Carpet cleaning
teppichreinigung
Carpet cleaning from A to Z
Carpet cleaning is a very complex, multi-step process that requires a lot of attention. It is not only important to clean carpets to remove surface dirt and stains, but also to remove dust, dust mites and other things that are in them. We have already written about this topic in our previous article. However, we have written this article to help you if you want to do the carpet cleaning at home on your own, and to show you what you can expect when you hire us.
The first step is to dust the carpet.
There is no more effective method than good old-fashioned carpet dusting! Yep! Thorough vacuuming alone is not enough! Nowadays, this old “craft”, which used to be used in playgrounds and backyards, has been almost completely forgotten – carpet dusting! Nowadays, where they still exist, they are completely orphaned and disused, their usefulness forgotten. At most, children play on them. In the modern world, dusting machines are used to solve this process. This machine shakes the carpet at a high vibration rate, so that the dust and other small objects it contains are falling out and sucked in by a powerful vacuum cleaner. There are two ways to do this at home, one is the aforementioned carpet dusting rack or you can simply shake them out (if you don’t want to collect enemies, don’t do it above your neighbours!) Then it’s time for a thorough vacuuming! We do this (a very hateful task, I note in parentheses) by pushing the vacuum cleaner hose down hard over the entire surface of the carpet. Already after this thorough dusting, you’ll have your carpet looking almost new! Really, you won’t even recognise it! That’s how much a very thorough dusting and vacuuming worths. Of course, let’s not forget the backing of the carpet! In other words, vacuum the bottom of your carpet too! Then the real cleaning can begin. Now, we have to discourage a bit those readers who want to clean their carpets professionally at home. Unfortunately, this will not be done perfectly without expertise and tools. Although they do advertise effective dry cleaning products for carpet cleaning that you just sprinkle on and vacuum out, like here…
…but unfortunately in reality it does not work like this.
So let’s see how to clean a carpet properly in real life! First, we’ll learn the simplest version that you can do at home. Of course, for this procedure you will also need a wet carpet and upholstery cleaning machine, which you can rent for around 25 – 50 EUR/day. You’ll also need carpet cleaning supplies such as Vanish products, although these are quite expensive. But carpet cleaning fluids from Well Done or Emsal are also good products and the price is not horrendous.
Now that you’ve got the ingredients and you’ve dusted the carpet, as mentioned in chapter one, you can start wet cleaning. First, mix the detergent with lukewarm water in the proportions indicated in the instructions and pour it into the appropriate container of the carpet cleaning machine. Start the machine. You will find two buttons on it, one to activate the spraying and the other to activate the suction system of the machine. Use the sprayer to apply the detergent solution to the entire surface of the carpet and leave it to stand for the time specified in the product description. The soaking time is also very important here, if you don’t wait, the cleaning will not be as effective. Relax, you don’t have to wait hours! Usually 5 – 10 minutes is enough. Once it’s done, you can start sucking the dirty juice off the carpet. Since the carpet’s material, like all textiles, absorbs the juice, it’s a good idea to spray the carpet while you’re vacuuming to get the dirty water out. So use both functions of the machine at the same time. Don’t rush, pull the head slowly across the carpet to get the dirt out better! Use a nailbrush to scrub dirt stains such as shoe prints, mud, etc. in a circular motion, but don’t spread it further and further apart! You can pour undiluted cleaning product on the brush or on the stain.
Attention! If you want to clean a coffee or wine stain from your carpet, after you have wet the stain, don’t start rubbing it all over, but take a spoon and pull it together from the edge to the centre of the stain and start soaking up the dirty liquid! This way the stain on the carpet will not get bigger and bigger. If you rub it, it will be fainter, but much bigger. It is advisable to go through this process twice. Then, to reduce the amount of chemicals left in the carpet, you can also subject the carpet to a wet, rinse, spray and suction cleaning with clean water. Of course, keep repeating these cycles until the machine is sucking clean water. As with vacuuming, it is advisable to go over the backing of the carpet as well and suck out the moisture.
