08/05/2019
RAISE THE BAR!
You and only you can force a change to the poor quality over priced carpet cleaning service that is so common among so many service providers.
While It is your choice to call who you want to clean your carpet you should be aware of common money scams
There are a lot of service providers who advertise a set price to clean your carpets either as cost per area or by the sqft and after seeing the carpet they claim the cost does not include the cost of and list a number of things, to include pre-vacuuming, pre treatment and spot cleaning.
Please answer this question - Why are you paying extra money to do the job your already paying to have done?
The answer is the so called "Standard" or "Basic" cleaning offered by so many providers is simply a low level service not intended to clean anything other a lightly soiled carpet. If you the consumer don't agree to pay the extra money you don't get a quality cleaning service.
The CRI Carpet and Rug Institute
https://carpet-rug.org tests the carpet cleaning equipment/processes against a base line cleaning of using only hot water 2 wet 2 dry passes of a wand moving at 1 linear foot per second.
Bronze Certification is only required to remove 55 to 69% of the test soil
Sliver Certification only required to remove 70 to 79% of the test soil.
Gold Certification requires 80 to 89% removal
It takes a Platinum level process to remove 90% or more of the test soil.
A little mathematics here:
Most wands are 12 inches wide and moving at 1 lineal ft/sec = 1 sqft/sec = 1 pass, or 1 stroke of the wand = 3600 sqft /hour
But if you make 2 wet 2 dry passes per sqtf this is 4 seconds per sqft or 1/4 or 900 sqft per hour.
If anyone would take the time to view the CRI website at https://carpet-rug.org/testing/seal-of-approval-programs/certified-deep-cleaning-systems/ you will see that both portable extractors and truck mounted equipment can qualify at a Platinum level of cleaning and what process was used by the company getting certified.
For example Stanley Steemer Platinum certification took 4 dry vacuum passes 4 wet passes and 2 more dry passes. Or about 8 passes at 1 ft/second. Twice as many passes as the 2-2 minimum used in the baseline testing. Theoretically this would take about 2 or more hours to clean a 1000 sqft of carpet. In reality they clean between 2000 and 3000 sqft per hour. How much dirt are they really removing???
Compare that to the Hydro-Force portable system that obtained Platinum certification with 3 wet 1 dry pass, theoretically the Hydro-Force portable obtained simular results in half the time.
The next time someone says that a portable machine is inferior to a truck mounted machine is simply making a false claim.
What is inferior is the operator, the chemicals and the processed use. Not the equipment.
