‘Look before you leap’ is sound advice. ‘Test before you clean’ is even sounder, as Chris at CJB Cleaning Solutions in Taunton recounts, now …
“So, I’d cleaned a front room for a client that owned a nearby pub and hotel. The front room cleaned exceptionally well with my Prochem Galaxy hot-water extractor and as the customer was impressed, he asked me to quote for his place of work, too.
“I got to site the next day and found the pub carpet to be extremely soiled. After performing the burn test, I identified the carpet as a synthetic and on a woven construction.
“I did a float test and then established it was a polypropylene pile fibre, or Belgian Wilton.
“I know that the Industry recommend that these carpets are dry-cleaned with a compound like C803 Fiberdri and I started to get a bit nervous of wet cleaning it with my Galaxy in case of shrinking the carpet.
“I called Prochem and they confirmed that I could be ill-advised to clean it that way and precisely for that reason.
“When I told the customer of the risks I discovered that not only had the carpet not been cleaned for two years but the last time it was the contractor shrank the carpets causing the landlord a lot of explaining to the brewery owner.
“The result was I got a lucrative contract to clean the hotel.
“I think the moral of the story is to do the tests first. Do a fibre burn test and ideally a float test as well.
“Look at the construction by opening up the pile and looking through to the back to see if it is a tufted or a woven carpet.
“Those three quick two-minute checks saved me from damaging the customer’s carpets and won me a new contract!”
For more information about these tests, either attend a Prochem Carpet Cleaning Course, or call the Technical Helpline.