Simples... just remove this here red wine stain

Its one of the calls most professional carpet cleaners least like to get. Its a regular customer who has already given you various solid referrals i.e. she's told all her lunch buddies you can work miracles.

Now she tells you about a large, full maxi glass of red wine that she dropped right in the middle of the carpet last night. After the jokes about not having a drink problem, and it was actually only the first glass of the evening not the last, we turn to the job in hand.

As the boss I have taken this job on because as any carpet cleaner will tell you, red wine can be a bit of a bugger! At best of times stain removal is a risky business and hence can be a no-win situation commercially. If you take on a serious stain removal job that goes wrong you can end up 'owning' the carpet - while all carpet cleaners should be insured for 'treatment risk' they will not want to put that to the test and wise old greybeards may simply 'walk away' from the problem.  Apart from the owner's often dim recollections you have no real knowledge of what it is you are treating.

Dirty carpets we like - stained carpets are something else so although its sounds like splitting carpet fibres they are two separate things! So it can make you a hero or a zero and should be approached with caution and you need to be sure of your routine before you start 'dosing the fibres' with chems - as we say in the trade.

First it depends on the construction of the carpet and the fibre content (this one is mostly wool) and it depends on the wine as well - some seems to come out alot easier than others. It can also be an old stain that has had the sun shining on it through a nearby door or window.

This one happened yesterday when it looks as if the full glass has flown across the floor with wine issuing out in all directions plus there are large concentrations where the glass first fell and where it bounced and worst of all where it ended up - plus many splatter marks! Nice.

Sadly the other problem which often rears its ugly head is DIY treatments - and this lot has had plenty. It has had the ubiquitous 1001 (a full bottle) and a product called Wine Away used on it - neither had worked to any negligible effect and may have made the stain harder to remove in the long run as the stain appeared to have been spread around and rubbed into the carpet.

The valued customer has done their best but has not removed any significant quantity of wine from the carpet. I got to work by starting with our standard first level of attack, rinsing out the chemicals with a mild dilute acidic rinse between courses and working up to the last resort. Some of the stains needed three treatments and several applications were left to dwell on the carpet for short periods.

A small portable wet/dry extractor was used during the rinsing stages and the active chemicals were mostly removed by repeated application of freshly laundered, white cotton terry towels.

Ninety minutes later the result is one pile of 'wine pink' terry towels, one clean, stain free carpet and one very satisfied and relieved customer. My only regret, I did not take any photographs for this blog!

http://www.steamcleancarpetservice.co.uk/