For those of you who do both HWE and VLM/Encap for residential cleaning. What do you tell the customer about Encap?

Do you tell them that all of the soil will be crystalized and that they need to vacuum it up? Or is there a more smooth way of putting that?

Ben Surdi
NW Green Clean

I tell them I will be using a low moisture system and give them the price. When the job is completed, I tell the customer to vacuum the carpet in the next couple of days. I encap my own carpets and never have any problems. For residential I use Rick's Basic Encap. There are still some homes that require HWE. I never get call backs saying the rugs look like _ _!
That dirty sock thing is a bunch of bull.

What would happen if you never told them to vacuum? (knowing that a normal person vacuums a few times per week).

In my experience with encapping residential carpet- the carpets always feel stiff after I finish. In fact- i got a call back from one of my property managers telling me they were "crunchy". I went back and vacuumed and it improved a lot.



Ben Surdi
NW Green Clean

Do you use Rick's encap products? When I clean my house I don't get crunchy carpet. I also have it dry in about 45 minutes with my 360 blower from P/F and Lowes fan. I'm sure Rick uses his own encap to clean his house so see if he adds anything to this post. A customer with no vacuum is not a real carpet cleaning customer. Five years ago I had a lady call back the same day saying how great the carpets looked. She was working and didn't see me clean. Been to her house a few times and she gave me a few referrals. The lady at the front desk of our cable office uses me every 6 months and is always happy. Guess you always get a few customers that just don't get it. They are like DUH!!!

Soft fiber carpets such as Saxony or Frieze can get stiffer right after their cleaned. The stiffness goes away in a couple of days with normal traffic and normal vacuuming and the carpet returns to a soft state like before.

Yes. I do clean my house carpets with Releasit. That's all we use and they stay perfect. We've been living here with cream colored plush carpet for almost 4 years now. Never been HWE'd and the carpet's still spotless. That being said, I've never been a fan of recommending encap as a "stand alone" cleaning method for residential. While encap is PERFECT for commercial maintenance, HWE still takes the cake for residential IMHO.

What to tell customers regarding post-vacuuming? Here's what I say...
"As I'm sure you know, thorough vacuuming is essential for good carpet maintenance. You will see optimum results if you'll continue to vacuum well during the next few days following the cleaning."

Nuff said. There's really no need to shoot yourself in the foot going into a dissertation about polymer chemistry, crystallizing encapsulation, and soil extraction via post-vacuuming. Keep it simple.






Rick Gelinas

I planned on selling my Rarely used Vento which is about two yrs. old. But I just realized how convienient it is to use. Just did a job up stairs two bed, lvg room. 150 S.f. $85.00 in 30 minutes. Carried Vento & vacuum & Penguin & two bonnets up stairs.