Interior carpet cleaning problem

[MJT]

Hey guys I have been working on cleaning my car carpets with the DA cyclo brush and using folex for stains and laundry detergent for main clean. I am then sucking up the water/liquid with a wet vac. I am of course vacuuming before all this to make sure no loose dirt is there in the carpet.

The problem I am having is that the more I scrub the carpet the more mud etc seems to surface and ends up looking worse than before! Sometimes it seems that the mud etc is spreading around the carpet. I have noticed that this happens during the wet vac stage. As I am sucking up the residue it seems to pull the deeper dirt to surface of carpet and it seems really hard to get that out. I have noticed if I use folex and just lightly clean the top layer of carpet fibers the stains come out and the carpet looks ok. But I know this is just skimming the surface and not deep cleaning.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[vandau]

I am assuming you are not working on the carpet mats. Mats can be blasted with a hose to rinse.

For the interior, laundry detergent, while it works, needs plenty of rinsing to completely remove. Make sure you have at least 2 rinse buckets. Use one bucket to rinse your used brush from dirt and suds; use the second bucket to soak the clean brush and reintroduce clean water. Scrub and follow up with the wet vac to remove all dirty and clean suds. Keep repeating the rinse procedure until no more foaming and dirt occurs while scrubbing. When the dirty rinse bucket gets too cloudy, dump it and refill with clean water. When you're done, dry the damp carpet with plenty of towels. Also, it's best to work in small sections. This requires lots of time and elbow grease but should give results close to an extractor.

 

[wdmaccord]

An extractor might help. And I would just use Folex on the entire carpet, not just spots, instead of laundry detergent. I have used CG Fabric Clean in this way by wetting the carpet/mats, spraying on the diluted cleaner in a regular spray bottle, scrubbing with an upholstery brush, and then extracting with only hot water (rinse/extract combo). Always comes out looking great and I only have a variant of the Bissell little green machine (the one that's "heated").

the CG FC has to be rinsed really well also because it foams. Kind of a pain, so I might be moving to CG Lightning Fast or Folex going forward. The foaming also makes you have to empty the rinse bucket more often on the LGM. I think on larger more expensive extractors, foaming cleaners can actually ruin the pumps.

 

[MJT]

Thanks guys. Would you dilute the Folex if using it for the whole car? And perhaps use it concentrated for specific stains? It seems like I really need to soak the carpet to get good results... is that right? I went back today at some of the muddy stains that resulted from yesterday's work and sprayed lots of folex/water and found that did a better job after sucking it all up with the vac. Had to repeat quite a few times!