What are the different types of carpet cleaning services?

Q: Is one Method of Carpet Cleaning is as Good as Another?

A: No. There are two primary methods—dry cleaning or hot water extraction.

Dry Cleaning. Many people believe that dry cleaning your carpet is like dry cleaning your clothing. This is not true. All carpet cleaning methods use water in one form or another. Here are the 3 variations of dry cleaning.

When a cleaner uses the Dry Foam method, he applies shampoo to your carpet, allows it to dry, then sucks the dry shampoo into a vacuum. Can you imagine applying shampoo to your hair, allowing it to dry and then removing the shampoo from your head with a vacuum? This method can leave residue in your carpet, which is one reason dry foam is not very effective.

The Dry-Chem method is similar to dry foam. The major difference is that when Dry-Chem is used, the company sets a large cotton bonnet on your carpet. Using a machine, the bonnet spins from side to side, absorbing the dirt that’s in the carpet. After the bonnet is saturated with dirt, another cotton bonnet is applied. Bonnet cleaning is like trying to use a large towel to rub the dirt out of your carpet. Like Dry Foam, Dry-Chem is not very effective.

The Dry Compound method spreads an absorbent mixture that looks like wet sawdust all over your carpeting. Then the machine brushes the mixture into the carpet, which in theory causes the dirt to absorb into the mixture. When the mixture has dried, a vacuum cleaner sucks the material out of the carpet. Because the carpet is not rinsed in any way, this method is not very effective.

Hot Water Extraction. This is a fancy way of saying that a hot water cleaning solution under high pressure is forced into the carpet and sucked out of the carpet. This method is also referred to as steam cleaning even though steam is not used.

Shaw Industries, the world’s largest carpet manufacturer recommends hot water extraction cleaning only. In fact the director of technical services at Shaw stated that in their testing every other process was merely rearranging the dirt.

You can choose from two types of hot water extraction—portable extraction which is done with a small machine, or truck mount extraction which means a large cleaning machine is mounted in a truck or van. Not surprisingly, the truck mount extraction cleans much better because it heats the water to over 200 degrees and shoots the cleaning solution into the carpet at around 400 lbs. of pressure, which breaks up the dirt and kills the bacteria and germs. Then the machine uses high-powered suction to draw the dirt out of the carpet. In effect the carpet is sanitized due to the high water temperature, and only truck-mounted “steam cleaning” can accomplish this. AmeriClean uses this method and carpets dry in 4-8 hours.

Methods that use cold and even warm water remove dirt—but are not nearly as effective as the hot-water truck mounted method. No question, the most effective way to clean carpeting is with a hot water extraction unit mounted in a truck. It’s the most powerful cleaning machine on the market and the only machine that thoroughly cleans your carpet and rids it of dirt, harmful bacteria, fungus, chemicals, pollens, and tobacco residue.

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