Carpet shampoo and rinse

What do find is the best way to treat carpets with the Extractor?

I was firstly using the shampoo solution in the Extractor tank and using a trigger-spray to rinse with fresh water. Then I switched to having the shampoo in the trigger spray and having the rinse water in the extractor.

My feeling is that its better to have the shampoo in the Extractor pump and water in the bottle. Does anybody agree or even have a different approach? You can take it that I do the necessary stain pre-treating prior to using the extractor. : )

What professional carpet cleaners follow is this procedure:

a. Vacuum the dry soil
b. Remover specific stains by hand
c. Pre-spray the entire carpet area and let dwell to emulsify the oily soil on fibers
d. Scrub with a hand brush or rotary shampooer to allow shampoo to lift the oily soil off fibers
e. Extract (either with an extractor shampoo or plain water solution).
d. Using extractor with valve off vacuum up excess moisture.

We find this a perfect procedure to get a clean carpet, floormat or fabric seat.

Regards

Bud Abraham

Yep, it is point "e" that I am stuck on. I guess I will use plain water in the extractor.

However, I think I will order one of your rotary shampoo brush kits in the new year, Bud. I haven't seen them in this neck of the woods and they look good.

Thanks for the input.

You can do either, however the professional carpet cleaners say that the extractor shampoo (non-foaming 60 or 64 to 1) shampoo helps to "clean" rinse the fibers vs water only.

I would and do go on the basis of what they say and it works and we get no wicking or resoiling after the carpet dries.

Do you have problems with "wicking" ir troublesome resoiling after the carpet dries?

Bud Abraham

No problems with wicking, but I never like the idea of leaving shampoo residue in the carpet. It attracts more dirt really.

That is exactly the reason for using a non-foaming, extractor shampoo solution to extract with, you completely rinse "clean" the fibers.

Water alone does not do that from what my experts in the carpet cleaning field tell me.

Regards

Doesn't make sense though, Bud. How can you rinse it clean with itself? I know that in the carpet cleaning field you can get shampoo neutraliser. Its a very, very mild acid formulation. But I don't want to avoid complicating matters with another chemical. I figure water will dilute it enough to effectively rinse the residue away.

I do not claim to know everything about carpet cleaning. But I do know that the carpet cleaning industry offers far more proven technical information than supplier in our industry provide and I listen to what they have to say because there is really no difference between the carpets in automobiles and the carpets that they clean.

They say to use a pre-spray and let it dwell to emulsify the oily soil and then extract with a water/extractor shampoo solution.

The neutralizer you are speaking is an acidic rinse that is to be used on white carpets to keep them from yellowing. If you leave alkaline shampoo in carpets or fabric upholstery that is white it will yellow.

For example, you might note that white shirts, tee-shirts or briefs often yellow. That is because the alkaline detergent is not neutralized by an acidic rinse.

Grandma's or in your case, great-grandmas used to use a bit of vinegar in a rinse for white cotton clothing to keep them from yellowing.

Do what you are comfortable with, for me, I do what the experts suggest.

Regards

That's okay. Thanks for looking into it and offering your advice.

I appreciate it.

Profile.. I hope this explanation can help clarify

When you are cleaning the upholstery or carpet of a modern vehicle you are probably cleaning a textile which is olefin. This olefin is pretty resistant material. It can fend-off many spills and stains. Because it is petroleum-based and “oil-loving” – it can also fend-off the water which you are using as the main solvent in your cleaning process. When you are cleaning a customer’s vehicle you are probably using the latest pre-sprays and emulsifiers which are available. Your prespray is doing most of the cleaning – breaking the greasy and oily bond which holds acidic dirt into the weave or tufts of the material or carpet.

Your modern upholstery and carpet chemical solutions are a far cry from the early soap shampoos used in the old days. Do you really know the difference between soap and a detergent? Well it is pretty simple. Soap has been around back to the days of the caveman. Soap is essentially derived from rendered animal or vegetable fat which is treated with an extreme alkali. In pioneer days soap was made by boiling fat and then treating with ashes (lye or caustic soda). Soaps allows oil and water to mix so all can be washed away. That is one reason soap is so effective at washing away body oils. Vehicle carpets and cloth upholstery are an entirely different matter.

We all know that we use soaps to shower. We work-up a great lather to attack all that horrible dirt. But then we take a great deal of time to thoroughly rinse-off that soap. The same thing is true of a washing machine. We don’t care about how much soap we use – we have long rinse cycles which thoroughly rinse-out all the soap.

