Todays blog we will be talking carpet cleaning and upholstery cleaning. We will talk you through our process and how we adhere to our very strict guidelines and criteria of how to properly and effectively cleaning your furniture and carpets.
Upholstery Cleaning and Carpet Cleaning
As always we do our pre inspection and this involves, checking for damages, trimmings, burns, fibre, fibre fill (if it has feathers, foam, rubber etc), colour run, colour loss, see if there is UV damage, looking for wear and or abrasion, texture distortion, and then we will look into the soiling characteristics such as – pet hair, oily stains, water damage, fatty stains, rust stains, urine, dye stains and more.
From just that pre inspection alone we then move onto our next step which is and the most important –
Vacuuming:
When we vacuum, we are cleaning the whole area, from the cushions to the back rest, to where you remove the cushions (if applicable) and vacuum the crevices and the bottom.
Why is vacuuming so important? Well it removes most of the dry soil and if you weren’t to vacuum and then apply any cleaning solution, the solution wouldn’t be very effective because the dry soil basically neutralises the cleaning solution and from there you just wouldn’t get peak performance from your cleaning agent. Also in accordance with the Australian standard AS/NZS:3733:1995 we must vacuum prior to cleaning.
Now how do we do it better?
HWA Carpet Cleaning we, use a Upright vacuum with turbo brush that raises and lowers depending on the pile and from there we have a HEPA filter which is especially good if we have clients who a allergic to dust, or who have asthma.
From there, there is a specific technique on how we vacuum, we don’t pull up and back with it, we like to vacuum how we say “walking the dog” and going along the carpet pile like a train track rather than against the pile. This results in a far superior vacuum compared to a rush up and back. We also overlap when we do it thus getting a more beneficial clean.
I can keep going on about this but I think we get the point 😊
Now we can move onto the next step.
Cleaning Agent:
As previously discussed with our pre inspection checklist, once we find out the soils, damages, fibre there is and choose our agent accordingly to what specifics your upholstery or carpet are.
Agitation:
Once we have applied the agent, we then like to wait for the solution to do its work, we call this “dwell” time. That takes the “heavy lifting” out of carpet cleaning. Basically we get better results with our “dwell” time. The same principle applies with your normal spray and wipes or home chemicals.
Whilst we are waiting for the “dwell” time we then depending on the scenario, we would use our Orbot Vibe to do extra Agitation. This allows us to give the carpets or upholstery that extra kick to give us a better result.
Heat:
With the Heat component, we use that term to refer to the water. Each fibre can handle so much heat so for example with wool we can go above 80C, but we want to get as close as possible, where as if you go over the recommended heat you will cause damage to the fibre. And some carpet cleaners can sometimes go overboard and use too much heat and agitation that it will cause permanent damage to the carpet or upholstery.
That conclude our Upholstery cleaning and carpet cleaning blog.
Stay tuned for more
~ Charles Hwa Carpet Cleaning