No one likes a dirty carpet. Consumer researchers know this and are constantly engaging scientists to come up with richer solutions to the clean-carpet challenge. Here are a few communiqués from the front:
- Encapsulating Crystal Polymer: This material goes down wet, but dries into crystals that encapsulate the dirt. When you vacuum the crystals, you also pick up the dirt locked within. Not all products are equal. You want one that doesn’t leave a sticky or gooey residue, and that really captures the dirt. You can test the product by applying it to a glass dish and let it dry. Make sure the residue is a dry crystal. Typically, you vacuum first, apply the polymer solution with a special scrubber machine, and then let the carpet dry. Vacuum again, and your carpet should be very clean.
- Scrubbing Equipment: A good scrubber uses vigorous agitation to muscle out the dirt. The best examples use multiple planetary counter-rotating brushes. The owner of a Bergen County rug installation company recommends Cimex scrubbers as the best in the business. The effectiveness of this machine is due to three brushes that spin clockwise as the drive deck spins counterclockwise. In this way, every carpet fiber is cleaned on all sides. The brushes spin at 400 rpm, creating significant agitation. You can clean up to 3,000 square feet of carpet per hour with a three-brush scrubber.
- Scrubbing Pads: An upgrade to any scrubbing machine is to replace the brushes with pads. The reason to use a scrubbing pad is to increase surface contact area on each pass of the scrubber. You therefore need less agitation and cleaning fluid per cleaning session. A good pad will give up to 10,000 square feet of scrubbing service before it needs to be replaced. That’s over three hours of carpet scrubbing – most consumers have a much more modest amount of carpet to clean.
While you can clean a carpet yourself by renting the proper equipment, you will have to make a commitment of time and energy to get your carpet really clean. We think it makes sense to bring in a professional. They invest in the best equipment on the market and use proven techniques to get your carpet deep-down clean. A professional can make two or three passes on your carpet in the time it takes you to do just one. To us, using a professional carpet cleaner is an example of Smart Living.