Two Great Spotting Products
Text Box: Cleaning Advice from the Pros! With so many flooring choices and cleaning products, knowing what to use on which floor can become quite confusing. We have put together a general guide to help maintain your floors between professional cleanings. Always check out the floor care information for your specific floor brand and warranty information. Have damaged textiles or floors repaired as soon as possible before it becomes a large problem. And place walk off mats whenever possible. Soil doesn’t simply appear, it gets brought in from outside sources. Carpet Daily Maintenance: Keep carpet free of debris, treat any spots immediately, vacuum heavy traffic lanes to prevent heavy grit from embedding. Weekly Maintenance: Vacuum all carpeted areas. Dust any baseboards or furniture before it can find its way to the floor. Monthly Maintenance: Check and replace furnace filters to help prevent airborne dust which can cause filtration lines along baseboards and under doorways. Consider a low moisture cleaning of Heavy Traffic Areas to prevent heavy buildup of soils. This can be performed either professionally or through products like Capture and Host. Yearly Maintenance: Have Heavy traffic lanes and areas cleaned professionally. If its been a year or two consider having all the carpet cleaned. Carpet Mills recommend cleaning every 12-18 months. See below for product recommendations. Rugs Daily Maintenance: Keep rugs free from debris, treat any spots immediately, vacuum heavy traffic lanes to prevent heavy grit from embedding. For delicate rugs and close to the fringe (if applicable) use suction only. Weekly Maintenance: Vacuum the entire rug, sweep debris or vacuum around the rug. Monthly Maintenance: Vacuum the front, back and front of the rug again to help loosen embedded soils. If you have a rug pad, vacuum this as well. Clean the floor underneath of any loose debris and replace rug and pad. Rotate the rug every other month to allow even wear. A quality rug pad can keep the rug from sliding around on hard floors or carpets and can prolong the life of the rug. Consider getting one if you do not already have one. Yearly Maintenance: Have rugs in heavy traffic lanes cleaned professionally every year in a plant designed to handle area rugs. Never let a cleaner talk you into cleaning a natural fiber rug in your home. And even Synthetic rugs should be full washed in a plant at least once in their lifespan. Most rugs should be professionally washed every 3-5 years. We recommend Spot Out for rugs. Upholstery Daily Maintenance: Keep upholstery free of debris, clean up spills immediately. Weekly Maintenance: Vacuum heavily used upholstery every week to remove dry soil. Monthly Maintenance: Vacuum all upholstery and mattress. Flip cushions and turn mattresses to insure even wear. Use upholstery wipes to touch up heavily used areas such as arm rests, and head rests. Yearly Maintenance: Consider rotating furniture to prevent sun fading in well lit areas. Have heavily soiled areas professionally cleaned and protected as needed. We recommend Spot Out for Upholstery. Tile and Grout Daily Maintenance: Dust Daily and clean up spills/excess moisture. Place entrance mats at doorways and transition areas to catch dry soil. Weekly Maintenance: Wet Mop areas with water only, changing water as needed. Monthly Maintenance: Wet Mop tile and grout utilizing a non residual tile and grout cleaner to remove excess oils and soils, changing water as needed. Consider a revitalizer that will clean and refresh the sealer on your stone or grout. Yearly Maintenance: Consider scrubbing grout and resealing. If the grout is not responding, consider a professional cleaning. Never use any acid based products on grout and especially on stone before contacting the manufacture or store you purchased your products from. Acid can etch certain materials and weaken sealants. We recommend Stonetech Stone and Tile cleaner or Stonetech Revitalizer. Wood Floors Daily Maintenance: Dust floors daily and clean up spills/excess moisture asap! Place entrance mats at doorways and transition areas to catch dry soil. Weekly Maintenance: Touch up high traffic areas using a wood floor cleaner approved by your product manufacturer. Monthly Maintenance: Use an approved wood floor cleaner on all exposed areas. Yearly Maintenance: Consider rotating furniture and rugs to prevent fading on wood floors. Put blinds and window treatments up to aid as well. Use scratch tough up kits to repair minor scratches. Consider having a professional cleaning of your floors. We recommend Bona Wood floor cleaner for most polyurethane hardwood floors. Resilient Floors Daily Maintenance: Dust floors daily and clean up spills/excess moisture! Place entrance mats at doorways and transition areas to catch dry soil. High traffic areas should be mopped with a daily cleaner or auto scrubber for large areas. Weekly Maintenance: Use a Neutral Daily cleaner to mop all areas. Never use a high alkaline cleaner like Pine Solvents to mop your floor. This can leave a residue behind and can strip wax finishes prematurely. Monthly Maintenance: Waxed floor should be burnished or spray buffed. For heavy traffic, consider having scrub and recoat performed to fortify the top layers of finish. Yearly Maintenance: Wax free floors should be buffed yearly and heavy traffic wax floors should be stripped and re-waxed. Lightly used floors may be able to have a scrub and recoat performed instead of a full strip and wax. Spotting Advice With so many spotting products to choose from, how can we tell what is good, what is bad, what works and what doesn't? When we arrive on a job to professionally clean, we have at any give time 10 to 20 different products that are specifically designed to treat certain types of spots and stains. We have been extensively trained to know when to use which spotter and