[james roffey]

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  

[JandS]

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

[Warren Aldridge]

Never refuse but always educate the customer and get them to sign a waiver if they want to proceed

[Paul Moss]

Cleaned hundreds of them even greasy restaurant/ pub  ones of which i have battered to death with lots of prespray and high psi , but i still have not been able to shrink one   , i must try harder

[Shaun_Ashmore]

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

[james roffey]

Think if i am careful i should be ok, thanks for response guys

[Jim_77]

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

[clinton]

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.