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Prolonging the Life of Your Carpet
Your carpets represent a sizable
investment. It would make sense to take
measures that would extend their life.
Most carpet is made of synthetic fibers such as: nylon, olefin,
polyester, and some acrylic. These synthetic fibers rarely wear out
(except on stairs), instead they ugly out. What we mean by
that is, the fibers crush, or mat down, or flatten out. They also
abrade or get scratched. You see, your carpets are made up of
thousands upon thousands of very small thread-like fibers that are
twisted together. These fibers are basically translucent pieces of
plastic. That means that light can pass through them, like a colored
Plexiglas. You know how Plexiglas looks after it gets scratched,
dull and dirty. Well improperly cared for carpet can look the same.
What scratches carpet is gritty soil and sand that is left in the
carpet and when it is walked on it rubs against the fibers and
scratches them. After so much of this scratching, you can clean the
soil and sand out but the damage already done is irreversible and
you get is what we call in the carpet cleaning industry ... traffic
lane gray. This is where the fibers are clean, but since they are so
scratched up they do not reflect the light back to the eyes and now
take on a dull appearance which is commonly mistaken for soiled
carpets. This usually happens first in the heavily walked on areas
or traffic lanes.
So the most important thing you
can do to improve the appearance life expectancy or your carpet is
to:
1. Use walk off mats.
- Every entry into the house that is used
should have an outside mat that is rough enough to remove
mud and other debris and soil and the inside mat that is
absorbent can remove any moisture.
- The outside mat should be able to
withstand the elements and have someplace for the dirt to drop
into so that it does not get contaminated and start doing the
opposite of what it was intended to do.
- The inside mat should be heavy enough to
lay flat and have a rubberized back to prevent creeping. These
mats should be small and light enough to be able to be washed in
your home washing machine and should be cleaned regularly.
2. Other places to put these inside mats would be:
- Right off kitchens to prevent cooking oils
and food-stuffs from being tracked into the carpeted area of
your home.
- Any other hard surface areas that adjoin
to carpeted rooms.
(Clean these mats regularly, they are the heart of
prevention.)
3. Vacuum your carpets regularly.
- At least twice per week and more often if
you have children or pets.
- Vacuuming your traffic lanes every day
will give you the best protection against premature uglying out
of your carpet.
4. Have your carpets professionally 'Steam Cleaned' a minimum
of once per year, more often if you have pets or children.
- Most people wait until the carpet is
visibly soiled before they clean their carpets. This is not
wise. What causes the most damage to carpets is the abrasive
particles that are stuck to the carpet fibers by oil residues.
These oil residues are everywhere and are from the burning of
hydrocarbons from motor vehicles factories, power plants and
volatilized oils from cooking. They are so small that we usually
cannot see them. But they always settle down and land on the
largest horizontal surfaces, our carpets!
- Once the oil is on the carpet, the soil
then sticks to the fibers and no vacuum cleaner can then remove
it.
- Also regular cleaning helps prevent
matting and crushing of carpet by removing the oils that cause
fibers to clump together and compress.
- When the carpet is so soiled that you can
visibly see it then the abrasive soil has been rubbing on the
fibers way too long and damage has already occurred.
- The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)
recommends that carpet in a residential setting be cleaned a
minimum of once per year and every 3 to 6 months if children and
pets are present. Their reason for the frequency has more to do
with maintaining a healthy indoor environment than appearance
but it is still good advice.
5. Maintain your vacuum cleaner.
- Most vacuum cleaners in America today are
70% ineffective, because the bag is over 1/2 full. After the bag
is 1/2 full, the vacuum efficiency is greatly reduced. Once your
vacuum cleaner bag is 1/2 full you should change it.
- Check the brushes of your vacuum
cleaner, when placing a pencil on the base of your power head,
the brushes should just touch the pencil and bend slightly
as you turn the brush. If it doesn't you could be losing up to
50% efficiency. Adjust or replace the brushes if needed.
6. Have your carpets retreated with stain and soil resistant
products regularly after a through, deep cleaning.
- Although you may have purchased your
carpet new with some type of soil or stain resistant treatment,
all topical treatments like these loose effectiveness over time
through wear and in the cleaning process. The only way to insure
the highest level of protection is to retreat after each
cleaning.
7. Remove spots quickly
- Most spills can be removed if attended to
quickly. The longer a spill stays on the carpet, the greater the
chance that damage will take place.
- Keep a quality general spotter on hand and
preferably have a multi part professional spotting kit to cover
most spills.
- Groom your carpets. Yes, your carpets need
to be brushed just like your hair to ensure optimum health. What
it does is to pull up or lift the tufts of fibers and make them
stand on end. The helps to control matting and crushing, and
allows your vacuum cleaner to reach down and get the sand and
grit in the base of your carpeting. It has been estimated that
grooming prior to vacuuming increases loose soil removal by 23%.
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