How to choose a carpet cleaner?

Choosing a local carpet cleaner can be a difficult challenge for home owners and facilities management teams. With so much choice and the ease of contacting cleaners in your area using the internet – finding someone may be easy, but finding someone who will provide a quality service is still a challenge.

Recommendations can be a great starting point, but what if you have recently moved to a new area? Maybe you manage cleaning contracts for an expanding business with more and more  cleaning contracts to fill, and would prefer to learn a little more about the process to be better informed and capable of assessing those companies applying or tendering for the work/contract? 

Hopefully you will find the following points useful in your decision making process. Whether you are a domestic customer just looking to ask the right questions on the phone before booking a carpet cleaning service provider or maybe you just want to know the key information to be able to compare apples for apples before you choose, I will try to cover the most important considerations to keep in mind:

1. Full training and knowledge of chemicals and safety issues

• It goes without saying that quality carpet cleaning equipment is bulky and often very heavy, so the right training is required to move and store the machinery safely without risk to your home or workplace.
• Carpet cleaning systems are powered by van mounted engines or mains electricity, which of course require training and high standards of care to safely provide your cleaning service
• All carpet cleaning chemicals require training and mixing to the correct concentrations in order to be safe for the carpet fibres and users of the premises, this is especially important in areas where children may come into contact with the carpet
• Over-applying or misuse of chemicals on the wrong fibres can cause rapid re-soiling of the carpet (because soap residues are sticky), permanent discolouration of carpet fibres or even complete loss of patches of the carpet caused by aggressive solvents loosening the bond between the fibres and the rubber/polymer backing
• To apply for membership of TACCA, carpet cleaning providers have to be well trained and be able to prove certification from the major cleaning and restoration training providers
• Insurance: Members of TACCA also have to prove full insurance to cover any unlikely damages – so by choosing a TACCA member, you have extra peace of mind.

2. The right equipment to do the job

To effectively clean carpets and remove deep-set stains we rely on 3 essential elements: heat, agitation and chemicals.

Cleaning Chemicals: Trained cleaning service providers care about the environment and your health so we only ever use the appropriate solutions for the job.

• Whereas some cleaning companies will cut corners to reduce the amount of agitation (grafting) required, by using very strong aggressive chemicals that speed up the job but risk long-term damage to the carpets and increase the likelihood of rapid re-soiling
• Trained professionals such as ourselves appreciate that to be safe and also eco friendly, whilst still delivering a great result, means we have to use use the minimum quantity and strength of cleaning chemicals, whilst using higher temperatures, suction and more effective agitation of the carpet fibres

Carpet Agitation Equipment: All TACCA members use carpet cleaning agitation machines to loosen soils deep down in the carpet pile, without proper agitation your carpets will appear clean at first, but are at risk of wicking and rapid re-soiling caused by residual dirt particles left at the base of the pile

Carpet Extraction Equipment: Small rental carpet cleaning machines only clean the surface and lack the power and suction to provide a deep clean. Although your carpet may look clean at the time, it won’t be long before walking on it makes the deeply embedded dirt seep back up to the top and any residue of cleaning chemicals will also be left to attract dirt

• Loosened dirt and solution is recovered from deep in the carpet pile using high temperature water jets sent through the extraction wand and immediately extracted under high pressure using powerful vacuum extraction systems, taking moisture along with any soiling out of the carpet
• Powerful suction to effectively recover all the moisture and soiling from the carpet is essential to minimise any residue of chemcials or moisture, which if left over-wet can cause problems such as mould, distortion and damage caused by shrinking
• This is why all TACCA members have to own the necessary equipment, including twin-motor extraction machines with at least 135psi pressure to join.

Drying equipment: In many cases it can be difficult to ensure completely dry carpets immediately after wet extraction cleaning, especially when taking care to thoroughly rinse chemical residues

• So a slightly damp finish is completely normal and absolutely fine and will dry out naturally in a heated building over 1 to 6  hours
• In some situations often with deep pile carpets, the drying process needs to be sped-up to ensure that the carpet will dry within a 6 hour window (over-wet carpets will begin to develop bacteria & smell)
• To speed up drying we use fan heaters or high performance air movers, which circulate air flow over the carpet, encourage drying and ensure we leave you with a carpet that will be dry within a few hours of completion

Just like all other TACCA members, we have invested heavily and trained hard to ensure we continually provide the best possible Carpet Cleaning service to our valued customers.

To find your nearest TACCA member: use the postcode search box at the top of every page.

Watch the new TACCA infomercial below: