The four or five previous times I’ve rented a rug doctor I’ve bought the 12 dollar bottle of rug doctor soap/cleaner/whatever, as I assumed it was the equivalent of detergent for a washing machine. Then yesterday I rent one to clean up some water from a leak, and without the soap, the water that came out was just as filthy as it was the previous times I used it with the cleaner. Is the soap a scam, or does it serve any purpose that you can’t get with just hot water?
My 2¢:
The cleaner does help, but it leaves a lot of soap in the carpet, which leads to the carpet getting dingy again very quickly. Hot water, combined with the residual soap will work just fine until all the soap is extracted. Of course, you may want to pre-spot any stains.
I was not all that impressed with the cleaning solution. I use hot water mostly, and sometimes a small amount of lemon scented Mr Clean because I like the smell. Mostly, the cleaning needs to be of the non-foaming type because foaming cleaners fill the tank with bubbles which triggers whatever the mechanism is that turns the cleaner off because the tank is full.
I have a buddy who’s dad was in charge of carpet cleaning for the County of Los Angeles.
When he used a rental machine, he would use the soap, and on tough stains use a scrubber (pic) By dipping it in a pan of soap solution the scrubbing the stain.
Then he would go over the entire carpet with the soap solution.
Finally he would go over the carpet once or twice more with just water, until the extracted liquid was both clean and soap free.
The de-foaming agent for the recovery tank will prevent problems with foam.
