As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m having a little problem with my girlfriend’s dogs peeing on the floor. I tried cleaning the carpets with a Bissell machine I borrowed from my aunt, which ended up kind of messy and smelly because I left the machine full overnight, halfway done with the dining room, and it leaked a huge smelly puddle which didn’t dry for a few days and smelled for a week or two. So after all of that, I called Sears to come clean the carpets more thoroughly, for $130 (!). Of course, when he came, the guy from Sears said I shouldn’t bother with the home machines, and instead spend money on him twice a year. So two questions:
Is one definitely better than the other? His equipment didn’t look any better than what I have (don’t snicker, kids) and the Bissell even has a roller brush thingy. All Sears guy did was pretreat it.
Does $109 for cleaning + $20 for sanitizing a room seem excessive for a 2 bed, 1 bath, 950 sq ft apartment? My dad said he gets our house in Florida, which is much bigger, cleaned for a lot less.
I was just told by someone who works with carpet professionally that the home steam cleaners are pretty much useless for thorough cleaning, and that my best bet would be to hire professionals when my carpet really needed cleaning. I’m buying a house, see, and it’s got white carpet in the living room. Oh, woe is me…
I have a dog and a carpet cleaning machine (Hoover), and I consider the carpet machine to be absolutely essential. Not only does it shampoo, it also sucks any liquid out of the rug, so you can first vacuum up the pee, then clean the rug.
It’s true that for overall cleaning, a professional does a better job. But when you discover one morning that the dog has had an “accident,” you’re not going to be able to have the carpet people appear on your doorstep in 10 minutes.
I suppose it depends upon the pros. My husband agreed to have our carpet cleaned when he got a telemarketing call. Apparently the “good deal” they offered was just to get them into the door so they could tell me that I needed this and that and the other done. The guy who showed up at my house kept trying to sell me stuff and I told him I couldn’t afford it. He flat-out asked “How much can you afford?” :eek:
Not only did he do a terrible job, his “steam cleaner” didn’t steam - he filled it with my hot tap water, which we didn’t keep all that hot. And it didn’t extract worth a damn - our carpets were wet for 3 days - and that’s with ceiling fans and portable fans running the whole time!
I’ve never owned a carpet cleaner, but when I get my carpets cleaned before putting the house on the market, I’m going to hire the best pros I can find. Dunno how I’m gonna determine that, but I will.
It just seemed like the guy from Sears was cleaning the carpet much more lightly and rapidly than one does with the home machine. Does the professional equipment spray and suck with much more force than the home machine?
Even a ‘cheap’ commercial machine has a 100 psi pump. Coupled with the metal wands used this translates to about 10’ of lift. Cheap of course is a relative term. One of these wil set you back at least $1000.
Contrast this with the best of the hoime machines. These will have a 30 psi pump. With a metal wand this could give about 6’ lift max. With the plastic wands most of them come with you’re lucky to get 4’. And this really is top-of-the line.
The commercial machines also heat the water to much higher temps than the majority of home machines.
The home machines are fantastic for occasional use. However they don’t extract water efficiently and most don’t heat the water near enough. As a result the water get into the backing of the carpet and sits there. This dissolves the crud in the backing and after repeated use his will wick into the carpet fibres, staining the carpet brown.
The best advice is to use the home machines only for very ocasional accidents, and never use them more than twice on any spot.
It just seemed odd that the Sears guy was running the wand over the carpet so quickly and lightly - he wasn’t pushing down on it as he pulled it back, for example, which seemed like it wouldn’t pick up as much of the water. The instructions to the home machine say to run it very slowly on the return so it picks up as much water as possible. Our tap water’s very hot here, and if I use that with the onboard heater (Bssell PowerSteamer ProHeat) it works well, or so says my dad. Do you think the price was excessive?
I agree totally. I am not going to pay for a whole-room cleaning if just one spot is dirty. We have three dogs, and between the rare accidents and the occasional barf, the machine has earned it’s keep. We have a Hoover Steam Vac. I couldn’t really say with any certainty that the carpet was any cleaner after the pros cleaned it. And I get a little oogied when I think about the houses they might have visited before mine - I don’t know how well or how often they clean their machines, but I don’t like other people’s dirt mixing with mine. Maybe that’s just me.
Why are the dogs peeing on the floor? I would address that issue if I were you.
