Do you have quality of life?

It occurred to me today that what we do as an industry is worthwhile!

This is not the first time this has happened and it will not be the last time. I have always known it was worthwhile but often you tend to take what you do for granted.

But you know the feeling, you do the job - the best one you can - and then you go to the next job and so life carries on in its own merry way.

Sometimes though you are brought to your senses by a customer who tells you that you have done a very good job steam cleaning their carpets and that you have improved their "quality of life".

We had a customer like this recently who is a very regular user of our services - we clean their carpets every six months and when we arrive at the job it is always the same sad scene - the household in question has several small children and a dog.

When we leave the picture is very much improved; to such an extent that the customer was moved to make the comment about their "quality of life".

I was just checking the results of our cleaning operation and commented quite casually that the money they spent on cleaning could have paid for new carpets by now! An exaggeration perhaps  but you know what I mean - sometimes you just talk for the sake of talking - or maybe that's just me.

This was when it hit me though. Or rather the customer hit me with their reply; "Yes, but then I would still need them cleaning". Not only that but they would have paid out a huge amount of money plus the cost of cleaning anyway - so suddenly it made sense - clean carpets improve the quality of people's lives...

Spend a little, save a lot...

An ingenious little gadget that can be bought online very cheaply (and new) compared to its original selling price has just come into my possession.

It’s a well-made little device called a Spillmaster and it was invented by Morphy Richards.

Search one out on Ebay and you should pick it up for about £8 including the postage/carriage costs.

The idea of the device is it turns an ordinary vacuum cleaner (virtually any vacuum cleaner) into a wet vac. There are adapters to make it fit your vacuum cleaner (probably).

Spillmaster at work. Pick the glass up first!

We are often called to properties that have had a calamitous liquid accident of some sort and it seems, as luck would have it, they mostly occur very soon after people have had new wool carpets laid! I don’t know why these accidents happen at this precise moment but they do!

Often the clients have either not persevered with their clean-up or they have managed to compound the problems by spreading the spilled fluid around in a wholly unnecessary and arbitrary manner – usually this happens because they are in a bit of a panic. The phrase ‘gay abandon’ comes to mind but of course the use of such phrases now probably breaks the law in several US states.

Much of this (shall we call it) frantic activity is accompanied by lavish use of one of those spray bottles of carpet cleaner fluid.

As I tell customers who use these products they are all very well (up to a point i.e. the point when you put them in the cupboard) but the more they spray on the stain the more it tends to merely mask or hide the marks left by the staining fluid.

With this there is also the likelihood that the active ingredient (usually sodium percarbonate) will bleach the stain and more importantly some of the carpet that surrounds the stain. And therefore we now have two problems for a carpet cleaner. A partly removed stain and a partly bleached carpet.

With this cheap and functional device you can simply suck up the fluid thoroughly and hence prevent any ‘gay abandon’ at all!

So buy one and avoid having to call us in to clean up the mess – we are fed up clearing up your mess (this is a joke by the way we love cleaning up mess!).

See an online demo of the device on Youtube:

http://youtu.be/mDykfeQpFqQ

If you must call us in to clear up your mess our website is at www.steamcleancarpetservice.co.uk

To vac or not to vac - that is the question...

Yes springtime is just about over and here in the UK it is the time we as a nation start to think about two things. What to do in the garden with the dead daffodil leaves and spring cleaning!

For the SteamCleanCarpetService.co.uk this is our busiest time of the year and this year - despite the double-dip recession - is no exception.

As an industry we are faced with a tidal wave of facts and figures bandied about by those we buy from, those we consult, and from people we admire or rely on as 'experts'.

Possibly the most 'bandied about' fact concerns the composition of the accumulated muck in your carpet that carpet cleaning (in all its forms) seeks to remove.

These 'experts' opine that 80% of this accumulated muck is 'dry soil' which they suggest can be removed by dry vacuum alone.

