Carpet Cleaning
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Commercial carpet cleaning, specialist or cleaning contractor?
We have recently been in correspondence with local authority and large commercial property managers with a view to carpet and upholstery cleaning, many of which currently include carpet and upholstery cleaning in their general cleaning specification.
This often ends with a non qualified or supervised staff stumbling through large areas of carpet cleaning using basic equipment and chemicals, often creating future problems, actually reducing the life of the carpet itself.
More often than not, no pre vacuum takes place, the machine is filled with large quantities of detergent, which will often re-attract large amounts of soil and dust due to the solutions sticky properties. The machine will often leave too much water and solution in the carpet, soaking the dry solids left in the carpet, which will produce mud at the fibre base.
Qualified and specialised carpet cleaning will give up to 4x longer carpet life expectancy, this long term attitude saves large quantities of money in replacement carpet costs, this may sound a little dramatic, but this is fact.
Many carpets found in commercial or local authority properties are low profile, this type of carpet will often benefit alternative carpet cleaning (low moisture or encapsulation) specialist knowledge of fibres will enable the correct cleaning method to be selected, delivering long lasting, better results.
The old saying ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ really does apply in many industries, including cleaning, some companies offer deep cleaning in kitchens, others offer steam cleaning services in hospitals, dealing with problems such as MRSA, employing a qualified and specialist carpet cleaning company really makes prudent economic sense!
With so many carpet & upholstery companies, which one do you chose?
Open any directory or newspaper, in each individual trade section, dozens of companies offer their services, but which one do you call?
Here are a few points that will hopefully ensure you find a professional company.
Ask for insurance - Comprehensive treatments risk insurance is required to cover upholstery, rug and carpet cleaning. If someone offers third party liability insurance, this will NOT provide correct cover.
Trade Qualifications - Find out if your local carpet cleaner is a member of the National Carpet Cleaners Association (NCCA) this is the only recognised qualification relating to carpet, rug and upholstery cleaning.
Recommendations - Simply ask your prospective carpet cleaner for local endorsements, this is an excellent way of sourcing information about your carpet cleaner.
Solutions - Many quality carpet cleaning companies offer non toxic and non re-soiling cleaning. These
state of the art cleaning products will effectively clean your carpets but will avoid the use of aggressive (fuming) chemicals.
First impressions- A carpet cleaning operator arriving at your property in a clean, sign written van wearing a smart uniform suggests a smart job.
Site survey - A carpet & upholstery cleaning survey will provide a customer with detailed quotation for any cleaning service required, measurements and individual cleaning specifications protect you as the customer.
In our industry some carpet cleaners operate a ‘Bait & Switch‘ system, this is as it sounds, an attractive price will be offered to the customer, when cleaning starts, reasons will be sought to inflate the price, in certain cases, this can multiply the original price by five.
Carpet cleaning - communication is key.
After cleaning carpets for more than twenty years, looking back at the huge changes in equipment, solutions, technology and communication, its hard to believe how we managed before.
When we first started our business, photocopied leaflets and linage advertisements were used to tell everyone in our area about our services. We also relied on our answer phone, with mobile phones yet to be introduced, picking up our messages when I arrived home was a regular part of the day. ( we wouldn’t be without our mobile phones today by the way)
Word of mouth is as important today as it was twenty years ago, we strive to produce top results and improve our services, this often will gain favourable comments from our customers, which in turn generates new clients.
The importance of a long term view in carpet cleaning (or any other other business) should not be overlooked, people like a trusted relationship with any trades person. A carpet cleaner’s job is probably one of the most personal trade experience a customer may have. Our job is to move items of furniture throughout the home, in the bedroom, conservatory, bathroom, study, lounge, almost everywhere! This is why honesty and discretion HAS to be at the top of our list of importance.
As I am tapping on our lap-top now, I personally realise the impact of the Internet, potential customers can find a wealth of information in the comfort of their own home, often in seconds. Google, MSN, Yahoo and many other search engines will enable customers to locate us, and hopefully find the information they are looking for. A well designed website is a crucial tool in our communication with people in our community, particularly when quotations for cleaning rugs, carpets or upholstery are required quickly. Our online quotation form enables people to receive cleaning quotations on the day our form is submitted.
After carpet and upholstery cleaning
After years of cleaning carpets and upholstery, little is ever mentioned (or known) about what happens when the job is done, here is an experience I had today with a regular customer of ours.
We clean many properties, domestic homes, pubs, hotels, nursing homes, hospitals and many more, today I found myself cleaning carpets at a private hospital, an unfortunate client of theirs had seriously cut their foot. We were called in to deal with a large blood spillage.
On first inspection, it was quite clear that the patient hadn’t realised initially that she had cut herself, there were dark red footprints all over the carpet.
We applied our cleaning solution to the affected area, using our contra rotating brush machine to agitate the areas affected. After this, we extracted the area using cold water (using cold water on bloodstains is very important) we repeated this process until all traces of blood had vanished. The housekeeper was extremely pleased and relieved that the situation was over, this was true, but unfortunately my day was not to end for at least another hour.
When arriving back to our premises, on went my rubber gloves and plastic apron, the cleaning of my equipment was about to start.
Firstly I had to remove the brushes on our brush machine, carefully placing them in a sanitising solution. After this, my vacuum pipe is connected to our machine, more water and disinfecting solution is sucked into the machine, flooding into our recovery chamber, this process is repeated for several minutes. After this, the suction pipe is removed, I then jet wash our the recovery tank wearing protective goggles.
If we clean carpets, rugs or upholstery when hazardous spillages have occur ed, this is the cleaning regime we need to employ when we return to base, our customers never see this, these are the safe procedures that HAVE to be followed.