I did - we’re crating them at night now, and have no problems. (I’d link the other thread if I could be bothered to use the search engine - but after asking for advice on how to train a grown dog not to pee on carpet, the jist of people’s advice was positive reinforcement when they go outside (treats) and crate training at night, which is when they were peeing on the floor. They’ve been crated for a week now [not all at once, obviously, but at nights], and we’ve had only one accident since.)
And I noticed when I vacuumed up the pee immediately, it seemed to stain the carpet more severely than if I blotted up most of the urine before running the machine. I assumed the hot water / detergent mix was setting in the stain. Could just be me, though.
It does sound like he was doing a poor job. Pressure on the wand is required to remove the water, as you point out.
As for what is a reasonable price, that varies a lot depending on where you live. It’s certainly within realsitic bounds if a littl eon the high side for some places.
I have a question> If you have brown carpets, how can urine stain them?
Don’t worry. the dirt doesn’t get mixed. The water in commercial machines is strictly single use. It goes into your carpets as clean water and is then sucke dout and dumped into a waste tank. No one else’s water is being used on your house.
I have 4 cats, a dog and a toddler. If I called sears every time I needed the rug cleaned I’d be broke!
I’ve never had my rugs professionally done…so I can’t say how the cost compares.
I have a hoover rug shampooer for when we have big jobs to do (like before we sold our old house and after we bought the new one) Or like saturday when my daughter was sitting on my lap and decided to vomit profusely half way across the room…
I also have a small hand shampooer for when it is just a small spill or something quick and easy.
I’ve always been happy with the job I can do at home. I use pretreater if there is a stained area and then shampoo the whole rug with the soap in the machine. The rugs aren’t damp that long. When I first moved to my old house the guy had pets and the pad was where the smell was. We pulled up the rug, shampooed the pad and returned the rug. Worked really well.
I have a carpet cleaning machine that does OK. The key to this is to have your carpet cleaned professionally, and then do maintenance with your machine every 4 months or so for a couple years. Then have it professionally done again, and so on. The professionals really do a much better job, but once you get the main crud off the carpet, if you keep up with it, the maintenance cleanings will look great. I have puking cats and we both smoke.
The puddles leave a yellow-hued stain, though they’re only really visible if the light’s just right.
Another thing I should mention that came from the other thread: People recommended special solutions for removing the “markers” in the urine so the dogs won’t go back. You can see these with a blacklight, and I don’t know how to get rid of those - I think the Bissell machine just made them worse, since you can see fluorescent tracks left by the wheels as they spread the urine marker stuff around. The Sears guy didn’t get them out either, though.
My father had a carpet-cleaning business and I spent a lot of time helping out. ( which is why most of my home is wood floor. I’m disgusted by carpets.)
But for the little carpet I have, I have had very good results with a Rug Doctor rented from the local grocery store. This is because
(1) I used professional cleaning solvents that I obtained from my father instead of shampoo. I don’t recall what it was, but you might want to go to the trouble of finding out and stocking up a few gallons for future use.
(2) I used a scrubbing brush. This is a brush the same size and shape as a rake that you use to scrub after applying the cleaning chemical. This is what really gets out the stains. You’d have to buy one of these too.
But once you have invested in a brush, the chemical and a sprayer/applicator for the chemical (any of the ones sold for yard work will do), you can clean your carpets as well as any professional for around $25 each time you rent the machine.
True, the PSI is not as high, but you just have to go over it more times. The scrubbing is the essential part.
Urine is a problem though because it seeps into the padding under the carpet and will continue to stink no matter how clean the carpet is. In some cases, you may just have to pull up the carpet and replace the padding.
We’ve got a puppy and a “Spin Scrub” machine (Think it’s made by Hoover)
It’s only drawback is that it doesn’t heat the water. The newer ones do heat. Other than that, we bought it for less that one professional cleaning would have cost, and as someone mentioned earlier, it’s always waiting in the closet to handle the inevitable puppy barf and piddles.
It gets the carpet MUCH drier than any professional cleaning I’ve had - the last time I paid someone money to clean my carpet, everything was damp for days. The Spin Scrub gets the floor walkably dry almost immediately.
To contend with the smells inherent in all the lovely stuff a critter can leave on the floor, “Nature’s Miracle” is the magic stuff - you just need to leave it on for a couple days and keep it moist (Cover the area with plastic wrap) so the enzymes can digest the odor-causing stuff. I see a bad horror flick in the making - Night of the Living Carpet Cleaner! You can also pick up a (I’m not making this up!) “Stink Finder” light at the pet shop - the smelly stuff lights up under UV light, so you know where to target the Nature’s Miracle.