My husband and I have just recently purchased a trailer, portable extraction machine,a tile and grout cleaning tool and lots of other items to begin our new floor cleaning business. Our intention was to initially begin with residential and work our way into the commercial arena. After much research and talking with a couple other people, I was convinced that buying a Cimex was the way to go, whether doing residential or commercial. I am now confused after reading several posts, one of which stated that encap may not be for the residential market. If it's so great than why not on residential? I thought the whole pitch was to get away from using all that water in the HWE method. Also is there any classes for actual hands on training that anyone could recommend? What I thought would be a relatively self-taught sort of business is starting to make me feel like we may need a lot of training first before going out and cleaning carpets. We have received a week of training on the hard surface cleaning but nothing to do with carpet cleaning. Help!

Denise, email me at healthyhomefl@aol.com and I will give you some advice as I do both commercial & residential - there IS a difference...

Joe

Don't make it that hard, it's not. You can use a cimex on res work, its just that with encaping, you dont pull anything out of the carpet so it's better for comm work. You can use bonnets on the cimex or buy a 17 floor machine.

Listen to Joe D he will help and knows his stuff.

Denise, we clean both residential and commercial, but we are more residential. We use HWE on residential because you take the dirt with you and most people expect that ( or at least I perceive they expect that). Commercial you can not beat the Cimex/Releasit combo.

I have cleaned residential before with the Cimex when we only had one TM and it went down. My customers were very satisfied. I also clean my own house with the Cimex quite a bit and it works great.

I have also used the Cimex in conjunction with HWE when we have run into extremely dirty traffic lanes. We will scrub with the Cimex and then HWE and it has turned out lots better than just HWE by itself.

I know Joe can help you with this too and he is very knowledgeable, but if you would like to talk with me also feel free to email. Thanks.

Other then Shorty, I think we three are the old fart members of this group. We been here the longest. I am sure I am missing a few others.

Denise,

You can clean residential carpet with encap. Rick sells
Encap-Punch which is designed to use with HWE and Encap-Basic
is a good product which does not produce a lot of suds that
you can HWE. I cleaned a carpet today that had been vacuumed
and still the hair came out of the rug. I use a 175 buffer with white floor pad for agitation. Then I did use HWE today because of pets.
You can clean berber carpet with encap. Give it a try and see what you think and what your customers think. I always pull up hair with the pad. The guy across the street from has a Big Bad Dyson. When I clean for them there is still hair. I think a cimex is too big for residential but a 175 with solution tank will work for you. Got any more ques e-mail me
carpetclean2000@yahoo.com

Charles,
Thanks for the advice. A couple questions. You mentioned the Encap Punch for HWE. Do you put that directly into the water tank or spray on as a prespray? Also is the Encap DS for use only with the cimex on commercial carpet then?
I have already purchased the cimex and it is supposed to arrive this week. So I really do not want to have to purchase another machine right now as you mentioned the 175 buffer for agitation. Can we get the same results by using the cimex for agitation? And what was the need for agitation if you were doing the HWE? You also mentioned that
you cleaned a carpet that had been vacuumed and still hair came out? Hair as in people, pet hair or fibers from the carpet??? And is it not customary to prevacuum for the customer before cleaning? I have a Dyson too for my home, but I also know that it isn't going to get everything so do you recommend a particular vacuum cleaner that you prefer? You again mentioned that you always pull up hair with the pad. Could you go into more detail on that. I'm not getting if you mean hair from the carpet fibers or what.

Okay I'm trying to be a little more relaxed about this issue of cimex vs. HWE. I understand the whole concept of not getting the loose soil at the very bottom of the carpet but I thought that if you do that say every 3rd or 4th cleaning that would be enough. Thank you for your words of comfort. Oh what would the 175 floor machine do that the cimex cannot? And is the reason for using the bonnets on the cimex to protect the carpet fibers?

I use the encap for both residential and commercial. I have great results with the encap hydrox in residential using bonnets and the cimex for commercial.

email me for other questions
ryan@siouxfallsbestchoice.com

Okay so lets see if I'm getting this right. You are using the cimex machine for commercial but are using a different machine but with the encap hydrox as your detergent and with bonnets on that machine??

Sounds like your straight out of the Masters Touch. You can never have enough training in my opinion. Not only do you need to know how it helps to know why. I feel that both Encap and HWE are needed if your going to be the best you can be. Just my opinion. There are a lot of places to get training. I got all my basic hwe training at Jon Don and get all my encap needs taken care of at Exellent Supply. Unfortunately I lost my magic wand before I got to use it so I had to learn the trade the hard way. Good fortune to you. Luck has nothing to do with it most of the time.

I realize you are asking for ideas about products, equipment and the best processes for residential but let me add the obvious.Even if you get the cleaning side right doesn't mean you will be sucessful.I highly recommend that you at the same time pursue a business plan that helps you build your business through sound sales, marketing and and planning stratergies that will help you when your business catches fire because you provide an awesome service. There are many resources available, I highly recommend www.barebonesbiz.com as one source.
I encap residential with CRB when the soil is light with no extraction. I use cimex to scrub most residential that i'm going to hot warer extract.Some times the home has some cut pile and some berber so unless it is a warranty job i scrub cut pile and extract and encap berber with no extract unless there is extreme soil ot pet issues.I find that using all of Rick's products and following instructions and a little experimenting has worked well for me for years.

sincerely, Wayne

Wayne,

You are so right as I mentioned earlier in one of my responses, I have been a successful business owner in another field for 20 years. I have all the groundwork laid for this business as far as the marketing, sales and business plan. These are my strengths, however I made sure that I attended every training class and read everything I could get my hands on with that business. This just seems like there is so many variables with machines, techniques, methods and mostly differences of opinions. I guess it is just part of the course.

So you are using the cimex in residential with berber, but using it on cut pile for the agitation, correct? Do you feel that there are times that you do not need to use both machines?

Yes I agree luck has nothing to do with it as I have been a business owner for 20 years now and realize that it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, superior customer service and the willingness to learn, learn and learn some more. yes I did come throught the Masters Touch training for the Hard surface cleaning but still feel that there was a lot left out. they only touched on carpet cleaning for a very short time. Does JonDon have actual classroom or site training? I am definitely seeing that there are both benefits and downfalls to each method we spoke of, HWE and encap. I just need to get the specifics down pat such as which chemical to use on what and when to use the HWE vs. cimex.

cimex is a great encapsulator and scubber no doubt but its one of many tools...i prefer to have more tools then less.....I know of a guy in saskatchewan canada who runs 3 cimex's and has 2 employees....only encaps.....he loves helping people with encaping...very succesful....he works on mostly commmercial but some res also...learning youre wording with customers and explaining the encaping process is the first thing to nail down..cleaning with cimex is like taking candy from a baby...good luck

Denise,

Keep researching and reading posts from this forum, it will help!

Encap can be used as a detergent in BOTH HWE and Low Moisture cleaning. The idea is what you leave behind is better than regular shampoo....

We use an OP machine (orbot) w Hydrox for Residential, along with HWE when needed....

We use a Cimex w DS for commercial, along with HWE when needed...

If you want to start in Resi, you already have the main tools to do so...just use the best shampoo on the market!!

Joe,

According to Rick he says not to get caught up in explaining the entire process to the customer. They just want to know that they are going to have clean carpets when you are done.

If you wouldn't mind sharing the name and number of your friend you mentioned in your post, I would greatly appreciate being able to talk to him. My e-mail is floorbrite@ymail.com