtier because of heavy foot traffic. The constant coming and going of feet between dirty areas and clean areas is a sure formula for more soiled areas. You usually see these in hallways, on stairs, or the entrance area into a building.

If you can restrict the use of cleaning chemical to these high traffic areas you'll be using less chemicals overall, even if you don't use a green cleaner. Using a spray bottle to apply cleaner in your target areas is a great way to know just where and how much you're putting onto the carpeting.

Be aware that many carpet cleaners recommend letting the solution sit on/in the carpeting for a short amount of time before coming back to extract it out. This is called "dwell time". Dwell time will be different for different solutions, but the idea is to let the cleaner take some time to chemically interact with the dirt in the carpet fibers. This will make it much easier for the extractor machine to effectively remove the grunge.

Reducing Moisture to Reduce Drying Times

Whether you use one or several air movers or let your carpets dry on their own you want to remove as much left over moisture from the fibers as possible. It will greatly reduce your drying time. If you can get your carpets extracted sufficiently so that use of or an air mover is cut in half you're saving substantially on the electricity used to run that machine. If you live and work in a dry climate you might be able to avoid using or owning an air mover altogether.

Is Green Carpet Cleaning for You?

As you can see there are many small factors to consider in getting to green carpet cleaning. Even if you decide to implement one or two of these factors in your routine you'll be ahead in terms of money savings. But, for those consumers looking for green carpet cleaning in their homes or business you'll be able to offer a unique and valuable product to them.