[William Sharpe]

called out yesterday to a very large corporate estate and conference centre to quote on giving all the carpets a deep clean and quarterly maintenance follow ups. the place is huge with 1000's of sq meters of light grey with black carpeting an incredibly busy place. The ops manager informed me that the previous cleaning co. came with 4 lads and cleaned the carpets with (rotary machines) I assume dry fusion or encap!! on all main walk on areas are quite black from foot traffic the edges are light and clean.
When you encap with say a sprayborg a video shows the solution to be foamy then it dissapears into the carpet to crystalise. 3 to 4 months later the same process. they tell me no one goes back the next day to vacuum so surely there must be an ongoing buid up of dirty crystals/powder left in the carpet that is causing the carpets to resoil quickly?
The area and the fact that it is always incredibly busy makes it difficult to HWE even late at night after midnight I will be able to HWE to get all the gunk out and this will take at least 5 nights.
Question. Do you encap pro's believe that you can keep encapping the same carpet every 3 months and get out standing results I really hope so. I am hoping the previous contractor was just using rotary and crappy chems. Because if correct encap program will give ongoing good results I would be a happy bunny and so will the client.

Reg

[stuart_clark]

Reg

you can get a realy good result with encap using the right chems and right machine, but it is imperative to post vac after the clean, say 24 hours, I price that in all jobs ive done this year and the results are fantastic, drying times are less than an hour but it takes time for the crystals to completely harden and thats why I give it 24 hours, I have used an airmover or 6 on the job but find its always better the day after the clean to post vac


Stuart

[Jamie Pearson]

We never return to post vac.
We explain to the customer the benefits of it and price it separately into the quote.
We also quote commercials at 2 rates. One for them using upright vacuums as part of the daily maintenance and the other if we have to do thorough pre-vac because they continue to use tub vacs.
The reality is the best looking sites we have are the ones with the best vacuuming program. Not the most number of cleans per annum
With the modern encap products it becomes inert and will remove with a few hits with a tub vac so over 3 months they should pull it out.

[Radek Jablonski]

Jamie would you say that good vacuuming over the year and one carpet cleaning per year would be enough for such a busy areas?

[Jamie Pearson]

No. They would need quarterly visits. An annual clean is usually always going to be restorative. 6 monthly they may get away with if they are really good at spot cleaning. I have always found quarterly gives a good balance of keeping the carpets looking clean so your work is cleaning clean carpets. Which is what maintenance is all about.

[John Kelly]

It may be they were using a cheap janitorial shampoo which will build up over time and needs to be eventually extracted.
Polymer based encap products shouldn't do this so can be cleaned over and over again using this method.
The main problem with commercial premises is they are not maintained or cleaned properly. The Henry vacuum is wizzed over to pick up visible debris and that's that. Its worth trying to educate the client the importance of using decent vacuums and how to vacuum correctly.
I did this with a solicitors offices in Newcastle. They had called me in to clean the boardroom carpet which was a very good quality Wool Wilton. The pile was full to the brim with crap. I asked them when it was last vacuumed and they said it was done every day I asked to see what they were using so they took me to the cleaners cupboard where there were 3 very forlorn Henry Vacs. You could have put them on your eyeball and they wouldn't have damaged it. On the back of this and a little educating I sold them 2 new Henrys and a Sebo BS36. I also cleaned all the carpets there for the next 10 years, mainly polyprop tiles, 20 year old which were always stained with curry and other takeaways as they often worked round the clock. Always cleaned up really well.
They eventually moved to a brand new office block. After a month they rang me to deal with some stains, curry again. To my horror the whole building was carpeted in 100% Wool carpet tiles in light Beige. The stains were permanent and they were shocked when I explained their error, or the Architects. I packed carpet cleaning in soon after so never got back. Would be interesting to see what state its in now.

[David Ware]

This might be of help to some one

THE IICR RESIDENTIAL CARPET CLEANING FREQUENCY CHART FOR A GOOD HEALTHY HOME AND GREAT LOOKING CARPETS !!

Traffic Soil Rating   Vacuuming   Spot Cleaning   Heavy-Use area cleaning   Restorative cleaning
Light Soil
(1 to 2 Adults)   1 x per week   Daily or as soon as spots are noticed   Traffic areas every 12 to 18 months   Every 2 years
Normal Soil
(Families with Children / elderly)   1 to 2 x per week   Daily or as soon as spots are noticed   Traffic areas every 6 to 12 months   Annually
Heavy Soil
(Families with pets / smoking)   2 to 4 x per week   Daily or as soon as spots are noticed   Traffic areas every 3 to 6 months   Semi-Annually (2x annually)
Extreme Conditions
(Large families / multiple pets)   Daily   Daily or as soon as spots are noticed   Traffic Lanes every 2 to 3 months   Quarterly
(4 x annually)

You could consider applying a good carpet protector after your first HWE if carpet is ok for this

David

[Simon Gerrard]

First off, it sounds like a valuable contract.
It also sounds like you might need to be heavily vacced and HWSE in the worst areas first to restore them and then think about encapping. Like any technique or chemical system they each have their physical limits to what it can achieve without rapid resoiling. From what you have said the last contractor was using a system or technique that didn't match the degree of soiling in the carpet and so the requirement for a consistently high appearance level could not be obtained. I wouldn't be making the mistake and despite the difficulties and inconvenience it is down to you to design and propose a system that will achive that. This could include different frequencies and techniques in different areas depending on the types of soil in those areas. Restaurant kitchen entrances and the traffic lanes from it could require a different approach to less soiled areas. Likewise main entrances with large amounts of dry soil could also be treated differently. You have to think of how a carpet gets soiled and with what to be able to come up with an appropriate system.
Don't forget, most of these people don't know anything about carpet cleaning, although they might think they do.

Simon

[William Sharpe]

Thanks to you all it has given me much to think about. I have just come back from doing a trial patch by the lifts area with a good vac followed by a pre-spray and rotary aggitation followed by HWE using form.90 the result was unbelieveable the waste water was a thick guiness with kilo's of seddiment. took a while to drain the area was about 1000sq ft and took me just on 2 hrs. had to do section by section with safety barriers in place . The overall area's are estimated at 10,000 sg meters

The client was over the moon now the fun part!! I must work out a deep clean quote (all work in the 3 bars/restaurants, reception areas X 2) must be done after midnight on Sunday & monday nights-HWE The corridors over 3 floors to the bedrooms must be done by encapsulation during the afternoons, all the conference and function rooms by HWE and during days they are not in use Dates supplied by client. Then all areas on a maintenance program of every 4 months following a deep clean.

I may call on a local CC to assist in the overall original Deep clean as that is going to take some doing especially with all the safety precautions needed.

And yes I will check their vacuum frequencies and equipment (thanks for that advice) Encap is not what i do but will have to supply this services so will look to the best equipment and chemicals.

Again thanks for the positive feed back.
Reg

[Ian Gourlay]

Reg was this with a truckmount?

[William Sharpe]

Hi Ian. No, we had 2 Ninja's I disagreeistant and myself.

Reg

[Ian Gourlay]

Ah two man job    bet you were forever filling buckets but well done you and the Ninjas