The carpet that is overwhelmingly being used in the new estates popping up around Penrith, including Ropes Crossing, Jordan Springs, Glenmore Park Ridge, Mulgoa Rise etc is polypropylene.

With an increased frequency, I’m being asked by some of the property managers I do work for, to have a look if anything can be done to improve the appearance of the carpet, usually after a tenant has vacated and had another business do the carpet cleaning. Sometimes the issue is the quality of the carpet cleaner used to do the job as there are ALOT of poor quality sub-contractor carpet cleaners around at the moment, but perhaps the most frequent issue is the unsuitability of the carpet selected.

Polypropylene has some redeeming features. It can’t be bleached, won’t fade in sunlight, it’s relatively inexpensive and can’t be dye stained. My recommendation of use for this carpet is to lay it in rental properties where there is a high likelyhood of needing replacement within 2-3 years of it being layed – because the tenants are likely to abuse it. Abusive tenants, and some suburbs are rife with with them, are going to destroy anything you lay. The new suburbs and estates where I’m seeing this carpet being layed do not typically have these types of tenants.

So what is the issue?

Polypropylene has very little resilience. In other words, it won’t bounce back into it’s original form after being bent, compressed or stretched. Carpet undergoes a significant amount of stress as a floor covering from foot traffic, and furniture. Traffic will tend to compress or fold the fibre, and when light reflects off crushed/bent pile, it creates an inconsistent appearance – which can make it look dirty.

The other issue is that this polypropylene has a very low melting point, so low in fact that simply sliding a lounge suit or chair across it will permanently distort the fibre. These typically look like dark, dirty streaks on a carpet. I can’t count the amount of times I have gone to inspect a rental polypropylene carpet where another carpet cleaner has been in, and DAYS later, these distorted streaks are still wet because the cleaner thought they were dirty marks, and over-cleaned them.

Polypropylene is a cheap floor finish, and you only ever get what you pay for. If you are serious about the longevity and maintenance of carpet in your new home, send me through an email and I’ll give you some recommendations from a carpet cleaners perspective.

Phil

Mighty Clean Carpet the premier upholstery and lounge cleaning business, servicing the Greater Penrith Area, the Blue Mountains, and the Hawkesbury.

Using laminar flow technology, hot streams of water are sheared across the surface of the fabric, allowing the furniture to be cleaned and left significantly drier than with traditional tools.

The picture below shows a polyester fabric sofa, being cleaned with said tools. This lounge has been rather soiled from pet oils, shampooed with an appropriate and safe shampoo. The final process is rinsing the textiles with incredibly hot water, minimizing residue and leaving the fabric with a soft hand, and smelling fresh.

Isn’t it time you called Mighty Clean Carpet!

If you are looking for the cheapest carpet cleaning in Penrith – you need to read this

Look at the two photos below. Photo 1 is from a competitor. The vacating tenant choose a cheap carpet cleaner. The property manager wasn’t happy, and requested the tenant ask they come back and re-do the living area. The carpet cleaner refused and claimed this was the best he could do – which was probably correct.

Photo 2 is after Mighty Clean Carpet Cleaning Penrith went back to fix up this other cleaners failure. The tenant had to incurr the cost of this – so the carpet cleaner was no longer cheap.

If you want the job done properly the first time call Mighty Clean Carpet 0434 020 726. In the rare case that you or your property manager is dissatisfied for any reason we will gladly return at no charge.

I was recently called out to see if there was anything I could do to clean a section of carpet where some hand moisturising cream had fallen into the carpet. As a second generation carpet cleaner with many years experience, I recognise these types of jobs as being potentially problematic – for the simple fact that hand cream is oil based, therefore working its way into the nooks and crannies of the fibre – and is difficult to rinse.

The problem won’t be when I clean it. It will be sometime between a few days and two weeks after I clean it, when the spot re-emerges, because I haven’t successfully rinsed it all out. And there is no way to really know if it’s all out – we can only see what’s happening in the visible top section of the pile.

So what’s the solution?

The first step is to use a good quality, water rinseable grease and oil emulsifier. This helps breakdown the oils in the cremam, and create a water miscible solution. This is then steam cleaned out of the carpet with long, deliberate, low pressure passes.

The second step is to have a way of capturing any hand cream residue that the cleaning process misses (and it will always miss some)! I use a concentrated, new generation encapsulating polymer. These work by coating the carpet fibre, and crystalising as they dry – thus locking any remaining oils into the dried up polymer. You don’t see the polymer, and it comes out with subsequent vacuuming. By taking these measures, Mighty Clean Carpet can give satisifaction guarantee’s on our stain removal work.

Pictures of situation below.

Before:

After:

Once upon a time carpet cleaners would place a big ad in the yellow pages, and the bulk of new business would come from the yellows. These days, yellow pages is out, and online marketing has taken over. Google Adwords, and driving online traffic to your website is the name of the game for making sales.

This change in advertising dynamics has spawned a new type of carpet cleaning environment. An environment where marketing gurus, with zero carpet cleaning knowledge are using there marketing expertise to drive sales. They use sub-contract carpet cleaners to conduct the work. Is this bad? The answer is mostly YES for the consumer.

