Cleaning
Shampoo Your Carpets
Having your carpets professionally cleaned may be seen as an expensive and needless burden by some homeowners, but it really should be looked at a necessary, regular maintenance task. By employing a carpet shampooer once a year as a maintenance priority you not only make your carpets look pretty, regular carpet shampooing comes with a long list of other valuable benefits as well.
Carpet cleaning not only improves the appearance of your carpets, it also drastically extends their life as well. This means big savings on replacement costs, and it means you are being more environmentally responsible too. All that dirt and grime not only looks bad, it also wears and tears at your carpet fibers over the years. The more it that this dirt and debris works its way into your carpet, the more damage it’s going to do. If you schedule a thorough carpet cleaning once a year, you can rest easy that damaging dirt and debris buildup will be kept to a minimum. In fact many new carpet manufacturers require regular cleanings if you want your warranty to remain valid. They’ve caught on as well. The cleaner your carpet stays the less they’ll have to pay out for carpeting that doesn’t live up their bidding.
Another important, and often overlooked benefit of regularly calling in a carpet shampooer is the hidden health benefits. Remember, 90% of the dust in your home is dander, a fancy word for human skin flakes, and parasites like dust mites live in paradise in a home that neglects picking up their primary food source. A dirty carpet full of skin flakes is like a Thanksgiving feast for dust mites. Other nasty and unhealthy pests, such as bed bugs and fleas also have a harder time taking root in the face of regular visits by a carpet shampooer.
Hot Water Extraction
Many people have never heard of hot water extraction when it comes to carpet cleaning methods. This is primarily due to the fact that companies such as Stanley Steemer have propagated the more popular term of “steam cleaning” to describe this method instead. The bottom line is it doesn’t matter what you call it. What is important for you as a homeowner to understand is that hot water extraction is by far the preferable carpet cleaning method on the market, superior to all other methods.
There are some other, less expensive methods that are used for carpet cleaning, but there is really only one way to get the carpets satisfactorily cleaned, and that is hot water extraction. For proof of this fact, one need only look to the carpet industry itself for clues as to which method is the best for your carpets and upholstery. Virtually every major carpet manufacturer recommends and often requires for warranty reasons that you use hot water extraction to maintain the cleanliness of your home carpeting. Another indication of the superiority of this method is that practically every major carpet cleaning company, from Stanley Steemer on down the line, employs hot water extraction as their method of choice.
The term “steam cleaning” is somewhat of a erronous label when it comes to describing how hot water extraction works. The fact is there is little or no steam involved as a primary cleaning component. Instead of actual steam, hot water and cleaning agents are propelled into your carpet pile at high pressure to where they loosen up the dirt, soil, and grime embedded in the carpet fibers. Immediatley following this a high powered vacuum removes the hot water, and all the dirt, grime and stains in your carpet right along with it.