Carpet Cleaning

Vacuum

The first thing to be said about carpet cleaning is that the surface should be vacuumed regularly. This is also good for the fibers as well as for cleanliness because sharp sand edges can cut the carpet fibers. In reality carpet is a destination for everything that gets dragged into the home including insects. This is why it should be treated with the same respect that you would a favorite sweater or pair or sports coat. So instead of going bare-footed put on a pair of slippers.

Take Out Old Shampoo

Just like rinsing your hair you have to rinse a carpet. Liquid carpet cleaners leave a build-up and this is a magnet for dirt. If you are renting a machine mix 1 cup of vinegar for every 2 1/2 gallons of water and clean the carpet with this first. Now go back over the carpet with just warm water. This will take the shampoo out and leave the carpet softer.

Stains

Never rub a stain, just blot it.  most stains come off with shaving cream. leave it on for 15 minutes and blot with white vinegar.

Club soda or a 30/70 mix of peroxide to water: This will work for red wine stains and orange popsicles.  Apply and wait 30 minutes. Then rinse with a vinegar/water solution.

Brake Fluid: No kidding, This will remove food stains. it contains the same chemicals as the professional dry cleaners use. Just dab it on a clean cloth.

Baking Soda: Animal spills and other stains

Cleaning

If you love your carpet a professional carpet cleaner works the best. They have the best tools and the exerptise to get all the dirt from the bottom of the matt and out. The store-rentals work to a point but just wet the rest down. And the pros will not leave a soap residue for you to get out later.

Carpet Repair

Having a burn mark or orange stain on a new, light-colored carpet is heartbreaking. And most of the time these blemishes are right in the line of sight. The first notion is that you carpet is ruined and you want it back the way it was no matter what the cost. This is just vanity speaking, and you wouldn’t do it, but the feeling is terrible.

There are a few home remedies you can do but if the damage is really bad you should call a professional carpet repair person. For not much money they can fix large damage and stretching

1.  Clipping: Some times you can clip off melted ends or stains that haven’t gone too deep. This works best if the carpet has a thick shape or weave. For Berber this might cause the loops to unravel.

2.  Surgery: Again, this will work if the carpet is thick. Find a spot where no one will ever see – under a couch, in a closet. Once you have a source for a patch go back to the blemish. Find a small cup or shot glass that will cover the blemish and, with a very sharp utility knife, cut down to the backing and cut out a perfect circle. Now do this back at the spot where the carpet is good and follow the same procedure. The new piece should fit exactly in the hole left by the old piece. Place glue from a hot glue gun on the backing and carefully place this piece in the hole. Don’t get glue on the fibers.

3.  Grafting: Some times you can cut out the damage and glue in some fibers without cutting out a whole chunk. If cutting out the bad strands is noticeable take some from the closet or under a couch and graft then to the hollow spot.

Carpet Tips

Nothing looks warmer and more inviting than a room with a beautiful carpet. Properly maintained and cleaned a carpet provides a beautiful surface that is a wonderful sound and heat controller. In addition, people with foot and back problems find comfort on a carpet where they found pain on hardwood floors.

Seams: Carpet manufacturers make the rolls of carpet in 12′, 15′ and 20′ widths which mean that two pirces would have to be used in wider rooms. These are seamed on the back and the visibility of the transition depends upon the style, color and weave of the carpet.  Most seams are placed toward walls where furniture placement will both cover them up and prevent high traffic.

Nap: The nap is weave height of the carpet fibers when it is manufactured and it runs in one direction. A shorter nap usually wears better than a longer nap because there is less fiber length for anything, like feet, to grab and yank.

Quality: Cheap carpet is like cheap flooring or cheap anything-else. It wears quicker, is less resistant to stains and is harder to clean. A more expensive carpet  has a greater pile density and a stronger backing.

Color: The one rule decorators agree on about latex paint is that you always choose one shade lighter thjan the color on the chip. This is because the paint may dry darker and, in a small room, this will have a big effect. However, carpet usually looks lighter in the room than on the sample. In a small room this is a great plus but larger rooms may look washed out. In addition any stains may show up darker.

Also, unless you want to be buried in your home when you go don’t go for fads. Choose a neutral colr that’s easy to clean. Think about it this way: You wouldn’t want a bright-green or orange hardwood floor so why subject your carpet to such decorating extremes!

Carpet Underlayment: Just like a gel sole or an arch support in your shoe the underlayment of a carpet can make the difference both in comfort and in the longevity of your carpet. This is the determining factor of how a carpet feels underfoot not the carpet itself. A spongy underlay can cause the backing of the carpet undo stress and streching which can separate the pile.

Installation Warnings

1. Move the Furniture: Check and see if the company adds furniture moving on the original estimate and, if so, how much.

2. Subfloor Preparation: “Quieting a floor” and leveling takes time. Most companies will either charge you extra or will make you get it done before they will come in.

