[Chris34]

I've come back after doing my first job and it was a real pain.  First it took ages to load up the van and then off load and set up the equipment when I arrived.  Then half way through cleaning the dining room the flaming wand decided it was going to have a laugh with me and jammed the trigger on so that I couldn't control the amount of water going down on the carpet.  I've only used the wand twice before.  Anyway I switched to the hand tool and carried on cleaning the carpet (reluctantly).  After 10 minutes I decided that it was too much work to do with a hand tool as I still had a lounge, hall and stairs to do and it was already past 1pm.  I decided that I could use the wand but go as fast as I could and as soon as I had done a quarter of the room I would dash to the machine and switch off the heater and pump and then go over the area with plenty of dry passes.

This worked quite well and in a way it actually helped me speed up my work, now I seemed to be doing the work in a 3rd of the time and the results were better than the part of the room that I had done when the trigger was working.  The only downside to this is that I was using the water at a faster rate so I ended up having to refill the machine about four times and I had about 9 buckets of waste water.

The carpet didn't look like new when I had finished but it was heavily soiled in the first place and it did look better and virtually all the spot marks on the carpet had either been removed or blended in more to the carpet.  I used one step fine line but I think I could have used something with a higher PH to get a better result.

All in all I think it is a good way to earn half decent money and I think once I have got faster and know which chemicals are best to use and can identify the carpets correctly I will be happy to make money doing this.

Thanks for the advice on which chemicals to use.


Chris.  (I'll have no probs sleeping tonight)

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Did you aggitate the one step with a machine before extraction?

Shaun

[Chris34]

Yes I did, I vacummed, then presprayed the carpet, left it 8-10mins and then presprayed again and then aggitated using the sebo duo.  Then I used hot water extraction at 200 psi, I can go up to 500psi but I didn't want to over wet the carpet.

One thing I did do wrong though was to mix the solution to 1:5 instead of the 1:20 that it says on the container.  The reason for me making this mistake was that lately I have been doing loads of figure work using lots of percentage workings out and this morning I was tired and lots of things on my mind so when I read 1:20 my brain just went into autopilot and thought that was 20% so I mixed 1:5 as it was close to 20% and filled the prespray container.

Does using too much make a difference and if it does is it for the worse or the better?

[Tony Gill Carpet Smart]

I SMELL A RAT

[will01]

Did you use the double headed dopple ganger or the gripley thriftshift to aggitate?

[Neil Williams]

the double headed dopple ganger

Always carry one of these, really useful on stairs.

[Chris34]

I just used the hand tool on the stairs and went over them plenty of times using the hand tool to aggitate.  I know this isn't the correct way but I've already spent thousands on starting up and now I want to get the money rolling in before I invest in anymore equipment. 

The sebo duo did a good job, I know that from previous comments some carpet cleaners don't rate them but I think for the money it's very good and as long as you give adequate dwell time the results are acceptable.


Chris.