First time with Cimex, what went wrong?

[Randh]

Would it be possible for you to inspect the bottom of the carpet fiber? Pry apart the tufts of fiber to look down to the base of the carpet pile. Sometimes, if the carpet has not received consistently adequate dry soil recovery (i.e. vacuuming & walk-off mats) a build-up of dry soil can occur underneath the tufts of carpet pile. Any method of cleaning on a commercial glue down carpet that has a build-up at the backing can cause a wicking condition. And that wicking condition will normally appear blotchy. From what you're describing this could be a factor.

I doubt it's a soil thing because the same issues happened in their executive offices which have very minimal traffic. Also the carpet is less than a year old as they just moved into their building.  


Another condition that occurs sometimes is shading or pile reversal. Movement of the pile occurs with the Cimex  - as you see the swirl patterns. This shading can also throw off different reflections at different angles. Normally after a few days of vacuuming and foot traffic the pile patterns relax, and the swirls disappear.

I'm okay with the swirl marks...and as I mentioned any soda and coffee stains that were there are now gone. Its just the "some of the carpet look super dark and other looks way lighter" blotchy appearance that worries me.  The one thing I think I could have improved was I pre and post-vacuumed with a proteam supercoach backpack vacuum, rather than one that could lift the pile. Before going in, I knew that my results wouldn't be as good as if i was using a different vacuum, but what I experienced wasn't a vacuum related issue. The carpet actually looked much worse after I was done. I've seen many pictures of Cimex results, and mine looks nothing like any of them.

Is there any way I could give you a call Rick? Honestly, I'm scared to use the Cimex again and i'd really like to narrow down what went wrong. I wouldn't put it above being user error as this was my first time ever using the machine, but on the other hand if I maybe got a bad gallon of cleaning solution or the machine isn't functioning properly I'd like to get it squared away.