Carpet cleaners might be forgiven for feeling a tad naked when confronted with this 'fact'. Does it mean that our whole multi-million pound service industry is based on the 20% of accumulated soil that the consumer cannot deal with on their own?

In truth most carpet cleaners would be hard pushed to prove this so-called ‘fact’. All professional carpet cleaners will in most cases vacuum the carpet before they commence the specialist cleaning operation that they sell. In our case that subsequent specialist operation is the finest steam carpet cleaning that money can buy!

Most home owners do vacuum their carpets on a pretty regular basis - some vacuum very occasionally and a few people (tenants and other people such as say students who are apparently pre-occupied with other things) never vacuum their carpets at all... ever!

The job needs to be done twice weekly or even daily on entrance areas around your main doors. There we have said it now - you need a daily vacuum regime!

But even if you have the best vaccing regime in the world you will at some stage still need to engage the services of a professional carpet cleaner.

Often we will be called in to homes with specific problems identified by the home-owner. Often it is traffic lanes and shuffle spots (where people's feet rest when they sit down in a chair) that are making people think their carpets look dirty and discoloured.

Usually they are right - dirt has attached itself to the pile of the carpet by electro-static action or because the dirt itself contained moisture - either way its not possible to simply vacuum this attached dirt away - no matter how good the vacuum.

Chemspec pile lifter vacuum

We will use a commercial vacuum cleaner (it has two motors) first or in extreme cases we may use a pile-lifting vacuum - this is a heavy-duty vacuum cleaner with a very stiff roller brush that really penetrates to the bottom of the pile to beat up, agitate and remove deep down dry soil. Above is the particular Chemspec model that we use:

The secret of the success of any operation in terms of dust removal is to know what you are dealing with. To do this you have to get down and dirty with your carpet.

So don't be shy, get on your knees and do what we do to examine how much dry soil, hair, dust mite litter, pet dander and cut pile there is deep down in the carpet. If necessary then use a magnifying glass like we do.

Extreme example of cut pile and soil removed from a hotel carpet using a Chemspec pile lifter

If there is a lot then we certainly don't want to get the carpet damp or steam it when there is a chance this soil will be converted into sticky mud that is adding to the poor appearance of the carpet. If its dry and removable we want to remove it dry.

So the next time you think about your carpets and you have a magnifying glass in your hand you know what to do!

Got an empty house? Now get the carpets cleaned...

It seems like (to use that over-used expression) a bit of a 'no-brainer' but if you find you have an empty house at your disposal why would you not get the carpets cleaned when there is nothing else in the house?

In the UK we do not necessarily think of carpet cleaning as a necessity. I don't think I can put it in a more straight forward (or inelegant) way than that.

To anyone in the carpet cleaning industry though it makes perfect sense to us that if a house is being emptied of all its normal furniture, bookcases, sideboards, tables and chairs, beds, wardrobes and other furnishing clutter the carpets should be steam cleaned.

By that I mean properly steam-cleaned - not brushed over with some luke warm water and a load of cheap sudsy carpet shampoo whereupon this un-holy mess is badly hoovered up with a hired carpet cleaner from the DIY shop! Yes you know the brand - worse than useless!

We cleaned what is known in the trade as an 'EOT' the other day - nothing remarkable about that, an End of Tenancy is usually an opportunity for the landlord to get a good look at their investment when the previous tenants have moved out but before they get their deposit back from the letting agent.

We try to encourage our letting agent clients to remind their landlords that after any re-decorating and the general cleaning is done the last thing before new tenants arrive is to have the carpets thoroughly steam-cleaned by one of our truck-mounted units.

 This is usually a great chance for us to do the very best job we can by having access to every square centimetre (or inch if you like) of carpet and to survey and clearly identify all dirty traffic lanes and stains and to really go to town on the clean.

 These are very satisfying jobs for us because we go away feeling we have really earned our corn by getting into every nook and cranny and giving the landlord a report on the state of the carpets as they were at the end of the last tenancy and as they were left  by us at the start of the new tenancy.

