[William Sharpe]

Just came back from Fethiye in Turkey had a wee gathering in the apartment and as it does the 12X9 turkish multi coloured rug ended up with wine and somebody dropped a plate of whatever on it. next day took it into town to a local carpet cleaner who laid it out on a concrete floor put a handful of soap flakes in a watering can with warm water poured this over whilst cleaning with a rotary machine and soft brush 10min hung it over a rail and rinsed of with iodised cold water. Thats it 2 hrs later it was bone dry (38deg there) and he delivered it back to the apartment all for 60TL which is about £22 it was amazingly clean, soft and looked like new.

Just curious has any one tried soap flakes and iodised water as a rinse

[AshWhite]

Slightly off topic, my old man lived in Turkey for 7 years - right by the amphitheatre. Nice part of the world.

[William Sharpe]

The best we have been going for the past 6 years and still love it

[Jim_77]

William, plenty of rug cleaners over here and more so in the USA will all clean rugs using that sort of method.  However, in the west we have tended to go overloaded on the technology side of things, compared to the traditional ways used in the countries where rugs originate from.  We've got all sorts of things like power washers, centrifuges, masses of expensive mechanical kit....

The traditional Turkish way I believe is olive soap.  People do it for themselves, rub the rugs over in olive soap and either wash it out in the nearest available clean water source, or hang it over something in the rain to wash off.  Like you say, dry in unbelievable time in that climate.