Proper and consistent carpet maintenance is essential to extending the carpet’s life and maintaining optimum appearance and performance level, in addition to a healthy indoor environment. Your carpet is also an added responsibility; as such, you must ensure it receives proper care and maintenance, so it continues adding value and beauty to your home for the years to come. And even carpets in casinos also require the same level of care to ensure that players are always comfortable and stay hooked on the games.
Below is a guide for carpet maintenance that will work you through taking care of carpets.
Daily Carpet Maintenance
Vacuum cleaning is among the most cost-effective and essential elements of an effective carpet maintenance program. Daily vacuuming can eliminate over 80 percent of all dry soil the carpet has accumulated during use. Vacuum cleaning must be scheduled based on the amount of potential dirt that built up in the area.
The standard recommendations for vacuum cleaning frequency of carpets based on traffic areas are:
Light: Once or twice a week
Medium: Twice a week
Heavy: Daily
Suppose your carpet is installed in vast, open areas. In that case, you must use a heavy-duty wide track machine that’s equipped with adjustable cylindrical brushes that will whip the embedded dirt to the surface and the domestic upright vacuum cleaner’s industrial version in tighter areas.
It’s crucial to vacuum your carpet frequently and thoroughly, especially in high traffic areas, to enhance the appearance and prolong your carpet’s life. It would help if you pass the vacuum three times in light soiled areas and five to seven times in heavily soiled areas. Remember to vacuum first against the direction of the pile to help dishevel and remove grit and dirt to reduce matting. When close to finishing, give the vacuum a pass in the pile direction to obtain a uniform finish.
Using a pile lifter vacuum for periodic pile brushing preconditions your carpet and eliminates dry, deeply embedded dirt from high traffic areas, which can be very helpful before carpet cleaning.
Vacuum Type
A good quality vacuum should have an efficient and excellent HEPA micro-filter system to extract fine dust and sustain an ideal indoor climate. Vacuums with micro filter systems guarantee that fine particles (like dust mite allergens ) are extracted and remain in the collection bag (especially if you’re dust sensitive). As a matter of fact, the HEPA filter system removes 99.997 percent of dust, animal scales, pollen, and other particles from the carpet.
Turn the brush off to avoid excess fuzzing, switch the head when vacuuming cut pile, Berber carpet, or loop pile. You should also inspect and adjust the height of beaters if they’re fitted regularly to ascertain that the carpet isn’t damaged due to excessive beating.
For thicker carpets having a higher pile, you may raise the height of beaters or reduce the suction level to make vacuuming easier. Suction efficiency is considerably reduced when the bags are half full, so be sure to frequently change or empty the dust collection bags and replace the filters as suggested by the manufacturer.
Periodic Maintenance
Cleaning
Periodically scheduled carpet extraction cleaning eliminates accumulated soil that hasn’t been removed by spot removal and regular vacuum cleaning. Cleaning the track-off area, congested channels, and transition areas will be required based on the conditions and localized use.
The Chem-Dry Method
The Chem-Dry method involves brushing a hot ( about 60-75 degrees Celcius) Ph-neutral, heavy carbon dioxide aqueous solution onto the carpet and is then absorbed and dried using a cotton disc.
This method is highly efficient, only uses minute amounts of water, doesn’t use any chemicals, and doesn’t soak the carpet backing. The soil is also wiped from the carpet pile and typically has a short drying time (around one to two hours).
Dry Cleaning
Alternative systems like the absorbent compound (Host Dry Extraction) may be utilized if there’s no time for the carpet to dry before it has to be used again.
Post-Cleaning
After cleaning the carpet, you should check it for possible remaining marks, as these stains must be treated. Don’t let anyone walk on your carpet until it’s fully dry. The carpet also has to be dry before you put the furniture back in place.
Spot Cleaning
You can minimize the damage from spills by taking immediate action. As soon as a spill happens, it would help if you blotted it with an absorbent, clean, white towel, and you must repeat this process until the spill gets completely absorbed. Keeping a professional spot removal kit like the Chem-Dry Spot Remover on hand is a must.
There are also available lightweight and portable extractors for the efficient removal of spills. The portable extractors will assist in thoroughly eliminating spills.
Caution
The first time a stain remover or cleaning agent is used on a carpet, it must be examined to know whether it could harm the carpet. Damages can happen as a result of bleaching, color bleed, dissolution, and discoloration.
How to Protect Your Carpet
To keep your carpet from being damaged, consider placing doormats at the outside doorways. Furthermore, it would help if you used chair pads and furniture coasters beneath chairs with castors and occasionally move the furniture to relieve pressure marks. Use rugs to protect the carpet while in high traffic areas. Lastly, protect your carpet from prolonged periods under direct sunlight using blinds or curtains.