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;
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.
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.