how to completely neutralize and remove the spotter. Unfortunately, many spotters available at the local shopping center for consumers are either so powerful that they damage the carpet and can remove color, or can only remove a little bit of everything. The super powerful spotters are usually very high pH or contain oxygen producing substances. These spotters can strip carpet colors away and can permanently damage the fibers by chemically sealing the dye sites. Also these harsh chemicals can be very risky to your family’s health. Several “safe spotters” offer milder chemistry that can lighten spots, but often don’t remove them all the way. Usually these spotters are on the acid side and the spot that has been left behind is often now permanent. Both of these types of spotters can often leave behind a residue that attracts soils quicker or if not properly rinsed, can continue to chemically damage the carpets. So what is the solution? The best spotter may be the one you let the professionals use. However, time and money does not always allow for a professional solution. So the following is a quick spotting guide for those little carpet emergencies. 1. Remove as much of the excess liquid or material as possible. You can scoop liquids or dry particulate with a spoon into a bowel for removal or soak up into a dry towel by blotting only. A wet/dry vacuum can be used as well. If this was a dry spill or mud, use the wet dry vacuum to suck up as much as you can and let any small amount of moisture dry, then vacuum the area very well. 2. Next, determine if the spill was water based or oil based. If water based, apply a small amount of warm water and blot up the moisture with a clean towel or use a wet/dry vacuum to suck up the moisture. If this is removing the spill, continue this step until you completely remove the spill or you stop seeing an improvement. 3. If you stopped seeing an improvement or the spill was oil based, after removing the excess with towels or a wet/dry vacuum. Apply a neutral spotting solution such as Tech, Spot Out, or equivalent. Carefully work the spotter into the effected area using a spoon or old soft tooth brush. Do not aggressively scrub the spill, and work from outside to the center. Then blot with a clean towel or remove with a wet/dry vacuum. Continue until you remove the spot or you stop seeing improvement. 4. Once you have removed the spot, flush with clean cold water and remove with a towel or wet/dry vacuum to remove any spotting residue. If you used Spot Out, you are done, as this product does not need rinsing. If the spot did not remove, contact us for additional assistance or for a professional spotting call. Check out our Quality Spotting and Odor Products: Spot Out is a neutral pH non rinsing spotter that works well on many different spots. It will never set a stain and does not require further rinsing. It will not leave a residue behind to promote resoiling. Vet’s Trust is the same great product we use profesionaly to remove odors from Urine, fecal waste, vomit and other bacterial contamination. This enzyme rich formula is prediluted for ready to use application and keeps working until the odor is gone. Both products are safe for people and pets and available at our store along with all of our recommendations above! Text Box: What is “Going Green?” In years past, this statement might have been used to describe our Irish Heritage. However, today’s definition of “Going Green” is quite controversial. From Recycled products and natural cleaning solutions to eco friendly vehicles and housing, trends to improve our environment are an increasing part of our every day lives. This trend has been ever present in the flooring and cleaning industry. For the last several decades, carpet mills have been designing carpets with much lower environmental impacts and a commitment to reusable materials. Cleaning solutions are continually being developed and improved to make them safer and more effective. So what is so controversial over improving our environment? There has been a large movement to use products marketed as Green friendly. However, the definition of green products is constantly changing from day to day. For example, recyclable carpets seem like a good idea, unless they require replacement every 4 years. Then all the benefits of recycling has been negated by the wasted energy to recycle and produce the new carpet. The same can hold true for green cleaning products. If a product is healthier but less effective in removing the more harmful soils and contaminates can it still be considered green? And if an effective green cleaning product is used but not completely rinsed away can it still be harmful? These are the questions and dilemmas facing researchers everyday in the battle to create and maintain a healthier environment. Several companies claim to be Green by using only green cleaning products. While we recognize the importance of green cleaning and utilize an entire package of very effective green cleaning products, we also understand the importance of Cleaning Green. When we select and match cleaning solutions for your floors or textiles, we consider not only the environmental impact. We look at how safe the products are for the family and pets, what residue it leaves behind if any, what is the long term impact this product will have on the floor or textile, and what is the risk of long term exposure for our technicians. We use equipment that maximizes soil removal while improving air quality with in a home. We also maximize moisture removal during our cleaning. By leaving the carpets in a dry to touch state, less energy is needed to further remove moisture from the house or business, the risk of mold and mildew is almost completely negated, and the overall flooring or textile is far less prone to re-soiling. Cleaning Green is a responsible choice and not a marketing gimmick.

