I cleaned an office building with a fairly thick commercial glue down berber. It was a mix of colors, darkbrown, beige and green...overall it was fairly dark in color. The carpet is 4 years old and has only been cleaned once per year by the janitor using a bonnet/shampoo system. It is vacuumed daily and overall the janitor does a good job.

I pre-vacuumed very thoroughly and cimexed with DS and the grey pads and it looked AWESOME! However, when I returned the next day it had dried hazy with a slight greyish effect. I decided I would give it a really good vacuum and that didn't seem to make a significant change.

Overall the customer is happy with the results due to most of the significant staining has been removed, however I'm not that happy with the haze.

Any suggestions what I should have done, or should do??

This was the first time that you have cleaned this carpet. There may be a heavy buildup left behind from the janitor’s cleanings. Sounds to me like you did nothing incorrectly. There may be a wicking issue that caused the haze. Rarely will a post vacuum remedy this. If it were me I would do a light, post bonnet using Releasit DS with minimal moisture. Speed dry would help but using minimal moisture it should dry quickly on its own.

Hopefully they will have you come in on a regular basis and each cleaning will get easier with better results.


Richard Brooks
Hit The Spot
Exceeding Client Expectations

I don't have bonnets for the cimex, however I have a rotary with thick fluffy looped bonnets that I use for carbonated cleaning. Would those bonnets work? Are you suggesting pre-spraying the DS? Or would Punch be better?

Thanks

I had the same thing happen at a Dentist office. It looked pretty bad I kept asking them if they were using a deodorizer in the carpet or a dry type cleaner they kept absolutely denying it. Well in the end they found the janitorial staff was butting down a powder deodorizer and it was wicking up from years of build up. I had to clean with a my OP and cotton pad 3 times with heavy vacuuming before and after it dried. Finally got it.

As the fellas mentioned above, there has to be a residue from previous cleaning. Releasit will not leave a visible residue. In fact when this question came up a couple of years ago we did some testing to see if Releasit could cause a residue. We tested Releasit on dark carpet (which would make it easier to see a residue) at double the normal concentration, and we observed no visible residue after the carpet dried. Releasit won't leave a residue, so you're obviously seeing something wicking. The effect of this can, under certain conditions, be more apparent with encap cleaning since the residue from prior cleaning is not being flushed from the carpet. I would recommend either rinsing the carpet or possibly bonnet cleaning to get the condition under control. If you decide to bonnet clean Encap-Punch would work well, in fact it would work well if you decide to HWE clean too. Hope this gives you some info to go on.






Rick Gelinas
rick@excellent-supply.com

I had a school like that with 4 years of janitors and buffers and a horrible build up. I flushed it with the Steamin Demon one day and the next day used the Cimex and Releasit and the carpet came out like new. Do you think they would let me do the future cleanings ???? Nooooo, they told me they were good for another four years and then they would call me again. They actually told me this. I told them thanks, but no thanks. This was the School Board,Talk about stupid. I figure that 50% of the people in this industry are normal and OK, 25% are Evil and the other 25% are Stupid.

Thanks for the help! Since the customer is actually very happy with the results I'll leave it for the next cleaning, they are going onto a maintenance plan with me and I have told him that it would take a couple of cleanings to get it looking the best it can. I just really wanted to know what I was looking at here. Now that I am using the releasit/cimex system on all my commercial, it's the first time I've encountered this problem. It's obviously a major residue from the bonneting the janitor had been doing. I'll probably HWE the traffic areas next time and cimex the rest, i'm sure it'll work out fine.

Cheers.

You hit the nail on the head about school boards.

I know, I work for one. For the most part they are a bunch of bone heads. I find that most educated people in the school systems are for the most part street stupid.