3. Delivery: Adding extra for delivery is rare but often enough that you should check first.

4. Scrapping the Old Carpet: Is this in the quote? If not how much? It is usually better to get a carpet company to do this as they have bulk rates at the recycle places.

5. Extra Items: Does the price include underlayment, transition strips, baseboards, adhesives and moisture barriers?

6. Time: Will they complete the whole job in one process or weill they leave it unfinfished and come back in a few days? Make sure you get the timeline in writing.

Old Carpet – Don’t Toss It

Here is a chilling statistic: 5,000,000,000 pounds of old carpet were sent to landfills in 2003. That’s 2.5 million tons going directly into space that’s quickly filling up all over the U.S!

So what can carpet owners do about this? Well, carpet can be recycled. In fact old carpet is one of the components of composite lumber for decks and posts, backer board for tile, railroad ties, roofing shingles, plastic automotive parts and carpet cushion, to name a few. In other words there is a movement to keep carpet out of the landfills and put it back into the market. The good news is that 500,000,000 pounds were recycled in 2003 – so that’s a start.

To look into why carpet is so hard to recycle it is important to note that each carpet is composed of a number of parts, each of which performs a different function in the carpet. The two main ones are the backing and the face fiber. If you look into a tuft fiber carpet with a latex backing here are the parts:

Face Fibers: This is the matt that is walked on and there are four types:

1. Polypropylene (also know as olefin)
2. Polyester
3. Nylon 6,6
4. Nylon 6

What makes the recycling process so difficult is that these face fibers have to be removed from the backing.

Backing: The two most common backing materials are latex and polyvinylchloride (PVC). PVC-backed carpets are the easiest to recycle. These are used in commercial settings while latex backed carpets are usually for domestic use. There are also some other filler compounds with latex which are hard to separate.

So, you can see, a carpet is a complex system with many components of different chemical composition. In order to recycle carpet it may be necessary to separate these components. Each step in the identification, separation, shredding and handling sequence adds another cost in the process of recycling old carpets. The  key is that carpet manufacturers are taking a long look at making carpet more recyclable.

To find out where to recycle your carpet contact your local flooring contractor.

Cleaning Carpets

Dirt is not all the same. Under magnification a sample of sweepings from a vinyl floor would scare the daylights out of normal people because amid the different sizes and shapes of the actual crushed stone that makes dirt there is pollen, plant material and insects. The latter would include dust mites, ants and larvae and eggs of dozens of species. This is why most carpet manufactures recommended daily or weekly cleaning.

Carpet is unlike any of the other flooring in that it accepts everything small that lands on it. And this is not hard because of good old gravity. So anything in the air that settles on furniture will also land on your carpet except that, because the dust on furniture is visible, it gets cleaned a lot quicker. And unlike furniture carpet is a pedway and the dirt off shoes and feet get ground into its fibers. The grinding action from feet and furniture pull fibers loose but also the gritty particles do their share of sawing off fibers which can kill a carpet long before it should be replaced.

Many homeowners will get a rental unit to clean their carpets because it is cheap and they can do it themselves. The problem here is that these units rarely clean down to the backing and so dirt is left. In addition the units put a lot of soapy water into the carpet and much of it stays there. So after evaporation the carpet is still saturated with soap which acts like a dust magnet. To get it out requires rinsing with clean water but this would make the carpet soggy and promote mold down at the floor level.

The best solution is regular vacuuming and getting the carpets cleaned about once a year by a carpet cleaning professional. This a very smart way to protect your investment.

Green Carpet

When environmentalists think of carpet many of them utter the words “off-gassing” which means that the volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) used to make the fibers give off toxic odors for, in many cases, years after installation. In fact a carpet’s life has a great impact on the environment starting out with chemical emissions from the manufacturing process, the use of nonrenewable resources, transportation costs (carpet is heavy), installation off-gassing and (a big problem) the cost of disposal both at local landfills and recycling depots.

Wool carpet has been used for a floor covering since the days when man first moved oput of the caves. The nomads of the Sahara and Gobi deserts built mobile cities where the floors of the tents were made from carpet. It could be cleaned and reused.

Today, many homeowners have realized that wool carpets are stain resistant, easy to clean with a vacuum system, washable and resists flames. Woven natural carpets in themselves are great for the environment but many manufacturers add treatments for wrinkling, extra stain-proofing and coloring. In addition, they put a synthetic backing on which defeats the purpose of the “green” carpet because the backing contains VOC’s.

Grasses are becoming popular for carpet alternatives. Natural fibers like sisal, seagrass and mountain grass carpets are making their way to m,any of the leading carpet centers. Many of these carpets are made in countries where there is badly-needed employment so buying one of these carpets is a win all around.