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Commercial Carpet Cleaning – Expert Tips & Tricks

If you’re the manager of a commercial property then you will know just how complicated proper carpet care can be. Looking after your carpets at home is a hard enough task, but office and commercial property carpet care can be a real challenge

Each day, dozens, if not hundreds, of people walk through the building, leaving a trail of muddy footprints and tattered carpet fibers. In addition, coffee and soda spills, food stains, dust, and grime all contribute to the decay of commercial and office carpets.

Keeping Your Office Clean Has Amazing Benefits:

Regularly cleaning the office carpets can affect productivity, health, and time. Workers in a clean and sanitary environment can focus on their tasks without being distracted my mess and dirt.

 

A clean and presentable office is also vital for business meetings and visitors. The first thing guests notice when they step into a new office is the cleanliness, and first impressions are everything.

Commercial Carpet Cleaning Solutions:

 

No two office buildings are alike so it’s hard to prescribe a “one-size-fits-all” method for commercial carpet cleaning. That being said, we can offer several tips & tricks from our very own experts which will help you keep your office carpets looking just as fresh and new as the day they were laid:

  • Vacuum Daily: This is our number one tip for a reason. Daily vacuuming will prevent dirt from being stomped into your carpet the next morning. Each night, after the office workers have gone home, your cleaner or cleaning crew should vacuum every square inch of carpet. This makes it easier to perform regular deep cleans and will preserve your carpets in the long run.
  • Perform Regular Deep Cleans: This can be done every 6 months or so, depending on how dirty your carpets get over time. This will require the assistance of a professional cleaning service that uses proper equipment. You can choose either a steam carpet clean which uses a method known as hot-water extraction to rid your carpets of dirt, or dry cleaning which uses various chemicals to remove all dirt and grime from the carpets.
  • Treat spills and stains immediately: Don’t leave coffee stains and grime to fester in the carpet until the next deep clean. Train your staff or janitors on how to correctly treat carpet stains on the spot. Keep a jar of vinegar, baking soda, ammonia handy in the janitor’s closet and make it’s used to clear up all spills as soon as they occur.
  • Use the right method for each carpet: Some office buildings have different types of carpet on each floor. It’s important to use the correct cleaning method to treat each carpet. At Flat Rate Carpet, we offer a wide range of options, including foam cleaning, shampoo cleaning, bonnet cleaning, and more.

“Check out the amazing job we did at this office in New York. The deep, dark stains were completely removed and the entire carpet area looks fresh and welcoming.

Conclusion

Keeping a commercial property clean is no simple feat. There are many common sense reasons to bring in a professional office cleaning team on a regular basis. Not only is it one less thing you have to worry about, but you can also rest assured knowing your office carpets are in safe hands.

Dry vs Steam Carpet Cleaning – Which Method is Best?

 

Cleaning your carpets is a simple, routine activity, right?

Wrong.

Believe it or not, even something as seemingly straightforward as carpet cleaning can actually be a pretty complex enterprise. First, you have to decide whether to use a carpet-cleaning service or to undertake this oft-neglected task by yourself. Once you manage to tackle this decision, the next thing to consider is which type of carpet-cleaning method you’re going to use.

This handy guide will explain the two main approaches, weigh up the pros and cons, and give you a verdict.

Steam Carpet Cleaning:

Steam carpet cleaning involves zero steam (it’s a misnomer). Instead, it involves boiling hot water, a vacuum cleaner, chemicals, and lots of free time. The process for steam carpet cleaning is as follow

  1. Sweep up/vacuum your carpet and remove all stray dust/dirt
  2. Use a steam-cleaning machine to spray detergent over the carpet to loosen any remaining dirt Inject boiling hot water under high-pressure into your carpet
  3. Hoover it up using a special vacuum cleaner known as a wet-vac. The wet-vac extracts all the hot water from the carpet along with dirt, grime, and bacteria.

Once this is done, your carpet will look nice and clean, but don’t start walking all over them right away! You need to wait at least 24 hours if not more before they’re completely dry.

Overall, steam cleaning is a very effective way to clean your carpets. It doesn’t require chemicals and it’s a very thorough method. However, it’s important to pre-treat all tough stains before applying hot water.

