Types of Carpet Cleaning Methods used by Companies

While you are spoilt for choices when selecting carpet cleaning company for your home or business, it is important to understand the different types of carpet cleaning methods used by different companies as not all carpet cleaning methods work for your carpet.

Here are the types of carpet cleaning in the market:

Hot Water Extraction Cleaning

Commonly known as steam carpet cleaning, hot water extraction cleaning use high pressured hot water to agitate the carpet fibre and dissolve dirt in the carpet.

Hot water extraction cleaning typically involves application of cleaning agent on soiled surface, agitation of carpet with brush and followed by rinsing. After cleaning agent settle in the carpet for a short duration, the carpet will be “washed” by a carpet cleaning equipment to rinse the cleaning agent thoroughly and finally left to dry in room or air conditioned temperature

An average sized carpeted office of 3000 sq ft would normally take about 2 hours to clean and will take at least 4 hours to dry. Most cleaning companies would advise carpet to be cleaned in the late afternoon so that after cleaning is done, the carpet can be left to dry over night and office operation can resume back to normal the next morning.

Bonnet Cleaning

High-moisturised equipment has been used along with an absorbent pad dipped in a cleaning agent to spruce up the upper surface or fibre of the carpet. A bonnet cleaning method is used by professionals to absorb dust, grime, soil and dirt from the upper layer of your delicate floor coverings using a cutting-edge machine.

It utilises the cleaning product, which is mixed with carbonated water and then used as a spray over the carpet. After that, professionals will attach the absorbent pad with the floor machine to get rid of soil and dirt from the surface of the carpet. The machine absorbs all the dust and dirt and leaves your carpets sparkling clean.

This method is ideal for companies and hotels because it quickly washes the carpets without disturbing the clients, guests and visitors. However, bonneting doesn’t clean the floor coverings deeply, but most of the carpet owners prefer to use this cleaning method as a temporary solution.

Dry Cleaning

This is one of the latest cleaning methods and has gained increasing popularity and approvals by leading carpet manufacturers because of its effective cleaning performance and convenience as it doesn’t require drying time. This involves the use of specialized machines to clean carpets with recently developed chemical technologies that permit no-moisture, or very low moisture cleaning, resulting in carpet beautification, and removal of stains, dirt, sand, and allergen.

Carpet Shampooing:

Shampooing of carpet may seem to clean heavily soiled carpet, the technology’s disadvantage is it leaves behind high amount of wet foam residues in the carpet and takes a long time to dry, becomes sticky when it dries because no rinsing is done after shampooing and rapid re-soiling of carpet, which makes this method less popular than the others.

DRY FOAM: This method is very similar to shampooing in that relies on the aggressiveness of the brushing action, which is usually counter-rotating cylindrical brushes. The only difference is that the solution is whipped into a foam and applied right before the brushes instead of a liquid as in shampooing.

Preconditioning: Applying preconditioning agents to the carpet hot early in the process allows time to bond with the soil particles and easier to remove afterward. This helps to loosen up stubborn dirt. The choice of preconditioning agent depends on the carpet ‘s fabric. You may want to use alkaline solutions when working with synthetic fiber carpets and a mildly acidic solution like diluted acetic acid on woolen carpets.

Encapsulation:

Foam encapsulation use synthetic detergents as a base that will crystallize into powder form when dries. Loosened dirt particles in carpet fibre will be encapsulated into powder once the applied cleaning foam dries and, finally, vacuumed or brushed when the foam dries after cleaning.

The froth encapsulation cleaning method has overtaken carpet shampooing technology as the former uses less water during cleaning which result in shorter drying time compared to the carpet shampooing. The froth encapsulation cleaning has gotten thumbs up by those who advocate using of eco-friendly products since there is less chemical residue left out after cleaning when compared with carpet shampooing.

Even though this method has shown good cleaning results, this cleaning method is not in a position to clear heavy soiling carpet due to the technology’s limitation.

DRY FOAM

This method is very similar to shampooing in that relies on the aggressiveness of the brushing action, which is usually counter-rotating cylindrical brushes. The only difference is that the solution is whipped into a foam and applied right before the brushes instead of a liquid as in shampooing.

Preconditioning

Applying preconditioning agents to the carpet hot early in the process allows time to bond with the soil particles and easier to remove afterward. This helps to loosen up stubborn dirt. The choice of preconditioning agent depends on the carpet ‘s fabric. You may want to use alkaline solutions when working with synthetic fiber carpets and a mildly acidic solution like diluted acetic acid on woolen carpets.