[danny taylor]

Ive been asked to clean a hotels carpets recently and have found out that they have 80% wool axminster carpet in the corridors. Could anyone help me with the do`s and dont`s. Thanks danny

[pete sween]

Keep the PH fairly neutral, don't over wet annd do plenty of dry passes. ie let agitatiton do the majority of the work.

Pete

[carlton care]

Do you clean carpets Danny, if not, might be worth farming it out to a c/c, with a retention, of course. Done a fair bit of this kind of work over the years, for house cleaners and there is often a spin off.

[danny taylor]

We do clean quite a few carpets but the last guy who cleaned this hotel shrunk the corridors and had to replace the lot and this is a 300 room hotel. thats one hell of an insurance claim. We have never had any problems before with any of our work but the shrinkage story kind of spooked me into asking for your kind help.

[derek west]

i'd say, keep the moisture low, no more than 250 psi, high ph isn't a problem as long as you rince with an acidic, (clearwater rinse from hydramaster is a good en) and use a room dryer straight away, but i'm only a newbie so unless a top guy says i'm right then take no notice, but thats how i do axes.
derek

[pete sween]

Hi Derek

Yes a high ph is fine but as most axmonsters are predominantly red you are more likely to strip the dye from them with initial high ph pre-treat. (it will come out to some degree with almost whwatever you use)

Pete

[Jim_77]

I think the most important battle is educating the customer that the carpets need cleaning frequently.  The more frequently they are cleaned, the lighter system you need to clean them and the less risk is involved.

Presuming the carpets aren't heavily soiled, I'd personally use a rotary system for speed and lack of downtime, being as we're talking about corridors that are in use 24/7.

If they are to be extracted, you just need to avoid getting the backing wet.  Reduced FLOW rather than psi is the key, but obviously with most machines turning down the pressur results in less flow.  If your vacuum performance stays the same but your flow rate is lower, you're running at a higher vacuum-to-flow ratio so therefore you stand less chance of overwetting.  In short, if your machine (I presume you're running a portable) has a flow or pressure regulator, back it off a little lower than you'd normally use for something like tufted carpet.

If it's cleaned VERY often it may even be possible to keep maintained with a VLM system like host or envirodri, or any other compound used with a CRB machine.  It's probably need a bloody good extraction clean once a year though, to get all that sawdust out

[Ken Wainwright]

During the course of a year, I stay in quite a few hotels all over the country, from large private, through family B&B and onto national chains.  EVERY hotel, without exception, has split seams to varying degrees and other shrinkage related problems on their axminsters.

Heed Jim's advice above.

Safe and happy cleaning
Ken

[CARPET KNIGHTS]

With regards to the high ph, I was taught on my iicrc course that the damage starts to occur straight away, so the acid rinse will not put right what has already happened. Keep the ph low and don't go blasting it to death with water and you will be fine. Axminsters generally clean up really easily and the colours really come to life. Explain to the custy about possible pile reversal in the traffic lanes and pivot points outside doors and that this may make them look dirty as a result of the light being reflected differently.

Cheers Goron

[derek west]

goron
what damage does high ph cause straight away.
from what ive gathered, the high alcali can cause jute to bleed cell browning, with the carpet being wool, as long as you dont over wet and are using a powerfull extraction system the jute will not get wet, an acid rinse will neutralise the alcali and some quick drying using blowers will kill of any remaining risk, if it needs a high ph then use it, but only if it needs it.
or does high ph cause something else that i'm not aware of.
colour run obviously but we test that first anyway. so what else?
oh and go easy on me as i'm still learning and am genuinely interested to know.
derek

[CARPET KNIGHTS]

Derek

Wool is very susseptable (sp) to high ph. High ph can cause a lot of unseen damage to wool such as blown fibres which is when the actual structure of the wool starts to come apart causing it to go fuzzy and drastically reduce the life span of the carpet!

You shouldn't be worried about browning from the jute as you shouldn't be getting water that deep into the carpet if you are then that is where the shrinkage problem comes into play, the jute strands will absorb the water and swell thuscausing the structure of the weave to pull tight shrinking the carpet!

Cheers Goron

[Jim_77]

Derek, cellulosic browning can occur within the woollen fibres themselves.

I once read or heard that it was the cellulose seeping from within the cells of the fibre, but not sure if that's correct or not.  Not got my science head on today.

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Goron is spot on with the symptoms of high ph on wool but you have to look at the carpet and see what damage is done by wear and tear first, if it needs high ph it is because you are doing a restoration job but the damage will already have be done by not caring for it in the first place.

Shaun

[danny taylor]

Thank you for all of your advice and tips. Its good to talk!!

[mark_roberts]

All valid points.  Im just back from cleaning 300sqm of carpet as you described in a hotel.  Split seems from wear, heavy stains from food and drink, carpet not on gripper as Id liked.

However it was dirty so I presprayed with Prochems powerburst and extracted using the RX20 and an acid rinse.  Carpet looks great.  As mentioned sometimes you just need to do whats necessary.

This was in a room that was closed off so it was easy but I wouldnt fancy doing this in the main corridors due to customers etc so a VLM option would be best if possible.

Be interesting to know what the cleaners did to the corridors to shrunk.

MArk