Clean It Up

UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: james roffey on October 01, 2012, 06:13:34 pm

Title: Took the plunge
Post by: james roffey on October 01, 2012, 06:13:34 pm
Been carpet cleaning now for almost four years and whenever i have come across a Belgian Wilton i have decided not to risk cleaning it, turned down about three jobs so far, until last week when my brother asked me to clean his carpet couldn't believe it when i saw it he had replaced a beautiful 100% wool Wilton for this polyprop, all i could think was the first time he asked me to clean his carpet and i cant do it, i explained the problem to him and he said we will take the risk, but it did not put me at ease, as i would probably never hear the end of it if i shrunk it.

I decided to clean it, it was well attached to the grippers and i reasoned that if i lightly presprayed some powerburst agitated then extracted with a low psi around 200 using my inline heater for a bit more oomph i may be ok.

The end result was fine it did not shrink and they were delighted, what i wanted to ask was do any of you routinely refuse to clean these as the risk of shrinkage is significant, they had a small off cut which i cleaned with a high psi and plenty of prespray and a 4ft piece shrunk by about a cm  
Title: Re: Took the plunge
Post by: JandS on October 01, 2012, 06:32:00 pm
They'll only shrink if you wet the backing surely.
With modern machines and training this shouldn't
happen.
Even leaving pre spray to dwell should be ok.

John
Title: Re: Took the plunge
Post by: Warren Aldridge on October 01, 2012, 07:24:53 pm
Never refuse but always educate the customer and get them to sign a waiver if they want to proceed
Title: Re: Took the plunge
Post by: Paul Moss on October 01, 2012, 07:27:19 pm
Cleaned hundreds of them even greasy restaurant/ pub  ones of which i have battered to death with lots of prespray and high psi ;D, but i still have not been able to shrink one  :-[ , i must try harder ;)
Title: Re: Took the plunge
Post by: Shaun_Ashmore on October 01, 2012, 07:30:09 pm
Check the fitting first if that's good then providing you do your prep work you'll be fine I've done 2 today in a house came up lovely.

Shaun
Title: Re: Took the plunge
Post by: james roffey on October 01, 2012, 08:49:55 pm
Think if i am careful i should be ok, thanks for response guys
Title: Re: Took the plunge
Post by: Jim_77 on October 02, 2012, 12:08:05 am
Jim haven't you got a rotary??!

I find most BW's are in lounges - pre-spray with a strong microsplitter (I use SPM) that is good for extraction but causes no problems if only bonneted..... a lot of the carpet you can leave bonneted, then just extract the traffic lanes.  Takes no longer than a full HWE process I've found.

Doing it this way you can also give the traffic lanes a decent rinse rather than backing off the pressure - if you're only wetting up a small % of the width of the carpet the shrinkage risk is almost non-existent
Title: Re: Took the plunge
Post by: clinton on October 02, 2012, 07:32:07 am
Must say am with jim on this one with the cleaning of bw,s..

Had to tack and glue a carpet a bit ago as it was already coming away from a small area..

Nice one anyway james.