Cleaning carpet 101 ? Please share.

phoneguy44

phoneguy44

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Quick History. Last year started detailing with what I had, mainly just wash, wax and vacuum, dust and wipe down interior. People at work and church kept me busy and made a few bucks. This year, doing the same but saving up go to get a DA ( I LONG FOR IT !! )

I work in an upscale place, most of the cars I clean are not beaters so when I get one, it's work but nothing i cant get clean. I've noticed this year that my customers have been referring me to their brother, mother blah blah blah.

One of my customers brings in his Dad's Toyota car, this thing is the worst one I've tackled. He owns a farm and drives his car up to the barn to feed the cows. Long story short, when I look at the interior to give him a quote, I notice that there is hay every where. Now i'll tell ya right now I lost big time on this one cause I spent WAAAAY more time on that carpet than I should have but I'm so freakin ANAL I couldnt let it go like that. The carpet had very small pieces of hay tangled all up in the carpet that the shop vac just couldnt get out. I'm talkin everywhere ! After 45 min just on the drivers side floor it just looked 'dirty' as opposed to 'NASTY' when I first started. So I gave up and moved on.
This was my last car for the day and customer called and said he was going to be an hour late so I broke out the vac again and got back to drivers side floor. With a small pocket knife I tried to pick alot of the hay out of the carpet, with success but my gosh it was everywhere and would have taken me days.

Now I read Wills post about the dodge durango, seen the nasty pics and how clean it was after he was done. In a case like mine, would the DA with the brush on it have gotten all that up ? All of that tangled up, small pieces of hay that wouldnt turn loose ?

By the way, when I gave the customer their car back the first thing I showed him was the carpet and explained that "This aint coming up without major work due to the neglect its been through." His reply: "hmmm, did you vacuum it good ?"

I hated that feeling, I'm not use to it. Usually when I give a car back i get the words "Fantastic, Amazing, New, Holy Smoke"
 
I have found that using a stiff bristle brush helps tremendously on nasty carpets. I usually first brush, vac, brush and vac again until the carpet is clean. Some carpet is easy to clean, and some carpet is just a nightmare for me. Such as the carpet in a kia soul for instance. Hay is a pain in the you know what...It gets everywhere and is hard to get up most of the time. Hope this helped some.
 
I use a a pet hair brush for stuff thats stuck in the carpet its a brush with thick rubber bristles and it works great for pullling stuff thats ground in the carpet out
 
I take a stiff plastic bristled brush and move it all towards one central spot. Then vacuum. Don't beat yourself up. Use it as a learning experience. I know in the rush to do all things for all people we often forget that we do need to be fairly compensated for our time.

Sometimes it helps to have a really good vacuum. You also need to maintain that sucker. Keep the filters clean and replace them when you start losing suction. You can bang the dust out every so often but a clean filter sucks real good. lol. Routine maintenance in the long run is way cheaper than having to replace a whole vacuum.

We personally use The Home Depot Stainless Steel vacuums. One has the detailers kit attached and the other is for hardcore vacuuming.

Tim

Tim
 
One more question guys. I dont mean to be a bother, just trying to make my job easier.

There's a detail shop less than a quarter mile from my work here. I notice they ALWAYS have the complete interior carpet out of the car hanging up to dry. I'm always starring at the shop when I go by just to see what they are up too and they stay pretty busy. They must have a real good sales guy telling everyone they will have to pull carpet out of the vehicle to clean it really good. I've seen them spraying hanging carpet up with a hose too, I guess rinsing all the cleaner out of the carpet.

Whats the purpose of that and wouldn't that be more work getting it back into the vehicle ? Couldn't the same thing be accomplished just pulling out the seats ? What are the benefits other than not being enclosed in the vehicle ?
 
phoneguy44 said:
One more question guys. I dont mean to be a bother, just trying to make my job easier.

There's a detail shop less than a quarter mile from my work here. I notice they ALWAYS have the complete interior carpet out of the car hanging up to dry. I'm always starring at the shop when I go by just to see what they are up too and they stay pretty busy. They must have a real good sales guy telling everyone they will have to pull carpet out of the vehicle to clean it really good. I've seen them spraying hanging carpet up with a hose too, I guess rinsing all the cleaner out of the carpet.

Whats the purpose of that and wouldn't that be more work getting it back into the vehicle ? Couldn't the same thing be accomplished just pulling out the seats ? What are the benefits other than not being enclosed in the vehicle ?
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In all of my years in the automotive industry I have found pulling the carpet to be one of the biggest hassles when putting it back in because it has to go under trim panels and then the seats etc... I offer to remove seats to get to the most amount of carpet for an additional price but I would never offer to remove carpet unless they were replacing it...
just my .02
 
I would suggest if your thinking about this detailing business long term to save up and get a mytee lite II and a steamer. That with a very good vacuum can tackle almost everything. I'm about to buy a mytee lite ii, but there are a lot of other people who has one that will prob chime in.
 
hmmm, gonna be a while before the mytee lite comes into play. Still saving up for my DA package. Been checkin around on a carpet cleaner with stair attachment. Looks like they are runnin about $75 - $100 in my area for a used one. Thats more my speed right now as I only detail 2-3 days a week.
 
