Don’t Trust a Carpet Cleaner who Cleans Area Rugs in Your Home.

Many (if not most) carpet cleaners will happily clean an area rug for you in your home with no stipulations or objections. In fact – many will insist! “Just let me take a quick pass on that rug while I am here!” When we were first starting out, we did the same. it wasn’t because we were irresponsibly trying to cause damage, it was just out of sheer ignorance. If you are not interested in learning the details, just scroll to the bottom for a consolidated list.

Carpet Cleaning and Area Rug Cleaning are not the same industry. In fact, many companies who clean area rugs do not clean carpeting because it is such a different beast.

There are some important things to know about the construction of carpeting in order to understand what I’m about to say but first we need to understand the difference between soluble and non-soluble soil.

• Soluble soil is the stuff that dissolves in water and can be rented away. Think of the things that break down in heat and detergent when you wash your dishes and your clothes.
• Nonsoluble soils do not not dissolve in water. Think sand, hair and small particulate matter.

Now let’s move to Carpet Construction versus Area Rug construction.

Wall to Wall Carpeting Construction

• Carpeting generally comes in wool, and synthetic and it is stretched from wall-to-wall across the floor and secured tightly.(There are many different types of synthetic carpeting, but all are cleaned the same way)
• The space between the fibers is comparatively large and the pile is low.
• The backing is usually synthetic and very stiff.

Area Rug Construction

• Area rugs come in an infinite number of fabric types and blends.
• Area rugs are generally constructed with a very tight weave. The tighter the weave, the better quality rug.
• Area rugs generally have a thick/deep pile or at the opposite end a floppy and flexible woven construction.
• Some rugs also have the addition of a fabric backing to hide a network of knots and stitches and glue that hold the rug together in a very unattractive way.

The detergent and equipment used to clean wall-to-wall carpet are specifically designed with the above mentioned things in mind.  The high heat, high-pressure water jets, and strong suction are ideal for removing soluble soil from between the carpet fibers (pile.)

Non-soluble soils are easily removed from wall to wall carpeting by a quality vacuum cleaner and consistent and proper vacuuming. Your professional carpet cleaner will also vacuum with just suction before he applies water. This is actually the first and most important step of cleaning. Removing the dry soils.

I’ll say it again, vacuuming is the most important part of cleaning wall to wall carpeting. Our job as carpet cleaners is always assured because people don’t vacuum as often as they should. I mean, who has time to vacuum every other day, anyway?!

Now because area rugs have such a tight weave/pile and they are loose, vacuuming is not as effective. Those non-soluble soils get worked down into the base of the rugs and even the most powerful of commercial vacuums cannot reach them. Rugs that have a lot of foot traffic get those soluble soils embedded deeply! While regular vacuuming is still really important, the most important step cannot be effectively completed in your home! Left alone those sharp sandy soils cause damage to your fibers and accelerate aging. So as with wall to wall Carpet, removing the dry soils is the first and most important step leading us to…

REASON ONE

…why you should not trust a carpet cleaner who insist on cleaning your rug in your home. The removal of dry soils is not possible without the heavy equipment you find in a wash plant.

REASON TWO

…doesn’t need such a long-winded explanation – as I have already gone into a lot of it to explain reason number one.

Without water, you cannot remove the soluble soils and you can’t get an area rug too wet in a home that does not have a controlled way to dry said rug. The amount of moisture that you can use when cleaning a rug in someone’s home is not enough to remove the soluble soil. You can remove maybe 20% of it.

REASON THREE

An additional factor that prevents you from removing soluble soil, is that the equipment designed to penetrate loosely woven fiber with rigid backing is not designed to penetrate tightly woven fibers with a loose soft backing. So the minimal amount of water that can be used when steam cleaning an area rug only reaches the surface of the rug. It is the same principle that applies to the vacuuming situation. The fibers are just too close together.

REASON FOUR

Drying. The biggest rookie mistake in carpet cleaning is over wetting carpeting. Usually when you over a synthetic wall-to-wall carpet, the results are not detrimental.Usually.  However, when you over-wet, a natural fiber or a thick pile area rug, you will cause damage. Slow drying natural fibers can lead to mildew, mold, and on wool, a very unpleasant smelling fungus called

 Keratinophilic. Penicillin also grows on wool. All of these things can be very damaging to natural fibers and can cause permanent staining.  

So the inability to control drying makes cleaning carpets in your home risky. Some rugs react badly to water and will turn yellow from cellulosic browning. Rugs such as viscose, bamboo silk, banana silk and other types of rayon need to be cleaned very carefully and dried quickly.

REASON FIVE

Fiber identification is much more complicated on area rugs than it is on carpeting. Carpeting generally can be determined to be wool, or synthetic. Area Rugs can be blends of natural fibers such as cotton, jute, leather, silk and wool, with synthetic fibers such as polypropylene, rayon, viscose, bamboo silk, acrylic, nylon, and the list goes on. Misidentifying a fiber on an area rug and proceeding to clean it in the home can have disastrous results.

So again – the top five reasons you should question a cleaner offering to quickly clean your rug while he is doing your carpeting:

1. Sufficient removal of dry soils is not possible in your home.
2. You can not use enough moisture to properly remove soils in your rug.
3. Carpet Cleaning equipment cannot penetrate deeply to clean further than the surface of your rug
4. If enough water is used to clean the rug, it is not possible to dry it rapidly enough to avoid fungal growth.
5. Many rugs simply cannot be cleaned safely in your home without causing damage to your rug.