Last night I travel 1 hour 45 minutes to clean a carpet I hadn't seen before. Okay, okay....I know...that's my first mistake. Originally it was 6500 sq. feet, then dropped to 3,500 square feet. When I get there, it's actually 8,470 square feet. So I'm already Pi**ed. It's also supposedly not very soiled. Wrong again. I took this guy's perception because I clean alot of carpet for him and he's usually right on the money. Of course, most of it is local so I can check it out myself. Anyway, I get started, mad as he** obviously. I vacuum and then begin to Cimex using Releasit. After my first couple of runs, I noticed the carpet looks awful. The traffic lanes which were dirty before are now black. I adjust my flow and keep going, probably doing 1,800 to 2,220 square feet. I'm not happy. It's the worst looking carpet job I've done. Not to mention my fresh fiber plus pads are now worn down and beginning to turn black. I call the office manager and advise her of the situation and that there is no way I can finish this job tonight. She is very nice and we talk for about 10 minutes. I ask her when the last time was they had the carpet cleaned which turns out it was about 1 to 1 1/2 years ago. Who did it and what did he use? His name was Joseph Arrington. She tried to call him this time but he's out of business (surprise). By the way, if any of you Raleigh guys know him, shoot me an email about his practices. She tells me he used some system with no water. Ahh! Some type of dry clean or Capture method I figure. Seems he surface cleaned and left the dirt in the carpet for me to turn to mud when I cleaned. There's no doubt in my mind he used something on this carpet that is now messing me up. I've done enough carpet, both hwe and encap to know something is wrong here. Any suggestions. I tried dry passes numerous times. I think I'm gonna have to hwe. My question is will my Grand Slam prespray break up both the dirt and his mess, or do I need a different prespray? It'll be next weekend or the one after before I can get back to this job. Thanks for all help. I can usually figure out what I need to do, but I admit, this one's got me stumped.
For a humerous aside to this story, the guy who turned me on to the job owns a cleaning service and is a great guy. However, he delves too much sometimes. While he and I were talking on the phone after I left, he was saying, "The problem is not what the other guy used, but whether or not we can get the carpet clean". I got a little miffed and told him that the problem is EXACTLY what did the other guy do this carpet that is now becoming my problem! I've cleaned enough commercial glue down to know this ain't normal.
Thanks for all forthcoming advice!

Hi Kevin,

If it was Capture you would see the little sponges in the vacuum. Check your vacuum if have not dumped it yet. If you have, when you go back vacuum again and look. They are easy to spot. If none there, then you know that is not the problem. Sound like this may be a job for a pile lifter. Or maybe you could just use the Mex with just the brushes, no water, to go over the carpet and pull the pile apart, then vacuum. If then you do not pull up a lot of dry particulate soil, then you that is not the problem. I think this all boils down to is that you may need to hwe this particular job. Slowly and overlapping strokes, half the wand width. A good Olifin pre spray and maybe a little booster may do the trick. With out actually seeing it is hard to tell. Maybe this is a help to you.

Bob

Kevin I used to use Jon Don's Matrix Grand Slam and it was not good on nasty stuff like your describing. I went to Attack by Cross American boosted with Citrus Solve and it has been great in these situations I'm sure there are others but when I find something that works I stick to it. But the grand slam I threw out. Good Luck

Kevin,

Let me start by sharing a little slogan that we have joked about in our company since back in the day when we used to clean a chain of putrid family shoe stores that weren't fit for barnyard animals. The stores were sooo nasty, that we used to joke that we were going to change our slogan to... "we care as much about your business as you do". What this meant was... if you care so little about your business that you let it become a toilet, then we can care as little about it too. Then on the other hand, if you're at all interested in taking care of your business, we can share that same level of interest by providing a quality service. Well we never actually adopted that slogan, but it made us feel better to say it amongst ourselves whenever we had to service one of these dumpster carpets

Now getting to your carpet. Yours is a story of ABUSE! Neglected CGD (commercial glue down) carpet can become impossible to clean. Here's the problem that develops when a CGD is neglected.

1. The loops of fiber get crushed and compacted with normal wear.
2. Dirt builds up at the base of the carpet beneath the compacted loops.
3. If the carpet is not maintained, dirt becomes trapped in the area beneath the compacted loops.

It comes down to this:
There's absolutely no way in the world to eliminate the build-up of crud at the base of the tufts of fiber. Those compacted nubs can permanently trap the soil and there's no way to get it out. A Pile Lifter won't touch it, a Steamin Demon at 3-4 gallons of water per minute can't flush it all out, a fire breathing truckmount isn't able to correct the problem, NOTHING will fix the problem entirely. The condition can be improved only moderately at best, but the condition will persist and continue to present a problem.

However the Cimex and Releasit can work relative wonders on this type of PROBLEM CGD carpet. This is why encap is so successful in the commercial sector. Here's the formula to follow on a problem CGD carpet:
1) Pre-Vacuum SLOWLY with a good commercial vacuum - north-south east-west.
2) Mix the Encap-Clean DS with HOT water at 4 oz per gallon.
3) Mix a traffic lane Pre-Spray using Encap-Clean DS at 6 oz per gallon. Or use Encap-Punch as a Pre-Spray according to the label. Spray the worst areas and allow a few minutes of dwell time.
4) Apply the gray colored FiberPlus Max pads to your Cimex.
5) Scrub SLOWLY (really take your time). Carefully AVOID over-wetting the carpet! Make 1 wet pass followed by 2 or 3 SLOW dry passes.
6) After you're finished with the scrubbing, run back over the carpet and make one more quick dry pass over the worst areas.
7) Speed up the drying process by running HVAC, ceiling fans, and blowers.
8) If the carpet is still behaving like a pig, do some post-bonneting to pull out some additional soil.

These steps will enable you to do a decent job of resuscitating a pooped out (or pooped on) CGD carpet. If you'll follow these steps to the letter, taking your sweet ol' time you can bring some NASTY carpets back to life. You won't be able to clean a NASTY carpet at the speeds you mentioned above, instead you'll need to be down in the 1,000 sq ft range, maybe even slightly slower. Rome wasn't built in a day, and this carpet wasn't destroyed in a day either, so you're not gonna be able to perform a miracle and resurrect it in a few minutes. But if you'll SLOWLY follow the steps above, you should be able to nurse a stinker like this back to an acceptable appearance level.

I hope this info helps ya. Don't forget to mutter under your breath while you're cleaning... "we care as much about your business as you do"







Rick Gelinas
encapman

Thanks to all for your responses! Rick, I believe you have my card # on file. Please send me a case of those pads! Thanks.

Thanks anyway. I realized that at that pace, it would take me about 2 nights. If it was local, no problem. I have declined the job.

It appears that you'd likely "care MORE about their business than they do", which could invariably lead you to an unprofitable encounter. If a trashed carpet isn't priced accordingly, they may not be worth pursuing.

Here's another little phrase that I've often thought of when I evaluate a commercial account. It comes from the old Steely Dan song - Throw Back The Little Ones...

"Throw back the little ones
and pan fry the big ones
use tact, poise and reason
and gently squeeze them."

Ponder those words a bit, they apply well to the types of accounts you go after.




Rick Gelinas
encapman