Very High Traffic Area Input/Information, Please...

[SS3PBM]

Hello all,

We will be starting a new 'regular' commercial carpet job in the next month or so for a public use building. This facility has upwards of 3,000 people visit daily. Currently we HWE and pour water in areas where our carpet cleaner use too much chemicals and etc. This has made us leave fans running all night for the client to pick up and put away each morning after in hopes the areas are dry enough for public access.

Quite often, as in almost daily, you can see a traffic stain into the main floor, at least twice weekly, we have to HWE these areas in order to make them presentable, at least.

One floor has so much foot traffic, the facility is replacing the carpet within the next 60 days.

My questions are as follows:

1) Can Encapping be the 'primary' go to method given the high traffic in this facility? Thoughts on this?;
2) We still have yet to purchase the recommended machines to facilitate this, so will 17" &/or 22" bonnet machines work for now?
3) Dry time, can we expect dry time to be within three (3) hours or so, or should we plan on longer? Use fans?
4) The facility has a policy of only installing light colored carpets, which is/can be the bane of cleaning them especially when there is inclimate weather or on these days go to HWE?

I Am sure there are more questions, but this is what I can think of for now.

Thank you for your thoughts and input.

[encapman]

Excellent questions! Here is what I saw work out perfectly in a very busy facility, with foot traffic like you're describing. The Vario machine with MicroBeast bonnets and Releasit have been a game changer for them! It is easy to to facilitate too. Dry times using a carpet fan are less than an hour.

Here's a plan of action that should take care of your account nicely:

First start off with good dry soil recovery. The BrushEncap machine with the Renovator trays does a very good job of prepping the carpet for encap cleaning. At the very least, make sure that you're doing intensive vacuuming with a good commercial vacuum cleaner. Giving attention to good dry soil recovery will go a long way to a cleaner carpet. And what I like about the BrushEncap with Renovator approach is that it makes the pile stand up. Crushed and matted commercial carpet pile is not very accessible. Getting the pile to stand up makes it more accessible to cleaning deeper into the fiber.

After the dry soil has been addressed, you can begin cleaning. Here's what we recommend...

1. Vario machine
2. MicroBeast bonnets
3. Encap-HydrOx (especially good for the lighter carpet you mentioned)

Clean the carpet in the really high traffic areas at least once a week (possibly daily at the entrance areas).

Limit your HWE to "as needed". And with the intensive low moisture program outlined above "as needed" will be much less than you'd likely imagine. In fact if you stay on top of of the carpet with a good encap program, HWE can become almost unnecessary.

Try it! You WILL be impressed. It's simple. Your techs can handle it with minimal training and supervision. The carpet will stay looking good. The dry times are ridiculously quick. You'll be able to clean 2,000-3,000 sq ft per hour in the normal soil areas; and 1,000-2,000 sq ft per hour in the grungy sections. And the cost of admission is reasonably cheap. I think you'll find that this approach will be a game changer for your building too.

[NJP]

Great answer Rick. we all learn something new all the time.