Carpet Care

Carpets are beautiful, comfortable and warm. Used and cared for properly, they can last many years, and be a source of great pride and joy. But if not cared for, unsightly damage can cause many headaches. The most important part of any carpet care – vacuuming – should be frequent and thorough. Some studies show that good vacuuming can remove up to 70% of soils in a textured plush carpet. Depending on use and location, carpets should be cleaned professionally once a year, and spot cleaned as necessary in the meantime.

Soiling/Spotting

Spotting is a normal part of carpet use. Whether its source is a spill, a seep, or just general tracking, all carpets will build up soil over time. Cleanup can often be handled quickly, and without a professional carpet cleaning.

First, check your spot. Is it lighter than the carpet? If so, what you have is bleaching. This does not mean that chlorine bleach was necessarily the source. The sun, pet spots, and many household cleaners can have a bleaching effect on certain carpets. However, bleaching must be color-repaired. Call us at (406) 782-5339, and we’ll send a certified technician to come repair it.

On the other hand, if the spot is darker than the carpet, it may clean relatively simply, using just a cleaning agent and a towel. We recommed our bottled spotters, which you can pick up for free at our shop at 101 Gallatin, Butte, MT. Whatever agent you use, insure that you do not over-apply, preferably applying the agent to a rag, and then using the rag to apply to the spot. Be careful not to agitate the spot, but instead use a dabbing method to lift the soiling. Excessive agitation, especially agitation in a circular motion can cause fibers of your carpet to unravel, resulting in unsightly and often permanent damage.

Wear

Like all things, carpets wear out as they age. Depending on your carpet type, this can take several forms. For instance, if you have a frieze/shag carpet, often fibers may pull loose, resulting in uneven knap. These carpets are also known to have issues in high traffic areas, including pooling – a distortion of the pile which can result in your carpets looking dirty even when clean. On the other hand, most textured plush/cut pile carpets, wear well. When they do have issues, it is often in the form of pile distortion in traffic areas. Many synthetic berber/loop pile carpets wear like steel and clean well, but when a fiber pulls, it can cause a run that may cross your entire carpet, and is nearly impossible to repair.

When wear does appear, there are a few tricks that a professional carpet cleaning – provided by a company like Fine Fabric Care – can provide, and hide some of the more obvious effects. However, even these can often not be guaranteed, and you should consider whether the carpet should be replaced, or if you can live with the damage.

Why A Professional, Certified Carpet Cleaning?

There are many methods that can be used to clean your carpets. Why use a professional, certified company like Fine Fabric Care? Each carpet is unique. There are many different styles of pile, materials, backing, and pad. IICRC certified technicians have been trained to identify your particular carpet and adjust their cleaning method to maximize soil removal while ensuring that no damage is done. With an investment as large as your home or business’ carpets, it is important that the care given is the care needed. For this reason, most industry professionals recommend using a certified carpet cleaning company – such as Fine Fabric Care – to clean your carpets on a regular basis.

What to Expect From Your Carpet Cleaning

Fine Fabric Care uses a multiple step process to inspect, identify, clean, and protect your carpet. This begins with a walk-through with the owner, in which the technicians take note of the types of carpet they will be facing, the level of soiling and wear they will have to address, and the potential trouble they will have. During this time they can determine the cleaning agents they will need, and the speed at which cleaning must be accomplished. Immediately after this walkthrough, the technician(s) will vacuum the carpet thoroughly, set up the truck-mounted cleaner (which will require a hook-up to a water source at the house or business), run hoses into the building, protect corners from these hoses if danger exists of damaging them, apply a pre-treatment, and address spots that will need extra attention. The truck takes regular cold water, heats it to the appropriate temperature, adds cleaning agents, pressurizes it, applies it to the carpet, extracts it back out of the carpet along with the now captive soil, and deposits it into a 100 gallon tank onboard the truck. This process is carefully monitored, both by the technician and the truck-mounted equipment to ensure the proper temperature, cleaning agents, and extraction are applied to all areas.

After cleaning itself has been completed, the technician(s) will block up any wood and metal furniture with styrofoam or plastic tabs. They may also apply a protector, and groom the carpet to give it a uniform appearance. Most carpets take between 4 and 8 hours to dry, although this can vary widely based on external and internal humidity, carpet thickness, and the level of aggressiveness needed to clean the carpets. Generally you may walk lightly on the carpets immediately after the cleaning, but it is recommended that you wear footies (which Fine Fabric Care provides free of charge), and avoid heavy use, and/or stepping from a dirty surface (like outside) onto your freshly cleaned carpets. Wet carpets accept soil much more quickly than dry carpets.

Your technician from Fine Fabric Care is trained to show the utmost of professionalism and courtesy while in your home. Your satisfaction and comfort is our first priority. We understand the awkwardness of having strangers in your home – we’ve been there – and will do everything we can to make the experience comfortable.

Carpet Cleaning FAQs

How long will it take my carpet to dry? This varies with the method your carpet cleaning technician had to use. Heavily soiled carpets require more aggressive methods, and these methods often take longer to dry. A rough average is between 4 and 6 hours.

Don’t cleaned carpets soil faster? The carpet cleaning industry has come a long way in the past few years. While older methods left a lot of residual cleaning agents – and therefore would soil quite quickly – new methods continue to improve. Today, clean, dry carpets do not resoil any faster than new carpets.

I just had my carpets cleaned, and they are rippled badly! Don’t panic, this is actually quite common. It occurs when the carpet backing expands from the moisture used to clean, and no longer fits it’s area. The solution? Patience. In a few hours the backing will dry again, and your carpet will look like new. In the meantime, if it is dry outside and a decent temperature, open the windows and let the room breathe. It’ll dry faster, and be less humid.

How often should I have a professional carpet cleaning? The more often you vacuum and clean your carpets, the longer they will last. This is because embedded dirt and debris cuts away at the fibers every time you walk across your carpet. On average, it is recommended that carpets used frequently by a single family be cleaned once a year. Businesses, especially restaurants, may choose to clean their carpets as often as once a month.

Other questions? Concerns? We would love to help! Call us: (406) 782-5339, or visit the homepage to send us an email.