So if you rent from a letting agent or own a property that is rented out or are buying a property for your family home then please work out a time when the property will be empty and you can give a reputable carpet cleaning company a window of opportunity to work their magic. You know it makes sense...

Of Moths and Myths…

One of the regular carpet-related consumer problems we get asked to sort is moths. More often than not though, the owners of said carpets are completely unaware that they have a problem.

The tell-tale signs are not that easy to spot. But once you have seen carpet moth damage in a variety of different environments you can quickly tell if the damaged carpets you are looking at have ended up like that because of human (or family pet) action or because you have unwanted flying (and crawling) visitors!

It is also called the clothes moth but that is in fact another species - the webbing clothes moth or Tineola Bisselliella. Our prime suspect for carpet damage however is the case bearing or case making moth and to give it its latin name Tinea Pellionella.

One of the best and simplest ways of coping with carpet moths is to vacuum your wool carpets rigorously and often, especially around the edges and in dark corners and behind curtains.

If you do have a good vacuum regime (!) this actually makes our job a little more difficult because one of the telltale signs is lots of little ‘cases’ scattered around the skirting boards and attached to the inside of curtains and tangled up in cobwebs under furniture.

If you do find one and it looks something like the ones in the picture then you might try ‘popping’ it and hence killing the little bugger – just squeeze it and the mini-beast’s head will shoot out of one end of the ‘case’ as you cancel his future!

I have picked them up and put them to one side and then later when I came back to kill them in front of the customer the little buggers have crawled some distance away to make their escape.

The case it has made was spun by the worm-like larvae from fibres in your carpet and while it was eating your wool carpet the creature was planning to pupate inside the case and then hatch and start the life-cycle all over again.

We can spray for them but this is obviously a chargeable service and really needs to be repeated initially on a monthly basis and very few customers will bear the cost of that operation.

Often we will do the first spray very thoroughly and then brief the client what to do next if they want to control them. We will price into our service a later re-visit 6 moths later to tell them if the moths are still a problem.

Unless you take really drastic measures, control may be the only feasible level of treatment and is often all you can achieve because - it only takes a couple of missed adults to see the colonisation re-commence at a later stage.

The case moth can do considerable damage to a carpet and if left to their own devices they will go forth and multiply and absolutely destroy a carpets so as to make it a candidate for replacement.

I recommend that the self treatment begins a month after we have treated the carpets. Buy a good aerosol moth killer (Rentokil do one called Insectrol) and spray around all the skirting boards in your wool carpeted rooms and under furniture and in any dark and slightly forgotten corners like behind the television table where the moths can carry on their trade in relative peace and quiet.

Also make sure you knock down and kill any of the adult males that can be sometimes seen flying around at night – they are said not to like light but they will fly towards a flickering TV screen in an otherwise darkened room. The female adults crawl around but are similar in size and description to the males – both are small, brown and fairly feeble-looking things.

Often our clients are horrified when we tell them they have moths but there is nothing dirty about them – I can find them under furniture in most smart homes and it is a sign of the times that the undersides of old furniture inherited from parents will often be festooned with case moth larvae dead and alive.

So when you inherited your parents’ beautiful antique furniture you may also have inherited their moth problem which an antique dealer 'sold' them!

Any problems with moths? Let me know and I will see if I can help…

Cleaning carpets is not just about appearance, but also a health issue…

According to the Environmental Protection Agency in the US, indoor air quality is one of the top five most urgent environmental risks to public health. Especially in the winter, when buildings are insulated against the cold, indoor air is often two to five times more polluted than the air outside.

Further to this the American Lung Association is seeking to educate the public about the benefits of healthy indoor air quality. Cleaning carpets is not just about appearance, but also a health issue.

Case studies have shown that regular steam carpet cleaning on an annual basis coupled with a regular vacuming regimen, can help to transform a ‘sick building’ into a more healthy environment, thus reducing illness due to respiratory-related problems.