Carpet Cleaning Issues - Carpet construction, upholstery cleaning, stain removal, equipment, events, etc.
What is Good Wand TechniquePosted by Ian_G. (Ian_Gourlay), 2 January 2004
Window cleaners take great pride in their techniqiue and often describe how they clean a pane of glass.
Mike in another topic mentioned wand technique.
What do you all consider to be good
and what is bad?Posted by Tony_Browning (Tony_Browning), 2 January 2004
Interesting subject 
On the Prochem course I learn't to make a pass and then make a dry pass with the wand tilted to produce airflow....I tend to make 5-6 wet passes and then follow up with the dry passes...however I guess it all depends on the type of wand you are using...I prefer a scrub type wand.
On heavily soiled carpets I will scrub back and forth with the jets blasting and then repeat with dry passes.
Works for Me
Rgds
TonyPosted by Caesar (Caesar), 2 January 2004
really depends on the wand you use...On a butler 3 jet for instance.You use a j stroke.Your first stoke is straight with the pressure on,then you over lap one jet width .To the side you are cleaning next.To the left if you move right.vice versa if you are going the other way.On you back stroke regardless of which wand you use.The trgigger is released just prior to lifting up and beginning gain.The reason for lifting up is to produce additional airflow so as to move the dirt residues to the tm or portable faster.If you are cleaning and never lift off the carpet.You will notice your oses jumping when you do.This is improper and leads to over wetting.As for tilting you wand to produce additional airflow.By doing that you are braking wand seal at the wand carpet interface.That is making more work for you per pass actually.An leaving it wetter.I would suggest you try it one way then the other .An regardless of what some instructor sez.Monitor it with both moisture meter and paper towel...It should if procedure is good dry faster with out the tilt.Also always attempt to learn to clean with either hand.In case of injury,etc.Then you can still produce money.On a bane wand it is stroke with steam on, one dry pass up no steam,then a one third to one quarter wand width overlap...Etc,etc...Posted by mike_halliday (mike_halliday), 2 January 2004
a wand is designed to squirt water on the carpet then suck it up again. to do this efficently it has to do a couple of things
1) the vac slot must pass over the wetted area
2) it must pass over the wetted area before the solution has time to pass into the backing
good wand technique is where the solution is vacuumed off the carpet in the quickest time possible, if you go back & forth with the trigger pulled you will leave 50% of the carpet with solution soaking through to the backing,
if you then do your dry strokes, it will be too late you won't have the vacuum to pull the solution back through the carpet ( unless you have a big baddass truckmount like me 
)
MikePosted by Ken_Wainwright (Ken Wainwright), 2 January 2004
With the greatest respect Tony, may I suggest that if you are needing to make 5 or 6 wet passes, that you may not be putting enough work into the preparation of the carpet. You therefor leave the carpet much wetter than you need to (this will be proportional for any type of extractor, portable or T/M) Good dry-vac, pre-spray and agitation will reduce your wet passes to 1 or 2, the results should hopefully be drier, often quicker and at the end of the day you will be less tired. You should rarely need to scrub with your wand.
The exact technique used will vary from tech to tech, kit to kit and job to job. My own prefered wand is a Cleancare heavyish cast aluminium, 10" width with 4X02 jets. This delivers a little more water but in a smaller area than a conventional 2 jet swan neck wand. I single pass the area being worked with about 1" overlap, 2nd pass as required then dry stroke. Should the area be so heavily soiled that the results are not good enough, I will then spray, scrub and extract again, but this is quite rarely needed. I probably spend more time on agitation than with the wand.
Safe and happy cleaning
KenPosted by Mike_Boxall (Mike_Boxall), 2 January 2004
Are my eyes going funny? I'm sure AlexDH had posted a a pretty good technique here a little while ago!?
Ken, 5 or 6 wet passes does seem a lot but I'm sure Tony must have meant 5 or 6 seperate overlapping passes rather than all on the same area 
Regards
MikePosted by Ivar_Haglund (Ivar_Haglund), 3 January 2004
I do the hula hoop with my RX20
round and round
IVAR 
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