 

Dry Carpet Cleaning

Rug cleaning

Dry carpet cleaning requires specialized equipment and a strong tolerance of chemicals. The process for dry carpet cleaning is as follows:

  1. Pre-vacuum/sweep the carpet and remove any dry dirt or soil
  2. Treat the carpet using a special dry-cleaning chemical solution
  3. The solution dissolves all oily residue which is still in the carpet and extracts dirt from within the carpet fibers
  4. Immerse cotton absorbent pads in hot water and conditioning solution
  5. Attach the pads to special rotary hoover which cleans all remaining dirt from the carpet

The obvious advantage of dry carpet cleaning is that your carpets will be fresh and dry in a much shorter amount of time.

Verdict

As is often the case, there’s no clear winner between these two methods and both have their uses. If you need your carpets to be dry as soon as possible then obviously dry carpet cleaning is the way to go. However, if you have time to spare, you might want to consider steam cleaning as it truly rids the carpet from dirt.

In recent years, both methods have been improved. Dry carpet cleaners have the option of using organic, less harmful chemicals, and steam cleaners use better disposal methods for the water.

Need your carpets cleaned? We offer a comprehensive carpet cleaning service in Connecticut, including Fairfield CT

Where Do Carpet Beetles Come From?

Your home or your office is covered in beautiful carpets you purchased some years ago, and up until recently you’ve had no problems with them whatsoever; they’ve created a pleasant atmosphere and added color and life to the surroundings. That’s why you were so devastated to discover one day that the carpets are teeming with nasty little bugs! How horrible. This kind of situation can really be upsetting, but don’t throw out the carpets just yet – carpet beetles can be removed by pest control professionals; and there are ways to keep them at bay so this doesn’t happen to you again. But before we dive into the solutions that can be used to treat a carpet beetle situation, let’s first learn all about those tiny creatures.

carpet beetle

What are carpet beetles?

Carpet beetles (Anthrenus verbasci) are a common species of beetles which can often be found as pests in domestic houses: the beetles’ larvae can cause damage not only to carpets, but also to clothing and furniture. Carpet beetles have round bodies, parts of which are covered in scales, and their color is an irregular pattern of yellow, brown and white patches.

How big are carpet beetles?

Carpet beetles are 1.7 to 3.5 millimeters long. Surprisingly, the larvae are bigger than adult beetles: the wooly, elongated larvae are 4 to 5 millimeters long.

Where do carpet beetles come from?

Carpet beetles are very common and they live in a variety of environments – not just carpets! However, they prefer areas with low humidity as their eggs develop best in dry areas. They can found in most of Europe, in North Africa, in the Mediterranean countries and the Middle East, in North Asia (Russia, China, etc.), and in North and Central America. So as you can see, they’re pretty much everywhere. They can easily enter your home through openings such as doors and windows, or on plants and flowers that are brought inside.

What causes carpet beetles?

To understand what causes carpet beetles, you must first understand what attracts carpet beetles. The secret lies in their food preferences. These beetles like to eat animal-based items, such as wool, fur, leather, animal hair and silk. Understandably, this attracts them to upholstered furniture, clothing, blankets and of course – carpets. But why are carpet beetles also found in synthetic carpets, which are not made of animal materials? Well, synthetic carpets (like other carpets) often absorb food, oil, perspiration and other organic materials from their surroundings.

If you’re wondering now, “But where do carpet beetles hide?” – they’re not necessarily hiding, they’re simply so small, and their carpet habitat is so good in hiding them, that sometimes it’s difficult to spot them until they’ve become numerous.

What kills carpet beetles?

You obviously don’t want your home to be infested with carpet beetles and their larvae, so what’s the best way to get rid of them? Well, it depends on the situation. If you haven’t seen carpet beetles at your home at all but you want to keep them away, there are some things you can do: regularly vacuum your furniture, carpets and areas where food is stored such as the pantry; store all your food either in plastic containers or in the fridge; dust your home thoroughly on a regular basis; and check for pests and insects on plants and flowers before bringing them inside your house.

However, if you already have carpet beetles in your home, your best option is to contact pest control professionals. After they’ve eliminated the beetles, be sure to follow the procedures in the previous paragraph so they don’t come back. Good luck!

 

 

How to Keep Your Rug’s Value – An Easy Guide

An area rug, by nature and design, is a delicate item. Machine or hand made, wool or silk, antique or brand new – it needs to be taken care of, regularly and with special attention, if you want to keep its value for years to come.

The rug colors, shape and general vitality could all be preserved with some care, most of it simple and easy to follow, as you will see in this concise and helpful guide.

