Pile Brush vs CRB

[lee@deepclean.us.com]

Greetings Everybody!

I currently use a Pile Brush on every job.  It is like having half a CRB connected to a really good vacuum.
I find it really helps generate good results with encap cleaning for me.  

I am curious about using a CRB.  For those of you using a CRB may I ask what you like about it? What size do you have? Commercial and residential? What don't you like about it?  Do you have a built in sprayer?

Lee

[encapman]

The Certified Pile Brush is great. I used to own a couple of them so I have a bit of experience with them. It's a Pile Lifter. Pile Lifters do an excellent job of lifting the pile and digging up crud from the lower portion of the carpet. You said that you use it on every job. That's an excellent way to prepare the job for cleaning. Using a Pile Lifter helps recover dry soil. But even more than that it prepares the pile for cleaning. It preps the carpet and gets it into a more cleanable condition. Instead of being matted down and crushed - the pile is pulled open, making the pile more accessible for cleaning. It's an excellent first step.

Now for the downside of the Certified machine. Although it does a terrific job of pulling up the pile and opening the fiber, I was never very happy with its ability to swallow the dry soil it pulled up. Because of the large vac orifice of the vac chamber it seemed like it didn't suck up the dry soil as well as other dry soil recovery tools. In fact a lot of times it would spit stuff right back out onto the carpet. A good commercial vacuum can recover more soil than the Certified machines. Using the Certified machine in conjunction with a good commercial vacuum does an a really good job, but that's a 2 step process.

By comparison the Kleenrite X-Vac does a better job of swallowing dry soil. It's airflow through the vac head is more efficient, so it's a pretty good alternative. I think the X-Vac is the best Pile Lifter on the market today. It's a more modern machine and it seems to reflect a better design.

A CRB machine has the added advantage of being able to accomplish 3 tasks... It does a similar job of prepping the fiber as mentioned above with the Pile Lifters. It also does a a reasonably good job of capturing dry soil with the Renovator trays (not quite as thorough as the X-Vac but probably a little better than the Certified). A CRB machine can also serve as a good Encap Scrubber. So at the end of the day, it covers more functions than a standalone Pile Lifter. 

Hope that overview helps to answer your questions.

[keepitclean]

and to add to the crb functions that many forget, you can also dry clean with them as a stand alone cleaning machine........Highly advisable on certain types of fibers, but it doesnt discriminate as it cleans all equally well.

[encapman]

Very true; thanks for mentioning that. Using Dry Cleaning Sponges does a great job for extremely low moisture cleaning which is helpful on delicate fiber, and in situations where moisture must be kept to a minimum. In fact, some folks use this method for all their cleaning.

[lee@deepclean.us.com]

That is a benefit I had not even considered. It is nice to have equipment that can do multiple jobs in different situations! Thanks for the info!