When we are cleaning a vehicle’s carpet or upholstery we are at a slight disadvantage from the cleaning we get from a shower or a washing machine. This comes from the fact that we can’t take the time or effort to rinse as thoroughly. This is one of the reasons that early vehicle carpet and upholstery cleaning with soap caused rapid re-soiling.

What causes the re-soiling? When we put a soap down on a piece of vehicle upholstery or carpet to clean it, we usually perform a short rinse and extraction cycle which leaves some sticky soap residue in the carpet. This acts much like a “glue” to re-attract soil. So, as people place their feet on the cleaned vehicle carpet or sit in the vehicle’s cloth seats, dirt is “stuck” to the soap residue.

There is some confusion concerning “soap” and “shampoo”. Shampoo is essentially a high-foaming cleaning agent which is distributed by thorough agitation. We use our hands to agitate shampoo in our hair. Likewise, we use horse hair brushes to agitate on vehicle upholstery. Early vehicle carpet and upholstery cleaning used soap as the primary cleaning agent and agitation was accomplished by rotary brushes. Some people have gone so far as to use high-foaming soap and then try to pressure wash a vehicle’s carpet – with disastrous results. Most cleaning of vehicle interiors is now done with modern hot water extraction cleaning which does not use a shampoo but uses a chemical combination of pre-spray and emulsifiers (rinsing agents). The object is to get the dirt rinsed and flushed out – and make the vehicle interior dry as quickly as possible to eliminate soil wick-backs and microbial growth. A customer also doesn’t want to wait days for their car seats and carpet to dry before they can actually drive their vehicle!

As you can see we’ve come a long way from the days of using soap to clean carpet and upholstery. You’re probably currently using the latest state-of-the-art prespray and emulsifier detergents in your vehicle detailing business. Modern detergents have definitely improved greatly in their cleaning and rinsing ability. To understand detergents we need to understand how they are different from soap. Let’s look at the definitions of soap and detergent:

A “Soap” is a cleaning agent manufactured from saponified animal or vegetable fat and treated with an alkali.

A “Detergent” is a synthetic, organic cleaning agent that chemically differs from soap.

Virtually all the cleaning agents used in modern carpet and upholstery cleaning are highly-formulated detergents which operate as superior “surfactants”. That’s a pretty fancy word – surfactant. It is easy to understand how “surfactant” is important to our ability to effectively clean. A surfactant is an agent which effectively reduces the surface tension of water. Detergents, soaps and shampoos all have some ability to reduce the surface tension of water and are all surfactants. The new detergents you have available for vehicle fabric and carpet cleaning have superior surfactant abilities which help with cleaning.

When using modern cleaning agents remember that less is more. If the dilution instructions say to use only 2 oz. per gallon – use only that. Those PhD chemists have spent a great of time making sure the recipe is right. Don’t “glug-glug” and add more cleaning chemicals to your water. Use the right amount and they will give consistent results each time.

When using the latest pre-sprays and emulsifying agents we are using highly-refined detergents which contain no soap. Due to the bad memories from the use of soap in vehicle carpet and cloth upholstery cleaning, you should use your new cleaning agents to your marketing advantage. You can boldly proclaim that your cleaner is “soap-free”. You should be able to confidently tell your customer that you only use mild cleaning agents designed especially for vehicle carpet or upholstery that do not cause rapid re-soiling.

You should be cautious, however, about making claims about leaving “no residue”. Even if you were to widely advertise that you leave absolutely no residue you would be “over-selling” as there is no such thing as “no residue”. Modern detergents are designed to rinse very easily and leave a minimum of residue. Quite often that residue dries to a dry powder which will not attract soil and is vacuumed away in normal maintenance.

Concoursgarage, thank you for taking the time to post such a detailed review. It is an informative post. I did know a lot of that, but I still appreciate you taking the time to be educational.

The point I was stuck on was the possibility of the shampoo residue is a dirt magnet. But it was a forum much like this, with renowned experts, who said that the residue is a dirt magnet and should be rinsed well. I guess its a problem in this field. Every answer is qualified and rationalised, although it can be contradictory to every other answer.

Again, thank you and thanks to Bud for the posting.

I do not think shampoo residue is a big issue we need worry about... A good 90% percent or more of most carpets in automobiles are covered by floor mats and take on the brunt of the soiling. Typically most of the mats are pressure washed and have little residue. The carpet is typically soiled by spills like coffe, juice etc which has seeped under the floor mats. of course a percentage of people do not have any floor mats and drive dirt down into the fibers.

Profile Detailer:

Thank you for the acknowledgement, glad to be of assistance.

And, Gina Budhai is a very knowledgeable and informed detailer, you can always depend on her advise as being well-researched and proven in her own detail centre.

Regards
Bud Abraham