How to Choose a Carpet Cleaner

How to select a Professional Carpet Cleaning Company

It not just flooring, it is an investment worth thousands upon thousands of dollars. Who are you inviting into your home to handle your multi-thousand dollar investment?

Don’t be victimized by uniformed, uneducated, and down right unscrupulous carpet cleaners! This checklist will ensure that you have asked the right questions:

What kind of experience do they have?

It’s important to know how long a company has been in business, but the more important question is:

How experienced is the technician standing in my home?

Many companies have a high turn-around rate for technicians. This means most technicians have little to no training, let alone the hands-on experience that only comes with years in the field. Large, corporate-owned companies are notorious for this. Ask the technician how long they have been doing this. You may not always get an honest answer to this question so judge for yourself:

• Does the tech know what your carpet is made out of, what characteristics it has, and what kind of cut and pile it is?
• Can they concisely and adequately explain why their system is superior to their competitors?
• Can they tell you why and how their system works?
• Do they show a knowledge in their field or do they seem to “stumble and fumble”?
• Most importantly: do they guarantee what they’ve said in writing?

If the answer to any of these questions is “No”, you have the wrong company in your home.

What are they using to clean your carpet?

Mild surfactant washes, residue-free detergents, mild hypoallergenic shampoos… these products are made up of different components but all boil down to the same thing, Soap. Think about how much water it takes to wash a dime-size dollop of soap completely off of your hands. Translate that into a much larger quantity of soap being washed out of a completely porous surface like your carpet. You do not want that much water in your carpet, padding and sub-floor. If it takes your carpet one day to dry, it takes the padding and sub-flooring at least two days to dry.

Water becomes microbial within 24 hours, and with the presence of organic matter (ie. Dander, dust, or dirt) it WILL develop mold within 48 hours.

All steam cleaning (also known as hot water extraction) falls into this category. So if a steam cleaner doesn’t turn your carpet into a hot bed for mold and bacteria, they will leave you carpet a dirty and soapy mess. When soap dries in your carpet, it becomes sticky and causes your carpet to resoil within a VERY short period of time. This is where the old saying “Your carpets get dirtier quicker after the first time you have them cleaned”, comes from. This only applies to soap based methods, and it's not a myth!

At Accolade Chem-Dry, we use NO SOAP, only green & clean products to keep your carpet like new!

We offer premium carpet cleaning services to North Tampa, South Tampa, Brandon, Lakeland, Temple Terrace, and all surrounding areas. Call us now at (813) 780-8464.