[Bartlomiej]

Hi, firstly, thank you for accepting me.
I am new to the industry so I may be asking many questions which I hope you dont mind answer. I am still awaiting my cleaning machine to be built - Enforcer 400.
In the mean time I completed 1 day training with Ashbys which was very useful however I got a bit confused therefore here is the question.

How would you remove stain from solvent sensitive carpet ? Do I really need to know all types of carpets or is it enough to know that they are either Natural or Synthetic and how to indentify them ?

I do understand that I will need more training and practice but I would appreciate if you could share a bit of your knowledge with me.

Thank you

[Mike Halliday]

Solvent sensitive carpets.....which ones are those? I can only think of industrial carpet tiles that have bitchemin (sp) backing

You are getting information overload,  most carpet are ok with an appropriate solvent spotter you just need to be able to identify wool, wool mix and the man made  fibres. Did the teach you the burn test at Ashby’s ? Even then 98% of carpet cleaner never carry out a burn test.

Get down the carpet shop  and get some carpet samples and try to  destroy them with all the chemicals you have bought, play around on samples,  experiment,  practice.

Spill nail varnish , gloss paint, coffee red wine and practice

[RPCCS]

Might give that a go myself actually, thanks Mike

[Bartlomiej]

Mike - this is the best response I have come across !!! Thank you very much !!! I started to think that I need to be a scientist in order to do it I have visited so many different forums I read so many posts and a lot of them focus literally on chemistry !!!

[Mike Halliday]

There is an incredible amount of carpet cleaner who know only the very basics of chemistry ( almost nothing) they rely on the bottle to say what it does  and how to use it eg ‘coffee stain remover’ they have no idea why it removes coffee stains or POG ( paint oil & grease) they know what to use it on but not how it works. But this is not a problem, As long as they follow the instructions on the bottle.

It’s a bit like driving a car you don’t need to know how the car works to be a good driver, it does help to have a sound knowledge in the chemistry of cleaning but this will come over time just do your best and if possible practice of carpet samples rather than customers carpets

[Elfyn]

Carpets, in general, are quite straight forward - just follow the cleaning stages (vac, prep, extract) and you won't go far wrong. Get to know what a belgian wilton looks like and what steps to take when cleaning one.
Upholstery cleaning has many more pitfalls.
The only way to gain experience is to out there and do it.