A carpet cleaner e-mailed me with a chemical usage problem. He's using a standard rotary machine to encapsulate with. I thought my reply to his question could be helpful to some of you here.
Here's his problem...
"Last nite i went over a rug we cleaned on Saturday using (name removed, it's a brand we don't sell) sample encapsulate. This morning every where I released the chemical from the shampoo bucket I now have a 4 inch wide yellowed /brown streak. the areas in between look quite good. I now have serpentine marks on the 30 feet of hallway I experimented with . Getting closer to buying one of your cimex. any suggestion in the meantime .I am guessing that I put too much chemical and water down in the areas that i was flowing chemical. tonight I thought I would spray on the encapsulate and then rotary a more accurate dispensing method.? what are your thoughts."
Here's my reply...
You hit the nail on the head about product usage. You must be very controlled in your usage. You could pre-spray it down but this will take more time. And it will still be hard to control your usage. There are areas that require a slightly heavier degree of product. You determine what you need as you're running the machine. So using a secondary sprayer will make it harder to get the correct amount where you need it. You need to get smoother with the flow of solution. With SV M&B or CD you’ll just need enough solution to lightly wet the fiber. At the point where the tips of the fiber turn white is the upper threshold for usage. If you will feather out the solution you will get good results. Also when you stop the machine you'll need to spin on DRY carpet for a few seconds to dry out the pad or brush. If you leave the machine parked with a wet pad you're going to soak that spot.
If a brown condition occurs this can be caused by dry soil that is impacted in the fiber that can't be removed with pre-vacuuming/pile-lifting (it happens sometimes). In this case you can use some Bridgepoint citric acid powder. On these trouble carpets I'll add a capful of the powder to a 3-gallon bucket of Spin Vac. No browning will occur and it doesn't affect the cleaning.
Hope this info is useful to you all.Rick Gelinas
