[Tony Stewart]

I cleaned a house on Friday after an office clean and was asked to clean the dining room carpet along with other rooms.

Did a Prochem dye test and both the blue and red tests had dye running out of the carpet.
I even tested with MPower and this was the result.

This carpet was 30 years old and was bought from Waring and Gillow. I have it a good vacuum and spoke to the owner saying that it needed a specialist clean in a rug bath (or a D Liona rinse!!)
She was fine about it and thought that it may be a problem as she had noticed dye coming out of the rug when she had split wine on it before.
I am posting this to just make people aware that if in doubt read the labels on the chemicals that say test prior to using!!

[Tony Stewart]

Hopefully here are the pictures

Tony

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Tony

Did you try with acid rinse?

Cheers

Doug

[Paul Moss]

No Doug you dont need an acidic rinse after vaccing 

[Tony Stewart]

Hi Doug

To be honest I used an acid rinse as a test and as it was pulling dye, I got scared and would not proceed as I was worried that the dyes would migrate into the light colours. I did not want to be gung ho and risk owning the rug. The rug as you can see was a large one, so would not have moved it anyway.

[JandS]

I thought it was a carpet..

[Tony Stewart]

Sorry my mistake. The customer said for me to clean the dining room carpet but when I got there and as you can see in the pictures it was a big rug.

[derek west]

how old was the rug tony? and was there any sign of migration?

[Paul Moss]

how old was the rug tony? and was there any sign of migration?

Derek i think it started off in the dining room and then moved into the lounge.

[Tony Stewart]

Derek It was 30 years old but to look at it you would not have known. No dye had migrated to the other colours. It was just that as soon as I put an acid test on it all the red came out.

[AshWhite]

how old was the rug tony? and was there any sign of migration?

Derek i think it started off in the dining room and then moved into the lounge.

 

[Elfyn]

This is fairly standard for this type of rug.
You could have used a dye stabilizer.

[*Hector*]

Tony.... IMHO you did exactly the right thing... You found colour transfer, you were not happy to clean the rug, so you walked... Good move...

There are some good suggestions on this thread as to how to treat it in the future, but at the time you did the correct and ONLY sensible thing you could to protect your name and reputation and business.

[Elfyn]

Tony, If you're likely to be doing more rugs, I'd suggest attending a rug course.
The rug shown in the picture is fairly straight forward if you know what your doing.
Rug cleaning is a very lucrative part of my business.

[Mike_Roper]

You could probably pad it and dry quick.
Mike

[Tony Stewart]

Thanks for the encouragement Hector. The way I left it with the customer was that she understood what was going on. I left her the terry towel as a picture tells a thousand words!. I can always go back.
I understand about a rug cleaning course which I am happy to go on. I posted this to help others in the fact that I had met another guy at my supplier who had spent 3 sleepless nights over a rug that had bled and was worried that he had wrecked it. I walked not because I was not prepared to take the risk when I had cleaned the rest of the house to a great standard.
Now with the help I have received I can approach the customer at a later date and tackle the job professionally.

(whoops sounds conceited that last sentence - don't mean it that way!!!)