[thomas pl]

Hi! During carpet cleaning course they teach you to recognise type of carpet you dealing with by burn test - EASY
Tried a few times on job and reaction of customers vary. When you theling them that you need a sample some of them looking at you with respect/ know that you know what u doing/ and some of them are just shocked
My question is:
Are you realy doing burn test every time or with years of expierience you just looking on it and you know?

[JandS]

Why not just ask the customer.

John

[thomas pl]

Dont expect customer to be a carpet specialist. Before cc course if you ask me what carpet i have my respond would be green

[Neil Williams]

Are you realy doing burn test every time
No

or with years of expierience you just looking on it and you know?
Experience does help to tell but there are still times when a burn test is needed.

[Ian Gourlay]

I know where you coming from

You have £5000 carpet and a Guy you have ever met wants to take a sliver out of your carpet

What is worse he is the fourth one this week

[Ken Wainwright]

When you pull up the corner of a carpet to inspect the backing/construction, you can almost always find a detached tuft or two there.

If, like me, you use multi-fibre compatible solutions, it is not always necessary to know what the fibre is, just if it's dye fast and not going to harmed by water and agitation.

Having said that, knowledge and experience means a lot and you can often make an educated guess as to the type of principle fibre, but not necessarly a blend. For example, a Brinton's Bell Twist looks totally different to a tufted twist and most other face-face wiltons. I couldn't write down what the difference is but you can usually see it.

Safe and happy cleaning
The Ken

[Pristine Clean]

I dont always do a burn test. Only when I need some clarification. Colour fastness is more important to me as we generally use chemicals that are safe on most types of fibres.

I find the float test gets the customers intrigued enough.

Dave

[peter maybury]

you can never trust what the customer tells you there is there are a lot of customers out there that are convinced they have wool carpets when they have synthetic.
To a lay person one fibre is much the same as another.  The majority of carpet salesmen do not understand the characteristics of different fibres either. The most important is identifying wool from synthetics you can normally identify shedding with wool  or you can feel the absorbancy if you wet it slightly. Experience is a big help and as a carpet retailer as well with some 20 years experience can identify most carpets on sight. It is easy enough to find a tuft of pile to do a burn test you do not have to make a big thing about it in front of the customer. If it is some thing you do automatically and without a big show the customer will think nothing of it. Have your tin with tweezers and lighter in you pocket and just do it.

Peter