A-1 Carpet Service: 2013

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Pet Stains and Pet Odor Removal From Carpet Sioux Falls

Removing Embarrassing Pet odor and urine spots from carpet can be a challenge.

With today's synthetic backed carpets the odor is somewhat easier to remove than the older jute backed carpets, but delamination seems to be a lot bigger problem today.

To help establish the seriousness and approach to solving the problem we have established 3 Stages of pet odor control.

The Stage is listed in Blue, with the necessary treatments in Green.

Stage I

*Urine has not penetrated to the backing of the carpet.

*Usually a smaller cat or dog,

*Not a repeated regular urination area.

*Deep Surface Cleaning and Odor Treatment required.

Stage II

*Urine Has Penetrated to the backing of the Carpet.

*Large Dog or repeat event for smaller dog or cat.

*Repeated urination area.

*Most Common.

*Deep Surface Cleaning and Odor Treatment with Injections to backing.

Stage III

*Urine Has Penetrated to The Sub Floor

*Regardless of size of Dog or cat, this is a regular urination area.

*Carpet Must be pulled up,

*Affected area of pad pulled.

*Sub floor cleaned, treated and sealed.

*New Pad Installed.

*Carpet Backing Cleaned and Treated.

*Reinstall Carpet and Deep Clean and Treat Surface area.

Delamination of the carpet occurs when the primary backing separates from the secondary backing that holds the tufts of yarn in place, these two surfaces are are bonded together with latex adhesive. It would seem that there is a great deal more clay in this latex glue than ever before.

Delamination of the carpet can and will occur with all three stages if left uncontrolled for a period of time, depending on traffic and size of area involved.

What can you do?:

To prevent delamination the affected area has to be rinsed of urine and dried quickly A-1 Carpet Service In Sioux Falls, SD has the experience and equipment necessary to at the very least limit the damage and at best prolong the life of your carpet drastically.

The Chemistry behind odor removal is explained in more detail here.

As always we appreciate your time and I hope we have helped educate you more on pet odor control.

Call 605-359-1098 for a no obligation assessment.

Harold Pastian

A-1 Carpet Service

Sioux Falls, SD

(605) 359-1098

www.a-1carpetservice,com

Email us at a1cs@a-1carpetservice.com

Carpet Cleaning Sioux Falls | Upholstery Cleaning Sioux Falls | Carpet Repairs Sioux Falls

Duct Cleaning Sioux Falls

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Scampoo Carpet Cleaning Sioux Falls, SD

Read Warrens Post on The Floor Covering Institutes Blog Here
Warren's post caught my attention immediately when I Goggled Carpet Market Share.

I think he hit the nail on the head with appearance retention. Back in the day consumers were properly educated by flooring experts, and understood maintenance. Today we expect spills to jump back in the glass.

I have been in the carpet cleaning business for almost 25 years, As the Mills have advised, I have always used steam cleaning or hot water extraction. Today we use huge truck mounted equipment, state of the art rotary cleaning tools, and some of the best and safest chemicals we have ever seen. We are doing the best cleaning we ever have. Dry times are in the single digits and customers love it.

The biggest issues I see:

1. Improper Carpet Installation
2. People do not vacuum enough
3. Improper Cleaning
4. No Professional Cleaning

My point with all this is, at some point consumers were no longer being educated properly. I blame our industry some for that, sharing that blame with the mills and the retailers.

Our industry is full of profiteers and hacks out there Scampooing carpets with "Encapsulation" and "Carbonated" methods that were never approved for residential carpeting.

They do it because they can use a minivan and almost no investment in equipment. They do it because it's easy. Scampooers boast hourly rates around $200 per hour "cleaning" carpets. Scampooers use scare tactics about "days to dry" and are not educated nor certified by any Mill, yet they exist.

Retail flooring salespeople are not of the same educated, spirited group their fathers were. I will venture to say few have been to Dalton, Ga and actually seen carpet made. Education is the problem here.

Installers want to do it the easy way. I see more staples than I do tack strip.

The bottom line; The consumer sees a carpet that looks and feels "horrible" 6 months to a year after it's installed, they see crushed and dingy traffic lanes, ripples all over from the knee kicker installer, and vow to never buy carpet again!

They call a scampooer to "clean" the carpet. To ad insult to injury, they come in and spray some miracle solvent on your carpet, rub it around for a few minutes and charge $200 an hour for this! leaving behind a residue that the consumers are supposed to vacuum away.

And they vow to never buy carpet again. Judging from Warren's numbers, I would say they are keeping their vows.

For those consumers that love their carpet, and wish to know proper maintenance practices and the bottom line on cleaning, I offer the following sources of information:

Stainmaster:
Shaw:

I am betting you won't find anything about "Encapsulation" and "Carbonated" or "Dry" cleaning residential carpet, why you ask? Because it doesn't work!

