What is the Truth about "Green Carpet Cleaning" methods? What does this mean? And, if there is such a thing, what would it be?
Some 20 years ago, I found myself working a very short term stint for a company based in Renton called "Envirosteam." 15-20 carpet cleaners showed up each morning to pack a cheap portable unit in their cars or trucks and head off to clean carpets based on a very cheap direct mail ad that promised 3 rooms for $15. We were directed to charge more if the customer wanted us to treat a spot or use detergent in the water and the expectation was that each appointment was to net more like $200-$400. Now, I'm a believer in capitalism and favor the free market system, but I'm not sure this qualified. Furthermore, the manager explained that consumers were enamored with the "environment," hence the name "EnviroSteam." However, there was nothing special about anything we did or used that was particularly environmentally friendly or distinguishable from practices used by other companies I had been with except that the portable equipment was cheaper. Perhaps he reasoned that if we used straight water and no detergent at all we were doing the environment a favor, or that we used less fuel since it wasn't truckmounted and rather plugged into the customers' wall outlets?
The problem with using no detergent was that carpets didn't clean well...or in most cases at all. This, of course, was the catch. Customers soon realized they had to pay more if they actually wanted the carpets cleaned. Despite being broke, I left that company after just a couple days. The truth is that today most (but not all) carpet cleaning detergents available to the industry from carpet cleaning suppliers are not going to affect your health and are made to be biodegradable. Are you afraid to rub soap on your body when you shower? What happens to the soap when it goes down the drain? Does it harm the environment?
As it turns out, most carpet cleaning solutions are fairly mild (as detergents go). If a cleaner is used on a carpet that has too high of a PH balance, it will cause a chemical reaction that causes the carpets to turn orange after they dry (in one direction) or yellow (in the other). So, the soap you rub on your body, wash your car with, or put on your dishes will typically be at a higher PH than what we use. This is why you never want to use dish soap to clean a spot on the carpet. The trick in carpet cleaning is to use something strong enough to get the stains out, but mild enough so the PH balance isn't upset.
Are there some detergents that are greener than others? There was a professor at the University of Washington that developed a cleaning agent made essentially of salt, which was supposed to be a "green" solution. However, it wasn't very effective. There is also another product which is supposed to be organic and "eats" the dirt (called Host) that you sprinkle on the carpet, rake in, and vaccuum out. This actually had some success. But, in virtually every instance where I used it, I got a call back from the customer later wanting me to come back out and steam over it anyway because the carpets didn't get clean enough. There are also "tankless" systems that apparently are "green" because they don't use water. Some of these are called "encapsulaton." A product gets sprinkled onto the carpet and raked in. It's supposed to attach to the carpet fiber and break off taking the dirt with it when a special machine is run over it. Again, it does something, but it's not too effective, especially with specialty spots like tar, gum, urine, rust, ink, etc. It's also cheap for the operator. The equipment can be ported around in a car and plugs into your home saving on fuel costs with virtually no equipment to maintain.
Let me tell you, nothing cleans like water (or steam). There is just no substitute. So, we are back to using carpet cleaning detergents. Now what you should know is that everything a carpet cleaner uses as a spot cleaner gets completely rinsed out of the carpet except for the emulsification agent that runs (get metered) through the water. If metered properly and used in the right amount, this leaves a negligible amount of particles in the carpet. Unless the technician is using some cheap brand and can't tell that it's sudsing up, it's so insignificant that it won't attract any dirt and it certainly won't affect your health. Now, if the technician is careless or not properly trained, you could end up with the carpets feeling crunchy when it dries. This happens for two reasons. If the detergent is metered too strong, the carpets 1) will be crunchy when dry because too much detergent was left in the carpet, and 2) it took too long to dry because carpets stay wet longer when the PH balance is upset. This could also leave orange streaks on your carpet. It might also be that you used your own machine and put too much solution in the water and then called a cleaner out to fix it (but didn't mention what you did). By the way, usually this situation can be fixed and sometimes it can't.
Now there is something else to consider. I have been getting quite few calls lately from customers complaining about another "professional" carpet cleaner in my area who is using a portable unit with a Rotovac attached to it. They are complaining about the carpets taking three days to dry and feeling like concrete and they want me to fix the problem. My guess is that two things are going on here. Rotovac's use alot of water. I know because I own 2 of them. They are useful on extremely dirty carpets because they make it easier on the technician. But, they don't have the capacity for close detail like a standard wand. The circular pattern of the machine makes it hard to see smaller spots that need special attention. So, I don't use mine very often and my employees don't like them because they are heavy to lift out of the van and require an extra electrical cord which makes for tangled mess with all the other hoses already running through the house. It's also easy to knick up the tile or wood floor where it meets the carpet.
But to pair a Rotovac with a portable unit is trouble, because the portable isn't going to have the sucking power of a truckmount and Rotovacs put out alot of water. This also means the portable's small waste tank is going to fill quickly requiring frequent manual dumping (down your toilet). But, usually there is a window of time where the unit is almost full that it doesn't suck very well before dumping. If the unit wasn't sucking water well before, it's even worse now and it's shooting a spray of dirty water onto your carpets out of a vent on it's underside. But my guess it that in addition to the problem of sucking all the water out of the carpet, too much detergent is being used, which explains the phenomonon of the carpets feeling like concrete. Typically, a portable unit doesn't have a meter on it per se. You just scoop some detergent in the tank and go at it. But the secret is that, in the end, it's not the tool that does the heavy cleaning. It's the pretreatment. The tool is simply there to rinse the detergent out. That is it's main function. In terms of getting the dirt out, the most important tool actually is the hand sprayer and it's contents. I can run my wand or a Rotovac over a spot all day and not get it clean sometimes. But if I spray some special traffic lane cleaner (which I sometimes add a special boosting agent to for really nasty greasy stuff), presto all of a sudden I'm getting the carpets to look really nice when I rinse it out with my wand.
What could I do to call my company a "green" company? I guess I'd have to put solar panels on the roof of my truck or use biodiesel (a possiblilty for my newest rig shown below since it runs on diesel). Short of that, when it comes to detergents, there is no magic bullet despite any claims you might hear. You should also know there is a company in town that claims to not leave any residue in the carpet at all. I asked them about this once. They told me the product they use is manufactured by a company in Ballard. So, I called them and asked about the product. Well, the label on the bottle says, "does not leave a sticky or soapy residue." When I asked the person there if that meant it didn't leave any residue at all, just one that wasn't sticky or soapy, all he would do is repeat "does not leave a sticky or soapy residue." But, this is true of most carpet cleaning emulsifiers including the one I use, which means there is nothing special to distinguish that company from others.
