Anyone else using the CIMEX on residential jobs?

yes Bob i have all resi customers and i've been able to use my cimex on a few of them since i've had it 2 weeks or so. I was really impressed with the results. So was the customer, all she could say is wow!! The best thing i like about it is that I get a good workout by having to lift it in and out of my escort wagon. (smile)

Thanks
Your Servant Alex

The little bit of residential I do the Cimex is KING! I even got FANTASTIC results scrubbing in Releasit and rinsing ( not always) with my portable , and you will clean as good as any High powered truckmount, provided you do a few extra "dry " passes with your wand. It also lifts the carpet fibers, when you use the soft brushes.
If I was doing alot of residential, I would get the lighter , more nimble 15 inch Cimex, or wait and see the verdict on the new Windsor dual brush machine. Just my 2 cents.

Bob,

I use my Cimex on residential if the ares are big enough and the access is there. I just got back from a job where I used my 15" rotary w/ FP pads...excellent resuts w/ DS! I also have a Sprint machine which works great for encapping resi!

I use my 19 or 15 inch Cimex on residential a great deal of the time. Often I will follow up with the pilemaster to help groom the carpet or add a little extra cleaning power. I have noticed that the carpet dries faster when I follow up with the pilemaster, perhaps due to the increased areation from the extra brushing action. My customers seem to really like this method of cleaning.

i use my 19" Cimex on every berber i can. my Challenger, while doing an excellent job, it is slow going. my Cimex cuts my time on the job to a third.

last year i was at a job and forgot my Multisprayer. resi living rm, cut-pile with dog urine stains. i poured my UR-Out RTU (ready to use) solution into the Cimex sol tank & scrubbed the carpet. let dwell for 15 minutes, then extracted with the Challenger and wet cotton pads.

BEST urine stain results i've had to date. carpet shined.

for the outraged lurkers (baahaha) , yes u can use bonnets with a 'Mex cotton or synth.


thanx --- Derek.

Derek you are right! those are some very powerful tips man. I'm gonna keep them in my back pocket. Thanks for the direction. I gotta go now to get the rest of it.

Thanks
Your Servant Alex

Bob

When I need to do resi carpet I actually use my marble machine. We don’t do much resi carpet but when we do that’s what we use and it works great.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

On one job i started out by lifting the pile. All the while the customer thought i was shampooing. But when i brought the cimex machine in the customer said in amazement "WHAT IS THAT? I said now its time to clean your carpet. Exellent results!!! Those two are to me, an exellent tag team pieces of equipment. Especially when they're the only two you got. (smile)

Thanks
Your Servant Alex

I prefer my Sprint (on most residential jobs). More nimble and seems to me in the residential setting is faster. I have used my Cimex, just don't like moving around furniture and stuff with it.

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care

If it is residential berber style olefin, I would probably use the Cimex. With the handle in the more upright position it is very easy to get around objects.

I've used the Cimex a lot in residential and it's amazing how great a job you can do and how fast you can do it. I also use the sprint, especially when there is lots of pet hair to deal with. The way the sprint brings the hair to the surface makes customers very please.

Rick Thode
rick@releasit.ca

If the situation arises and there is enough open space and not tooo many stairs....I love my Mex. Cuts production time by more than half. NO prespraying, larger cleaning path than my Challenger, and better scrubbing action...I actually had a NASTY basement Berber to clean the other day, the only access was a very small stair way or a back door, down a hill in the snow. I dragged the Mex through 4" of snow cause I knew it was just what the doctor ordered!!! Hopefully there aren't any tire marks when the snow melts....

Why drag it through snow? just pick it up and carry it!

Hey Bob,
You taught my carpet tech cert. class about 15+ years ago at Excel in Ft. Myers. At that time I told you I was taught by Steve Andrews who used the Cimex and HWE. I have been doing that in resi since 1986 with him. You said if I followed that example I would do well. I did and I did.

I actually have straps on my 'Mex so I can toss her on my back!
...My back actually had a spasm just thinkin about it!

My associate and I had just finished a 900 resi job, customer moved furniture, in about 2 hours at 40 cents per foot. I have probably posted this before: our prime market is 22+ miles of condo towers stretching from St. Pete Beach to Clearwater Beach. Most have western exposure on Gulf of Mexico so lots of olefin to deal with fading. Can't get TM on lots of properties. But liv/din only encompass 300 sq.ft. We also service downtown St. Pete with 16+ condo towers staring at 15 stories. Lotsa stone down there. Some are little tight space wise so i will be picking up my ICAPSOL unit Monday AM. Mark that must have been back in the days when Paul would push his shelves in the warehouse back to the walls and we would have classes there. I vaguely remember Steve Andrews talking about his 16 year old daughter pushing the CIMEX down the halls in the schools while he pulled the 18" STEAM GENIE drag tool hooked to his SG TM. Those were the days eh?

I realize that there ARE situations, such as the one Bob W. described, where you could find yourself without another good option other than using true scrub-n-run encapsulation in residential. I understand that even a well equiped cleaner with multiple tools might find himself with no other choice ... at times. However, to choose encap. cleaning in residential settings when you have HWE or padding choices is to me unprofessional. I can justify encaping commercial carpets because the pile is low and there is no padding, so I figure my vacuum can be reasonably effective at removing the crystals, but residential cut pile, and most berbers, are way too thick for me to believe so.

With all due respect ... you folks have allowed you love of being "different" cloud your better judgement. Or, your lack of proper tools has made you justify some very poor choices.

VLM cleaners are no different than HWE cleaners when it comes to taking the responsibility to propery arm yourselves with the necessary tools of the trade. If you can't swing purchasing and equiping yourself properly to service the residential market, at least have the professional standards necessary to turn down residential work until you can.

