I looked at 3 month old carpet in new resturant business today. they have a bar and serve beer, wine, etc food and soft drinks. the carpet has spots from drink? spills and heavy soil in area near kitchen entrances.

the owner called me about cleaning and getting on a maintance schedule. I plan in cimex and DS with gray pads, and was thinking and suggested to owner every 3 months. they want to prevent the carpet from: 1. looking bad, 2. haveing to replace it in 1-1.5 years and 3. all the above.. The place is open from 11am to 2pm 6 or 7 days a week.

I have to get in early morning and have place ready by 10am I figure with encap and fans i can have it dry in 45 mins or less??

so my question is the drink spills. should I use a citrus acid booster to DS, with punch prespray. or not.. I have read other scrub info, about scrubbing for a min or so with no liquid. Is that best method.. this is CGD nothen special..and a darkish color. brown etc.

I want to make sure the spills stay gone.

thaks
carl n
raleigh nc

Hi Carl,

My advice would be to hwe the first time in. That way you know what you are starting with. Then after that you can use the mex. But every 3 month is a stretch. I have one I do on Emerald Isle every 5 weeks. Even at that it is pretty trashed. I usually use the rx-20. Some areas I can encap. But they do get a good flush regularly. As far adding anything to the punch or ds from what I understand especially with the ds, you will mess up the crystalization process. Some of the guys here are doing well just with the punch for a pre conditioner and then ds in the mex. If you hwe it first like I suggest you should have no problem keeping it in shape after with encap. But I still think 3 months is too long between cleanings.

Bob

that good advise, the floors are vacuumed every night. I looked around when there and did not see any missed stuff. looked in pile and did not see any dirt near the door area. they have several walkoff mats outside and inside so I was thinking the HWE was not needed first time. plus I sold them on encap..

I told them 3 months might be to long myself. we could moniter after first cleaning and see how thing were going.. might suggest 60 days out cleaning to get thing back to clean so to speak.

I quote both HWE and encap. .20 SF encap about 1900 total SF and .25 to hwe.
them vacuuming, putting chairs up and helping as needed with other stuff.

trying to be competive and not shoot self in foot.. this could be a every other month gig at 350.00 for 1-2 hrs work..

have a good one..
carl n

We do all of a certain chain resturant in my area.

50/50 mix Hot of DS and Punch with synthetic pads on a rotary and parts done with a CBM after my initial HWE cleaning with Punch. everything looks great after several cleanings.
Hardest part of the night is moving furniture, and vacing

About 12 years ago we began cleaning some buffet type restaurants on a monthly basis. The carpets have a colorful print pattern on a cut pile nylon glue-down carpet. The restaurants are open for lunch and dinner and get a ton of traffic.

My observation is that carpets in buffet restaurants get hammered pretty badly. The whole family walks back and forth to the feeding trough several times, which amounts to more traffic than a waitress would make coming to your table. Plus when people aren't paying for a plate of food they tend to be sloppier with it.

Like I said we started cleaning these buffets about 12 years ago. At that time we were doing a dual method - we would pre-scrub the carpets with an enzyme detergent and then HWE rinse them. They were generally satisfied with our service, with only an occasional complaint.

We cleaned the buffets for a few years and then one day the management called and canceled the carpet cleaning. They had decided to save money and have their night cleaning crew take care of carpet cleaning. Well a couple of years went by and they called us back. It turns out the night crew wasn’t so good at cleaning carpet. Whodathunkit?

So about 5 years back we started cleaning their restaurants once again. But this time we did something different. In the interim since we stopped cleaning their carpets we had begun cleaning with encapsulation. So for two reasons I decided to now only clean with encap... (1) I had started selling encap products, and I wanted to see if the system would break and how far we could go before it did. (2) They hadn't been a very loyal customer so what difference did it make if we lost them?

Bottom line: We are still cleaning these carpets with encap! We have been cleaning the restaurants every month with Releasit and the Cimex for the past 5 years or so. We haven't performed HWE even once during that entire time period. And we have not had a single complaint about the cleaning. The carpets look great.

Our technician that cleans these carpets did make one observation. He started to notice that one area of carpet closest to the kitchen was looking duller than the rest of the carpet so he asked me what he could do about it. I told him to post-bonnet that section with bonnets on the Cimex after he cleaned it. That took care of the problem. Aside from that single issue, the carpets are staying nice looking!

So my thought is that restaurants can be MAINTAINED with encapsulation. The key word here is "maintained". They need to be serviced frequently enough to keep them under control. We have been able to successfully care for these 2 buffet restaurants for a few years now using Encap-Clean DS and the Cimex alone. The client is happy, we're happy - works for me







Rick Gelinas
rick@excellent-supply.com

We just cleaned a 'higher end' restaurant yesterday. Put Encap-Punch in the Cimex to prescrub, and the carpet looked unbelievably good! Then we just gave it a quick clear water rinse with the Butler. We plan on using the Releasit/Cimex combo most of the time from here on out, but just wanted to give it a good going over the first time. The carpets were BLACK from years of cleaning with rental portables, and the results were amazing.


Kevin Kluth
Pinnacle Cleaning
www.dryinonehour.com
www.fullerdirect.com/0704120

That's great it turned out but wouldn't it make more sence to rinsde with Punch rather than clear water? Otherwise you are rinsing away the encapsulating chems and defeating the whole purpose of using an encap product.

Dion, you stole my question...

Yes, why a clear water rinse? You flushed out the best parts of the encapsulation- the fluorocarbons, and the wicking control.

Why not rinse again with Punch, I do HWE this way frequently. Punch as a Pre-Spray and a Rinse.

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care

Why NOT use a clear water rinse? I know that any residue left from cleaning solutions won't be attracting any dirt. I don't like switching products in the rinse, so we clear water rinse just about everything, whether we use encap products or traditional HWE products, or are rinsing tile and grout or marble.

I know that the encap rinse may offer other benefits, but I could always protect with Soileze, etc.

Kevin Kluth
Pinnacle Cleaning
www.dryinonehour.com
www.fullerdirect.com/0704120

I don't like switching either...

That is why my gallons and gallons of BP's Zone Perfect, End Zone, Boost-All, and Citrus Solv are sitting unused in my trailer (just in case) and I am moving to using Punch all the way around. The increase in chemical costs is more then offset by the labor savings of not switching pre-spray's and rinses and did I add it or not confusion.

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care