DILUTION RATIOS AND MEASURING
Do you like to cook or bake? If you do, do you use measuring cups and spoons or just guess and dump? When making your favorite chili do you measure or dump? I make chili often enough that I don’t measure anymore, I know what to put in the pot, and my family likes it. But when I bake I pretty much measure everything, including temperatures. I have learned that too much heat when proofing yeast can kill it. And not waiting until the oven is up to temperature will burn the bottoms of the rolls or bread I am baking. I have also learned that mistaking salt for sugar and mixing it with cinnamon to roll the snickerdoodle dough balls in, ends up with beautiful looking cookies…in the trash. I have learned to pay very close attention to the label on the containers I keep my ingredients in.
When you clean carpet, do you use a measuring cup to mix your carpet cleaning detergents? Do you have a designated sprayer for the detergents you spray on carpet?
Measuring things is important and it doesn’t matter if you are baking a cake, cleaning carpet, or installing hard or soft surface flooring (which I will cover in a future article). Disasters can happen if specific measurement rules are not followed.
Regarding carpet cleaning, what kind and how much traffic lane cleaner is needed to clean a soiled polyester carpet compared to moderately soiled nylon? How much Chemical-Heat-Agitation-Time (CHAT) does the carpet need to suspend the soil?
According to the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC), S100 Standard and Reference Guide for Professional Cleaning of Textile Floor Coverings:
1.1 Principles of Textile Floor Covering Cleaning Explained
1.1.2 Principle 2: Soil Suspension
Soil suspension is intended to separate the adhered soils from fibers not removed during dry soil removal procedures (Principle 1), from fibers. Maximum soil suspension incorporates four elements:
chemical activity;
heat or temperature to accelerate chemical activity;
agitation for proper chemical distribution, and
time for chemicals to function properly.
When one or more of these four fundamentals is decreased, one or more of the others should be increased in order for complete soil suspension to occur. …..The initial objective of each cleaning system, however, is to fully suspend or separate soil from fibers, insofar as practical, in preparation for subsequent soil removal.
1.1.2.1 Chemical Activity
Where appropriate, biodegradable detergents, builders, or dry solvents should be used to suspend, emulsify, peptize, or saponify the various soluble or insoluble soils. Cleaning products shall be used according to label instructions.
1.1.2.2 Heat or Temperature
Increasing cleaning solution or rinse water temperature results in increased cleaning efficiency. Increasing temperature can also reduce the quantity of cleaning agent required, which can result in less detergent residue following cleaning.
1.1.2.3 Agitation
Agitation is manual or mechanical action that distributes cleaning agents so that they can separate soils from fibers, thereby enhancing soil suspension. Agitation can be achieved with varying efficiency using hand brushing, cylindrical or rotary brushing, oscillation, or with water pressure.
1.1.2.4 Time
Soil suspension is not instantaneous. Following application, cleaning products (e.g., preconditioners) should be allowed sufficient contact or dwell time for adequate soil suspension to occur. Dwell time varies based on chemical formulation, cleaning method, level of agitation, and application temperature. Cleaning product manufacturer labels can provide guidance in this area.
Today’s Reality – Your Reality
What you just read above is measuring to one degree or another; here I have broken it down for us who live in the real world.
Chemical Activity: Do you measure or glug? Accuracy is more important than you think. Please measure and do NOT add more thinking it will work better, it could actually cause resoiling. Do you have a designated sprayer? Cross contamination can easily happen and sticky residues will be the result.
Heat or Temperature: This is the water you mix your preconditioner with, not the cleaning method you use. The hotter the water the better and the faster it will react with the soil on the fibers. Hot water helps reduce surface tension and melts oils that attract soil to the fibers.
Agitation: I have been in this industry a long time and have cleaned football fields of carpet. I still do but not as much as I once did. I admit skipping this step for years when I first started. I was young and had more hair than brains and was exhausted at the end of each day. For all you cleaners under the age of 40, I don’t even want to hear your bellyaching about this step as to how hard it is. Back in the day, the tool we had to use was a groomer. In a home, sure, but how about 5,000 square feet of dirty commercial carpet? Then I got smart-er and switched to using a rotary machine with a shampoo brush. I know you’re not allowed to use that anymore, which is why I switched to a machine with counter rotating brushes. It is so easy to operate and I could not believe how well it worked. Talk about a time saver and back saver for us older folks with gray and/or no hair. So this step does not TAKE time it SAVES time and your body.
Time: How long will it take for the soil to become suspended in the detergent solution? There is no easy answer for this question. Some questions and things to consider though are: when was the last time the carpet was cleaned, what color is the carpet, what fiber type is the carpet made with, how soiled is the carpet, what type of soil is on the carpet? All these conditions will determine how long it will take to suspend the soil.
Today’s polyester carpet (including Triexta, aka SmartStrand ®) has many of the same soiling issues the carpet cleaning industry had years ago when we were cleaning polypropylene Berbers. Polypropylene carpet is still out there but it is losing market share to polyester, because nearly all polyester is either recycled from PET bottles or a derivative of corn, such as Triexta. It’s the “green” thing to do.
All carpets need soil suspension for proper cleaning to occur, but more specifically polyester carpets, or the carpet may not come clean or you will have to work very hard to get the carpet clean.
If you do not precondition sufficiently you could end up leaving clean streaks in the carpet. Clean streaks occur where the overlap of the wand stroke begins and ends. The carpet got more “CHAT” in those several inch areas. A cleaner who is trying to hurry and get to the next job or home, is the same cleaner who feels a carpet will come clean without the CHAT step. The unfortunate call back can be traced back to the cleaner who fails to measure chemicals properly and skips the fundamentals of soil suspension.
As you know I am a credentialed carpet inspector and I inspect these soiled and streaked carpets and get phone calls from people and cleaners to find out what happened. The good news is this can be fixed. This time, you will measure the proper amount of detergent to hot water, apply a sufficient amount, agitate the carpet thoroughly and then give the detergent sufficient time to suspend the soil so it can be easily extracted from the carpet.
In my next article I will talk about things flooring installers should be measuring, from the flatness of a floor – how flat is flat; the amount of water to patching compound ratio – one splash or two or a whole bucket full of water; what type of floor flatteners should be used – shingles, tar paper, VCT scrap; and biggest measuring device of them all is the trowel – is the proper amount of adhesive being used to install ceramic, carpet, vinyl, wood, and so much more.