I am bidding on a commercial building that had some renovation work done, the carpets are full of concrete dust , and even though they have vacuumed several time's , the dust is still there. I am thinking about using HWE with just water and then going back over it with our encap cleaner and buffer. Any advice ?

That carpet might have to be HWE a few times.
Do you have a Steamin Demon? You will see mud in
your dump water. After using HWE check the carpets the next day
to see if there is any white on top of the carpet.
Those areas will still have dust if they are white.
After extraction encap cleaning should be fine.

Not sure if you have a pile lifter or not but if you do I would take that over there too and spend a lot of time removing as much dry particulate as possible. Then HWE, but be prepared for it to come to the surface once it dries if you don't remove all the loose dry particulate first.

If you don't have a pile lifter then vac, vac, vac. Even though they did it you never know if their vac is working correctly.

Kevin Pearson
www.pearsoncarpetcare.com

First off, Thank you for your advice. I do not have a pile lifter however, I was thinking about using my VonSchrader LMX like a vacuum cleaner first,and letting that brush real dig deep down ,then vacuum, then HWE , and then encap it with a buffer. I was thinking of charging 15 cents a square foot , plus labor, transportation , and the cost of supplies. What are you thoughts ?

Don't waste your time vacuuming if you aren't using a hepa vac or equiv. The dust if fine and will go through the bags and out the back. It's not quite as fine as sheetrock dust, but, it's close. They have filters for most wet/dry vacs designed for sheetrock dust. They run around $10 for a box (3 or 5 don't remember). Good for at least 1 vac load.

You'll be shocked at how much dust you can pick up.

i used my Hoover Conquest with a plain old bag for drywall dust tonight. did a fine job. since it doesn't have true edging capabilities, i ran my dyson's wand for edging, which has hepa filter. no difference, no dust blow-back with either