[shaun thompson]

any good carpet cleaning videos i could watch and learn and get good tips from before i start my course

[Conroy]

Legend Brands have some good videos  including some good upholstery cleaning videos if you plan to get into upholstery cleaning as well.

https://www.youtube.com/user/LegendBrands

Lots of carpet cleaning videos around, but it's mainly people doing things their way, rather than the correct way.

[dustee]

all you'll learn from videos is incorrect technique and the wrong way to do everything , better off going on a course and getting things right form the start

[Mike Halliday]

There are lots of great videos on youtube, after watching about a 100-200 you can start to filter out the crap. Also read articles on websites like clean fax.com.

The   idea that you can learn how to clean a carpet by doing a ‘course’ is in my opinion wrong ,  courses are good for learning technical stuff like stain removal but on courses the very basics are never taught. You need to learn how to.......vacuum, move furniture, use a wand, apply the correct amount of pre-spray, protect paintwork, Identify stains,  control customer expectations, recognise potential problems..... etc..etc

If you think sitting behind a desk watching a slideshow teaches you how to clean a carpet then you are wrong

[dustee]

Apparently Solutions do all this on their course

[Kinver_Clean]

Shush!!!  You are not allowed to mention Solutions on this site, even if they do the best course by far that is internationally recognised.

[Mike Halliday]

What course is that?

I love solutions mention them all you like

www.worldofclean.co.uk

If solutions  make their courses more of a practical nature then it’s a step I’m the right direction  but if I’m honest I doubt it goes far enough ( but I have no information on their course so I might be wrong) if anyone has done the course I would love them to give a review of it.

To me the best format for a training course would be to block book a small hotel or B&B, let the attendees stay the night, then the next day run the course There.......actually cleaning the whole place....... every bedroom, the stairs, the dining room the chairs & sofas in the lounge.

[Kinver_Clean]

They have their own dedicated centre. It has dirty carpet to clean ( it goes back in the workshop/warehouse to get dirty again.) There is plenty of opportunity to learn wand and prespray techniques. One day is stain removal. Then on Friday there is a free for all session where you can bring up and queries.

[john martin]

This is text from the cleansmart site  ...    i think they all have a practical side these days it might be ages since mike was on a course , alltec also have pics of guys doing practical training .

For a newbie, it’s easy to leave a theory-based carpet cleaning training course feeling that you know everything about carpet cleaning – apart from how to clean carpets!

That is why Cleansmart runs a series of one day ‘hands-on’ carpet cleaning training courses:

[john martin]

texatherm also hands on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7GWbXoomdY

Basically its a chance to sell THEIR machines and THEIR chemicals etc to a captive audience  ... 
which is the whole function of providing training in the first place .

[Robin Ray]

When I did my first course with Derek Ashby we had a go with a wand on a piece of old carpet and talked about wanding technique. To be fair it was a really good course and he did try to talk about lots of the practical elements of the job. Having been a carpet cleaner his course was mostly a string of experiences and anecdotes, I don't know if its still him doing the courses now though. You can pick up tips and tricks from you tube videos and from forums but a few good courses are the core of the knowledge you really need to get going. At present that is....
The biggest thing people really underestimate in carpet cleaning is getting a constant supply of work, not cleaning the carpet. To begin with carpet cleaning is really a marketing business which just happens to also clean carpets.

[Mike Halliday]

Does anyone really believe these ‘hands-on’ courses equip anyone  to clean a carpet in a customers home? Pulling a bit of carpet from a warehouse floor is as close to carpet cleaning as me thinking I’m a surgeon after carving a Sunday roast.

Let’s be honest every carpet cleaner uses his first 50-100 customers as  Guinea Pigs,  using their carpets and upholstery to practice on (while still telling them they are a ‘professional carpet cleaner’ )

[Kinver_Clean]

Its better than my initial training.
You put the water and detergent in here, You push the wand over the carpet and the dirty water comes out there.
Thank you for the cash --  Bye.

[Robin Ray]

Does anyone really believe these ‘hands-on’ courses equip anyone  to clean a carpet in a customers home? Pulling a bit of carpet from a warehouse floor is as close to carpet cleaning as me thinking I’m a surgeon after carving a Sunday roast.

Let’s be honest every carpet cleaner uses his first 50-100 customers as  Guinea Pigs,  using their carpets and upholstery to practice on (while still telling them they are a ‘professional carpet cleaner’ )

Just as well Surgeons spend years studying and training before being let loose with the scalpel!
Courses will provide alot more knowledge than nothing, it wont make you an "expert" but it helps. And anyone really seriouse about doing something properly wants to know at-least something about how to do it first.
To be fair you learn alot in the first few jobs after, but you know about issues which could arise and you have at least some knowledge you can talk to the customer about.

Example
You buy a machine and arrive on your first job, fitted seagrass matting.  You proceed with your powerful hot water extraction machine... For some reason it shrinks away from the walls by 2 inches and the customer is unsurprisingly not happy.

On to the next job...
You arrive to clean a white linen sofa, after finding out from the internet that the best prespray for upholstery is prochem fabric restorer you prespray the fabric but for some reason it starts to turn brown in patches, another unhappy customer..

Job 3

A viscose suite.  HWE ?? ....

Job 4

blood staining on a light wool carpet   HWE?? ...

job 5

Fabric turns red after applying acid rinse...

etc....

You can learn to deal with all these issues and more with experience and asking random people on the internet. Or you could attend a course or two which at the very least will prepare you for the possibilities that such problems exist!

[Cleanevangelist]

Hi

By far the best is

https://prochem.co.uk/product/2-day-carpet-cleaning-course/

the reason is they teach the connection between their products and the three main carpet cleaning methods, Preventive, Corrective, and Salvage.

Good luck

Ian Harper

[john martin]

Ha , American tim trying to teach cracks me up  ...  he had a few good points though    ( free course )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HO4lHhlh4o

[Steve_Knight]

What course is that?

I love solutions mention them all you like

www.worldofclean.co.uk

If solutions  make their courses more of a practical nature then it’s a step I’m the right direction  but if I’m honest I doubt it goes far enough ( but I have no information on their course so I might be wrong) if anyone has done the course I would love them to give a review of it.

To me the best format for a training course would be to block book a small hotel or B&B, let the attendees stay the night, then the next day run the course There.......actually cleaning the whole place....... every bedroom, the stairs, the dining room the chairs & sofas in the lounge.

Just like the original Sunny Days Out Mike!!

[Mike Halliday]

Some info about Solutions training course.....

Hi Mick
 
Saw the post about training and thought I would let you know. we have two purpose built training rooms, each one is around 6 meters square, containing different fitted carpet, standard polyprop, Belgium wilton, axminster, 80/20 mix, twist , loop cuts, a carpeted staircase, commercial carpet tiles and even some vinyl,
 
During training all delegate clean said areas, including an area that our forklift tracks over 5-6 times a day.
 
They work with crbs, rotary machines, orbital machines extraction machine.
 
Low moisture, padding, dry compound, combination cleaning, so get to cover the whole spectrum, following the training course we also have an additional day if people want to simply pop in and have more hands on ( free of charge, obviously we supervise this)
 
We are the only manufacturer to have this type of facility, certainly in the UK, we are told by one ex NCCA President that he has never seen anything so comprehensive in all of his travels.

[Jennifer w]

Blimey 6m2, that is a seriously impressive cosy showroom.....

[Kinver_Clean]

The difference between six metres square  and  six square metres.