The first question you ask a scampooer is where does the dirt go? They will give you some type of "story" about the spray encapsulating the dirt so it can be vacuumed away later, and go on and on about how fast it dries. Of course it drys fast it's a spray!

We use a filter to trap pet hair and other debris from getting into our waste tank and blowers. Take a look at this photo, I just took. This is from one customer that had 2 rooms and a set of Stairs cleaned. This doesn't show what we removed with the vacuum. Ask the scampooer to show you their filter.

Warning: A closeup of this pic may disgust you.

Beware of someone toting this yellow machine into your house.

Here's a tip: If there is no large vacuum hose running to a truck in the driveway, ask the scampooer to leave.

What happened here is the scampooers saw an opportunity. Grudgingly the Mills "accepted" the need for Very Low Moisture cleaning for some commercial carpet settings. The "Dry" carpet cleaning business exploded. The training and equipment to get started was 1/10th of what it cost to buy a truck mounted steam cleaning setup.

It didn't take long and the scampooers found there was not nearly enough carpets for them to clean, so they "decided" the only way to make $200 an hour was to scampoo residential homes. This being an unregulated industry, there are no carpet cleaning cops to stop them. The industry associations went broke trying to educate the scampooers. So they were left to multiply.

Here we are today talking about carpet as a floor covering losing it's market share.

Never will any Mill "approve" or "accept" encapsulation cleaning for residential carpet. The pile and construction of residential carpet does not allow for the aggressive action of a floor scrubber. The process just doesn't match up to the deep cleaning of mill and industry approved truck mounted steam cleaning.

Thanks for your time.

Harold Pastian

A-1 Carpet Service

Sioux Falls, SD

(605) 359-1098

www.a-1carpetservice,com

Email us at a1cs@a-1carpetservice.com

Carpet Cleaning Sioux Falls | Upholstery Cleaning Sioux Falls | Carpet Repairs Sioux Falls

Duct Cleaning Sioux Falls

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Carpet Dyeing - Color Change

I have been working on a better Carpet Dye Delivery System for years.

The method I was taught was very similar to spray painting. using an electric spray pump and wand to spray the dye on the carpet, then work the dye in with a carpet groomer, finally extract the remaining water and dye.

I have been working on a Rotary application method. My concerns have always been leaving swirl marks in the carpeting.

I did my first test today doing a color change with the Rotary setup.

Starting with a very light grey to a charcoal grey. (about 4 shades)
See the picture to the right. As of this writing the carpet is drying with no apparent swirl marks and possibly most important I used a lot less water which means super fast dry times.

The picture on the left, taken as the carpet is drying shows the dramatic color change with no apparent swirl or overlap marks or shading.

With results like this, we at A-1 Carpet Service
really believe we can expand this service to a wider variety of customers.

Stay tuned I will post more tests as time permits.

Thanks for your time.

Harold Pastian

A-1 Carpet Service

Sioux Falls, SD

(605) 359-1098

www.a-1carpetservice,com

Email us at a1cs@a-1carpetservice.com

Carpet Cleaning Sioux Falls | Upholstery Cleaning Sioux Falls | Carpet Repairs Sioux Falls

Duct Cleaning Sioux Falls

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Duct Cleaning Sioux Falls

Reasons you should look at having your duct work cleaned.

1. Heavy dust build up around the edges of the rooms.

2. Dust builds up quickly on furniture.

3. Hot and cold spots in the home.

4. Debris and pet hair can be seen in the vent.

Heavy dust built up around the perimeter of your rooms is a yell tale sign that you have a fair amount of dust built up in the duct work as well. "Filter Dust" as it is called actually can become part of the carpet fiber over time, and is almost impossible to remove or clean with any success.

If you can see dust on the cold air returns, and tends to build up quickly after being cleaned, it's time to have the ducts inspected.

An analogy I like to use, goes like this; In your car you can set the AC or heat to either circulate the inside air or use outside air. Setting it to recirculate is how your home is set up.

Unfortunately your home does not have the option of exchanging the air with the outside air.

So where does the dust go? It goes with the path of least resistance, your lungs, furniture , carpet, and back in the system to do it all over again. At one point in the process it goes through a filter. The problem with that is, the many feet of duct work before it gets to the filter.

Getting your duct work cleaned has huge advantages as you can imagine. The debris collects dust and pet hair, quickly becoming the size of a softball in some cases. The airflow gets choked off and then you get cold and hot spots. Generally, having your duct work cleaned every three to five years is sufficient. If you have pets maybe more often.

Duct cleaning is not exactly rocket science, it's more the equipment and an experienced operator.

At A-1 we use a combination of methods to clean the duct work, depending on what is called for. High pressure air and a huge vacuum are key components.