I respectfully disagree with your opinion on extraction and encap. I too used to share the same short sited view of systems other than extraction. I ate, slept and probably bled the ideal that if it wasn't extracted, especially with a super heated rug sucker, then it was just moving the dirt around. I got certified with the IICRC with all the typical credentials. I've now been able to see first hand over the course of years were I have literally, side by side, cleaned carpets under various circumstances, including residential, were carpets have not only looked better, but also stay cleaner substantially longer. There has also been tests even involving contaminants like mold spores were the mold spore tests have shown greatly reduced numbers after only being encaped.

Now don't get me wrong, I am a strong believer still in extraction, it's a great tool. One of many that can clean carpets equally well in the hands of a skilled operator.

There are a great number of very proud and talented individuals who frequent this board from many different cleaning backgrounds and biases. I'm sure we all feel that we are the very best carpet cleaners in our areas, but to insult a person by saying that we use inferior systems and are in essence taking advantage of our customers just because I may not share your view of which system is best in a given circumstance is really unfair. My bias may say that I prefer a truck mount manufactured by a particular company, but if you don't share my opinion and use a different truck mount you are not cleaning your customers carpets properly and should save up more money until you can afford a PROPER truck mount. Seems kind of silly doesn't it.

We all take training to offer our customers the very best service we can and use the tools of the trade in the most skilled way possible. When you learn to clean well with your tools and consistanly offer that skill to your customers, you will always be successful. I don't care whether you use a truck mount, portable, bonnet, orbital, cimex or CBM, you have guys that clean well, and others who just screw it all up. Its not the tool, it's the skill of the operator.

As a distributor of Releasit/Cimex in Canada, it's obvious I have a bit of a bias. But, the one thing that I have always said to my customers is this. Lets say that its true, truckmounts extract way more soil (debatable). Now let's say that you take your truckmount in and I take my Cimex in. You clean half, I'll clean half. Yours looks great, takes a few more hours to dry and when it does dry, the carpet isn't quite as brite as when you finished cleaning and you have a couple spots wick back. Now my carpet dries quite quickly, the spots are gone and when the carpet completely dries, it looks a little brighter than when you first finished cleaning. Who do you think the homeowner will more ecstatic with the end result. Who do you think will get called next time? I have traveled across Canada working with many carpet cleaners and this is always the case.

Tools and skill, that is the answer.

Rick Thode
rick@releasit.ca

If you were insulted by my post, then you chose to be. I am merely discussing residential cleaning, and having an opinion is certainly not wrong.

You mentioned having a clean off and how your side of the cleaning would "look" better.

On that we both can agree.

This thread started out about using the CIMEX in residential. Now it is about using encap in residential as opposed to HWE. When I clean residential I use Encap Punch, scrub with my Cimex and then HWE with my 19" drag wand (Yep, I still use it Bob!)with Punch in the extractor. Am I missing something? Who says encap is not compatible with HWE in resi? Those choices are poor only if they don't work.

And Bob, my daughter is 15 and she runs the Cimex.

I really don't personally take it as an insult, I'm simply refering to the insinuation that if I were to chose to use encap residentially, that I may be irresponsible because I could have used extraction or one of your other more prefered methods, rather than mine. I just wouldn't want to tell a person that he was doing an inferior job simply based on his chosen method. That is my only disagreement. We should all be as passionate and proud of what we do and how we do it.

A paint brush is only a paint brush until you put it into the hands of an artist.

The only way that I have learned anything is by some great debates. Please accept this as such and not possibly as harsh as my post might have read.

Rick Thode

Mark:

I certainly am not claiming that encapsulation technology is not compatable with HWE. The two are not mutually exclusive. The way in which you describe cleaning in the residential environment is a very responsible approach, and I applaud you for it. You have properly pretreated the carpet to emulsify the soils, then you have properly rinsed the fibers to EXTRACT the suspended soils and have left an encapsulation rinse to brighten the fibers and encap. any residual soils. Plus, you have left an anti-resoiling barrier on the fibers. Great going!

I could do what you are doing and feel I have ABSOLUTELY given my customer the best possible cleaning!

That was some of the best dialog between to cleaners; Rick and Marty that I have seen grace these boards in a long time. As a carpet cleaner turns 50 (Marty) he is becoming more eleoquent and poetic in his post IMHO.

Wow!! What great impassioned responses. I really liked this, I've often been a fan of the "if you can't make table stakes, don't get in the game" philosophy especially with my employers. However when it came to myself personally as an "entrepreneur" it became more difficult. I also would like to believe that my customers/clients have the freedom to be informed consumers and research what they are paying for. I agree they generally do not, and simply want their surfaces, "cleaned", or "shampooed" or they want me to come "do the rugs". At which point I believe they want me to employ my best judgement, survey and interview them to try too get at what their priorities. Sometimes it is speed, turnover, cost, short and long term appearance, and health. All of these factors will possibly alter my "prescribed therapy". One thing does seem to be a constant is they are generally not interested in how I get the result, just a successful result, all dependant on their priorities. I just try to worry about doing the best I can with what I have, pricing it fairly for both myself and them, and doing a job that will allow me to look them in the eye when they pay me, and have them pay me to do it again later. I try to tell them what I have and can do to meet their goals and priorities, if their are potential problems that I can see, just be honest and treat them as if they were me. I may not always be able to get my family of 6 on my Vespa, but if the Vespa is the only ride I can afford at the time to get me money to get an Escalade then so be it.

The guy that started this thread is such a pot stirrer !!

Everyone has their own special dance on this subject. As for me I shall bide my time until the CRI lets me know if its OK.

LOL

There is always a certain enthusiasm for defending the system we use. That enthusiasm always seems to be much greater when someone is defending the system they sell.

Marty...getting along with someone....Inconcievable!