Why do I say this? Because there has been a rapid increase in the amount of carpets I am having to go back and fix after a sub-contract carpet cleaner has had an attempt at cleaning. Usually the carpets are over-wet, browned out, or look dirty or dirtier than before the job was started. So what is going on here?

The answer is simple. Many of these “carpet cleaners” are backpackers and travellers, or inexperienced people who have never cleaned carpets before. The marketing company is usually taking 50% or more of what is charged, and the sub contractor is left to pay for fuel, vehicle, equipment, chemicals, clothing and the costs of running a business. So if you were enticed with a $72 for 3 room offer, guess what? The sub contractor is getting $36. This is simply not enough income to spend the time required to do a thorough job. So the operator has two choices. One is to try and pressure the consumer into spending more. The other is to race through the job. I’m hearing that 20 mins for 3 rooms is about the average for these rogues. In contrast, 3 rooms will generally take a skilled operator closer to an hour.

Before making a decision on a carpet cleaner, we recommend that you read some reviews. Most of these companies have SCATHING reviews! In contrast, Mighty Clean Carpet Cleaning have a 5 star google and TrueLocal review rating. Hands done, we are the best choice for Penrith carpet cleaning!

I’m going to say it. As a carpet cleaner, if I was to lay new carpet through my home, I’d be using Harvey Norman SmartStrand IQ or one of the equivalent Triexta based carpets from one of the independent carpet retails such as eco-strand.

Triexta is the latest carpet fibre to reach the market, and is a sub-class of polyester. Unlike polyester, it has much better resilience (stands up to traffic and furniture).

While I recognise that Triexta is by no means perfect, and certainly isn’t cheap, it has some features that make it a great choice for the home owner. These include;

1. It can’t be dye stained – as the fibre itself does not have dye sites. This gives it a significant advantage over wool and nylon.
2. Can’t be urine stained – for the same reason as above. Urine contains urochrome pigment. Triexta has no dye sites – so no urine staining! This makes it a better (not necessarily ideal) option for pets. Note that pet odour is not so easy to deal with here!
3. Doesn’t crush easily like other synthetics such as polypropylene and polyester.
4. Has a very fine denier, and is soft and luxurious.
5. Will not sun fade! Can’t be bleached! The dyes are locked into the fibre in molten state during manufacture.

Given all these great features, this carpet would be easily to professionally clean right? WRONG! Being a new carpet fibre, and with scant instructions from the manufacturers, carpet cleaners have been on their own, sussing out the best way to clean SmartStrand, EcoStrand and other Triexta derivatives. Having cleaned a number of these, and having assisted carpet cleaners who have run into problems and issues with cleaning SmartStrand, I have developed a method of professionally carpet cleaning Triexta that is very effective.

1. Thorough vacuuming with an industrial grade upright vacuum with cylindrical brush. This is important when cleaning any carpet, but VERY important when cleaning SmartStrand. Why? The fibre has no capacity for water absorption, and water runs straight down the fibre, and into the depths of a carpet (and sometimes beyond), where the finest soils can accumulate, but where wet cleaning can not reach. As the carpet dries through capillary action, these soils migrate up the fibre stem, and settle on the tips of the carpet. Thorough industrial vacuuming minimises this.
2. If the carpet is only lightly soiled, we would recommend low moisture encapsulation cleaning with an absorbent pad. The pad collects a good portion of the detergent soluble soiling, and what is left behind is encapsulated and removed during subsequent vacuuming. The advantage of low moisture encapsulation over steam cleaning is there is less chance of activating any deep seated fine soils, and any wicking that occurs is absorbed into the residual encapsulant – which is not seen, and which vacuums out.
3. If the carpet is heavily soiled, we would recommend bonnet cleaning the traffic lanes with a volatile dry solvent, used sparingly. The rest of the carpet will need to be preconditioned by a rotary scrubbing machine or equivalent, using a hot citrus based, alkaline degreaser, and thoroughly rinsed at low pressure. As a final measure, a light misting of encapsulant should be applied to the carpet, and cotton pad dried.

The challenge when cleaning Triexta carpets lies with two things. The first being the lack of water absorption, which can aggrivate wicking. It is not uncommon for carpet cleaners to have multiple revisits to clean SmartStrand or other Triexta based carpets, to clean re-occuring spots and stains. The initial carpet clean removes stains/spots, but they re-emerges due to wicking. Hence the use of encapsulating polymer based detergents. The second challenge is that this carpet absorbs oil/fats/grease like a sponge, primarily because it oil based (like absorbs like). Oil, fats and grease are typically the glue that holds dirt and soil to a carpet. This is the reason we recommend citrus based detergents with alkaline degreasing. The citrus and alkalinity dissolve and breakdown oils/fats/grease, and the steam cleaning process removes the greasy solution. The post encapsulation process with a cotton bonnet assists with rapid drying, and greatly prevents wicking and soil redeposition.

If you have a SmartStrand carpet, and are located in the Penrith or Blue Mountains area, call Mighty Clean Carpet Cleaning Penrith.