This was a customers car I cleaned over the weekend. Tell me how you guys would clean this ? Is it possible to get this clean as new ?

This also goes to prove that customers dont expect as much as we do. When I gave him his car back to him he was more than pleased.

Before

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After

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If thos are coffee, soda or beverage stains other than fruit drink, yes they could come out a lot better. If it were at my shop I would have presprayed it with Ultrapac Traffic Clean. Then scrubbed it with a stiff plastic bristle brush. I would have then used the hand held wand for my extractor and rinsed and extraced it. You would be amazed at how much can come out with a coffee spill.

The key is the prespray and agitation. It's like using shampoo and lathering it in your hair and rinsing. If you just dumped the shampoo on and then rinsed it you would have a couple clean spots and thats it. Let me see if I can find some coffee extract pictures.

Tim
 
rovetherockies said:
In all of my years in the automotive industry I have found pulling the carpet to be one of the biggest hassles when putting it back in because it has to go under trim panels and then the seats etc... I offer to remove seats to get to the most amount of carpet for an additional price but I would never offer to remove carpet unless they were replacing it...
just my .02
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Agreed! I've been detailing for years, and pulling a carpet is just not necessary. If the carpet got so bad, that it needs to be pulled...you're better off just replacing it since it's coming out anyways. If you ask me, that shop you're passing by is just trying to look fancy. In my opinion...it's a waste of time pulling carpet. With the tools we have today, you can get in just about any spot.

It seems to me that where your lacking with carpet cleaning, is a missing extractor. Either a steam cleaner, or an extractor would open up a lot of doors for you with carpet cleaning. :dblthumb2:
 
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Before


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After

I got a used extractor from the local carpet cleaning distrubutor. I use a Century Ninja 400. It has 2 vacuum motos a pump and and in line heater. I got it for around $1000. A lot of people get in and out of the cleaning business all the time. You don't ever really have to buy new. You just have to know a little about what you are looking at.

Tim
 
Let's me first say that Toyota carpet flat out sucks!
It's short tight nap is the worst to clean and vacuum!
I will at delivery when I get these ask the clients have try vacuumed it before and they will admittedly most times say it sux to vac these carpets.. Then I'll get a brush and my vac and show them and explain what the end result will look like due to the fibers in the carpets .. Nothing u can really sk but scrub with a brush and vac for hay
 
phoneguy44 said:
This was a customers car I cleaned over the weekend. Tell me how you guys would clean this ? Is it possible to get this clean as new ?

This also goes to prove that customers dont expect as much as we do. When I gave him his car back to him he was more than pleased.

Before

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After

100_3464.jpg

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It looks a lot better! not perfect but unless you told them it would be perfect (which I do not advise) they would be happy. That being said you may have been able to get a bit more out with some harsher chemicals... What did you use as a pre-treatment? I have used a very light combo of Dawn (one cap full), Simple Green (one cap full), and Wolite or Folex (one cap full) in a 32oz spray bottle filled with HOT water; spray it on let it sit about 10 min the aggitate mist a bit more on let that sit then aggitate and extract that seems to work amazing.
 
Good tips right there and I pay attention so dont think any instructions are taken lightly. Carpet is my weakness, mainly because I dont have a super extractor like some of these guys BUT, as he said, my customer was more than pleased.

By the way, 2 things on that carpet. I used only what was provided in the Bissle Pro Heat vaccum, nothing else. And last, I HATE CLEANING CARPET WITH A PASSION !!!!

Man I feel better.
 
small steam cleaners are good if used correctly... The biggest misuse of them is when people over wet an area and expect them to extract all of the water/solution... Heck I have even used a wet/dry vac and a spray bottle to get auto carpets clean! That actually works pretty well as the wet/dry vac has a lot more suction than most of the lower end carpet cleaners and even some of the high end ones... I have the high end one and a good wet/dry also...

Something else that you may want to try in place of water is club soda, tonic water, or sparkling water (just make sure it has no flavoring as with flavor it comes with sugar and that is not a god thing; club soda shows sugar in the ingredients but it is such a fractional amount that it has no ill effects) if you use any of these to sub the water you are basically using a oxygenated/carbonated cleaner now which helps to encapsulate the dirt and bring it to the surface! Give it a try!
 
I do think I would agree with the guys above that said you should get a carpet cleaner. I got the bissell little green machine for $100 and it's been a life saver! I love that little guy!!! Put hot water on it. Spray the carpet with what ever cleaner you want, scrub away and let the little green guy take care of the rest. I think it's the best way to get into carpet cleaning without throwing in tons of money. You should look into it.
 
MaximumMD said:
I do think I would agree with the guys above that said you should get a carpet cleaner. I got the bissell little green machine for $100 and it's been a life saver! I love that little guy!!! Put hot water on it. Spray the carpet with what ever cleaner you want, scrub away and let the little green guy take care of the rest. I think it's the best way to get into carpet cleaning without throwing in tons of money. You should look into it.
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When I say "Steam Cleaner" or "Carpet Cleaner" I am meaning products like the LGM or the Hoover one etc... If I say "Carpet Extractor" I am meaning products like the Duramaids or Aztecs etc... Jus to clear up any confusion... In no way am I trying to sell someone on a "high end high dollar machine"... As I said I have used a wet/dry vac with great success also...
 
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