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Expert Cleaning Advice

How to Prepare

For Cleaning

 

1.  Adequate Ventilation:  Although we take great care in maximum moisture removal, hot water extraction can increase humidity levels in a house.  For the quickest drying carpets possible we ask that you help us maintain proper air ventilation by utilizing ceiling fans, air conditioning or heating when necessary, dehumidifiers when available and floor fans as well as windows and exhaust attic fans.

 

2.  Pre Vacuuming:  We will always perform a quality pre-vacuum to maximize dry soil removal prior to wet cleaning.  However, vacuuming prior to our arrival will help remove that much more soil and if vacuuming has been neglected, it will insure more dry soil is removed.

 

3.  Upholstery and Rugs:  This is also a great time to vacuum your upholstered furniture and area rugs. These areas often get overlooked but usually hold quite a bit of dead skin cells from use while cushion crevices can hold assorted lost items as well as soil. Rugs are especially good at hiding dry soil that can shorten the life of the rug. It’s a good idea to use a suction only tool to minimize damage to your fine fabrics.  Also do a good inspection of your furniture and rugs.  When was the last time your favorite sofa, chair, or area rug was properly cleaned?  We offer certified upholstery cleaning on site, as well as master rug washing at our cleaning facility.

 

4.  Moving Furniture:  We ask that you move all valuables, small items and electronics from the areas to be cleaned and all portable furniture if possible. Larger items such as sofas and tables can be placed on gliders during cleaning and moved around in the room to facilitate cleaning as long as enough smaller items have been removed to allow adequate space.  Very large items that have and will never move in the life of the flooring such as heavy chests of drawers, china cabinets or large electronics may be left in place and cleaned around.  Please hang curtains and fold up bed spreads that may hang low to the ground to protect these fabrics from overspray during cleaning.

 

5.  Children and Pets:  It is a good idea to keep children and pets in a supervised and safe area away from cleaning solutions, equipment, and machines. Also please ask the technician before moving equipment. Solution lines can be very hot a result of the need to maintain heated cleaning solutions.  Vacuum hose has very strong suction and should not be attached to any person or animal.

 

6.  Dusting: We recommend that you dust any furniture or pictures in the areas to be cleaned as well as ceiling fans. Don’t forget the top of baseboards as well. During our final cleaning process, we place high volume air movers to speed dry the carpets. These fans move high amounts of air and can knock dust off objects which if not vacuumed up afterwards can lead to quick re-soiling.   Upgrade to our Shamrock premium package and we’ll do the dusting for you!