How to Maintain Your Commercial Carpet
Regular carpet maintenance can enhance your indoor air quality and prevent your carpet’s appearance from deteriorating prematurely. Because preventative maintenance is less expensive and more effective than infrequent restorative cleaning, we recommend that you:
- Vacuum and spot clean your carpet daily.
- Implement a preventive maintenance program.
- Use hot water extraction to restore heavily soiled carpet.
1. Vacuum and spot clean your carpet daily
Accelerated carpet wear occurs when traffic grinds imbedded soil into the carpet fiber. You can extend your carpet’s life by placing walk-off mats at exterior entrances and vacuuming traffic areas thoroughly every day.
Only about 20% of carpet soil is soluble in water or solvent. You can remove much of the remaining 80% (fibers and particles) by vacuuming thoroughly every day, emphasizing heavy-soil areas like entrances (refer to the maintenance plan on the back for more guidance). Your vacuum should have a powered brush and strong suction.
To ensure spots are removed promptly, give your daily cleaning staff a carpet first aid kit containing:
- Dry cleaning solvent (e.g. perchloroethylene)
- Detergent solution (a teaspoon of non-bleach powder in a cup of water)
- Ammonia solution to neutralize acid stains (a tablespoon of ammonia in a cup of water)
- Vinegar (of citric acid) solution to neutralize alkaline stains (1/3 white vinegar, 2/3 water)
- White absorbent cloths or paper towels.
SPOT REMOVAL GUIDE
Spots and Stains removal is most diffiult step in carpet maintenance, which can be seen as a science. If spots and stains could be treated properly, it can retain a good appearance. Otherwise it will bring permanent damage to carpet or let it be color-fade or color-changing. Therefore, it need a careful plan to remove spots and stains and treat them seriously. Here are several tips that may help.
- Scrape off all solid materials with a spatula or a spoon.
- Blot up all excess liquid with a white clean towel.
- Apply certain amount of corresponding cleaning agent onto the treated area for 3 minutes.
- Using towel to work from the edges into the center of the stain.
- Using dry towel to remove the stain.
- Dry Stains: Vacuum thoroughly to remove dry stains. Don’t use liquid.
- Wet Stains: Blot with absorbent white cloth, paper towel or use spatula to remove excess then blot. For larger spills, a portable extraction unit or wet/dry vacuum is most effective for removing spilled liquids.
- Dried Stains: Gently remove as much as possible of the substance using a small, soft hand brush or spatula to break up any crusted material. Vacuum thoroughly to remove loosened particles.