Afterwards, it is advisable to lay the carpet out somewhere to dry faster. Do not expect miracles from this carpet cleaning! Unfortunately, lint, hairs and heavy dirt stuck in the fibres will not disappear from the carpet. And because a carpet cleaning machine doesn’t suck 100% of the liquid out of the carpet, it will also leave some of the dirty juice in it. If you want a really clean carpet, leave the cleaning to the professionals!
Industrial carpet cleaning is a whole different story.
Let’s see how it differs from carpet cleaning at home! Of course, the basic difference is that almost everything is done by machines. First, the carpets are treated by the dusting machine mentioned at the beginning of this article, and then they are completely soaked. You read that right! We don’t just wet the carpets, as in the home version, we literally bathe them in water. Then we apply the cleaning product and go over the carpet with a brush scrubber. This process ensures that even the toughest dirt, hairs and lint are removed from the inside of the carpet. Or there are the big industrial carpet cleaner machines, where the carpets go through inside the machine and 10 brushes scrub the carpet. Next comes the removal of dirty water. There are special tools for this purpose (push paddle), and then it’s time for a high-pressure rinse. Again, the process is repeated until clean water flows out of the fibres. There are some smudges that we have trouble with, such as pieces of crayon that kids have stuck in (to get one out of the line) and they take a little longer to fiddle with. But unfortunately, it also happens that the carpet can no longer be saved because it has been soiled or smeared with a substance that has caused the “death” of the carpet.
But our work doesn’t end there, the water is still in the carpet! We put the clean but still wet carpet into a special machine, specially designed for spinning carpets and spin the water out. Then we take them out of the machine and lay them out. It’s worth leaving it out in the sun for a while, because dust mites don’t like sunlight! Floor carpets are a bit more tricky, as they can only be cleaned on site.
Here’s an amazing behind the scenes video about the professional carpet cleaning!
Floor carpet cleaning with roller brush machine!
Now we would like to give you a more detailed description of “only” one of its branches, and one of the cleaning types of that. And this branch is none other than floor carpets, and the cleaning type is WET cleaning. Floor carpets have a rather basic characteristic, namely that they are glued down. As a result, we cannot move them from their place of origin, so cleaning must be carried out on the spot, where the carpet ‘lives’. For these local carpet cleaning jobs, Kärcher has developed super-efficient machines! The Puzzi 30/4 spray-extraction upholstery and carpet cleaning machine is one of the most powerful spray/extract cleaning tools available. To increase efficiency and improve quality, we have added a
Kärcher PW 30 roller brush head (driven by an electric motor).
The Puzzi 30/4 machine, as described above, sprays the detergent solution into the fibres of the carpet. It does this at 4 bar pressure! The PW 30 head unit, on the other hand, is not content with spraying the carpet, but uses the rotating brush roller to work it right into the fibres. This allows us to clean our carpets much more thoroughly, as the carpet fibres are moved while the head unit sprays the solution onto them, so that they are exposed to the cleaning product over their entire surface. Plus, it “combs out” hairs and other lint that are hiding in the floor covering.
We made a video of one of our jobs, where we cleaned a heavily soiled floor carpet. We have no information on whether the dark stains are the result of soaking or water from a dismantled radiator. One thing is certain, the carpet has a very bad discolouration. We started the cleaning with a very thorough vacuuming, using of course a high suction industrial vacuum cleaner, also fitted with a rotary brush head. This is a much more thorough and efficient way of removing NON-sticky dirt. In fact! Some dirt cannot even be removed with a conventional vacuum cleaner head!
After a good vacuuming of the carpet, it was time to apply the detergent solution with the Kärcher PW 30 head, working the material well into the fibres. We waited the soaking time and then sucked out the dirty water with the 4x suction power of the Puzzi 30/4 machine. The suction edge of this special head unit is perpendicular to the surface of the carpet (so it is more upright), creating a larger vacuum, which combined with the high suction power, results in a clean floor carpet! This spray/vacuum step was repeated one more time (that was enough for the carpet), and then it was time for the rinse. The corners and hard to reach areas were done with an upholstery cleaning head and hand brush.
Enjoy the video! Not long, only 3 minutes!
If you would like to order professional carpet or floor carpet cleaning, please contact us using one of the contact details on our contact page. Click here to order carpet cleaning! We look forward to seeing you!
Thank you for your attention!