We promise that if you choose to adhere to these suggestions – all coming from seasoned rug cleaning and repair technicians – your rug too will continue looking beautiful as time passes by.

Regular Cleaning

How to keep your rug valueVacuuming is the first and most basic part of keeping a rug intact. As dirt tend to accumulate over time and settle between the rug’s fiber, making the entire rug weaker, vacuuming can prevent that from happening.

Some gentler rugs needs to be vacuumed very carefully, so take that into consideration before you act or search for specific rug type vacuuming and cleaning instructions. On top of that, you can regularly use (if needed) cleaning solutions
after vacuuming, for better results.

Rotation, Rotation, Rotation

You should rotate your area rugs at least once a year. As traffic on the rug surface will not be spread even, so does the rugs color fading, tear and small but yet unseen damage. You have to even it out by rotating the rug, which would keep its integrity for much longer.

Also, when it time to repair or renew the rug, the damage will be minor and spread out equally, saving the need for a bigger, more expensive, repair. Other than that, It’s important to rotate – duration time – depending on how much traffic your rug is getting. The more it gets, the higher the rotation rate needs to be.

Immediate Care

Whenever a drink is spilled, or you suddenly notice a spot you’ve never seen before, taking action as fast as possible is critical. The more you wait, the harder it is to fix the damage since the rug absorb the foreign material and incorporate it with its own. That should be avoided, if possible.

Use Only Green Cleaning Products & Solutions

Whether you’re doing an emergency treatment for a new stain on the rug, or simply performing your routine cleaning protocol, we strongly advise that you’ll use only green, non toxic, biodegradable cleaning products. Today‘s market has top of the line organic cleaning products that can do a great and effective job, without the hazards to your rug and your health, hazards that a heavy chemical agent night induce.

Use Modern Tools

At home, or when you take your rug to get professionally cleaned, you have to make sure the equipment in which the rug is being cleaned is modern and up to todays standards. It needs to be effective, green and maintained properly vacuumthrough time. An old werked vacuum, or an unmaintained steam cleaning machine can often do more damage than good. The rule should be – use good cleaning products with good machinery when it comes down to your rug.

Scheduled Professional Cleaning

Although the basis of a good rug care policy is done by you at home and is almost completely up to you, it is highly recommended that at least once a year you will use a good, reliable, professional service. All of the home cleaning, care and maintenance can’t get the effect a deep cleaning process, done by pros, can do for your rug.

It lacks not only dusting, an important step that even some companies choose to pass on, but also the complete access a professional cleaning can get to every part of the rug, inside out. A professional rug cleaning expert knows what to use, how and how much. Without this routine step, your rug will deteriorate in a much faster rate. Also, a pro can notice early signs of tear or any other problem that needs to be taken care of right away.

Since area rug repair and restoration is not a simple or cheap process, that could be a real time and money saver for you.

The Right Way To Store Your Rug

Before storing an area rug deep in the closet or the attic, it needs to be rolled and not folded. If not done this ways, it could suffer from variable creases and irreparable damage. It also needs to be vacuumed and cleaned thoroughly, avoiding any type of dirt that cause further damage to the rug materials. If the rug is made out of natural fibers, it’s advised that your pack it with mothballs, keeping any harmful insect away.

The best way to make sure your stay intact, you can use our rug storage services.

It’s up to You

To sum things up, the lifespan of your rug is very much up to you and the care you choose to give it. Taking the right steps, using the right equipment and products, following the best practices as they are presented in this blog post – and your rug can and will live a very happy life right along with you 🙂

How to Choose The Right Area Rug

Weather you want to add color to the room or reinforce your sense of style around the house, Choosing the right area rug can be the perfect answer.

Varying from a machine made shag rug to a handmade delicate Persian wool rug, your options are almost limitless. Available to your are a wide variety of colors, patterns, materials, shapes, sizes and many more factors that contribute to a rug’s character.

area rug

But as with anything else, too many options can be a tad overwhelming. That is why we have some thoughts and tips for you on the subject, as real area rug experts and enthusiasts.

Size of the Rug

Measure your room properly and decide on the exact location of the intended rug. Size in this case is money, so you will need to decide on that first. With a big room, a large rug is needed, otherwise the whole space will look smaller or in the wrong proportions. On the other hand, if your sofa is backed-up against the wall – you can have a smaller rug, in front of it. At any rate, it should at least cover the length and width of your furniture.

Style of the Rug

Another major factor that should be consider at first, is the style of the rug and the character it showcase. A unique item and a substantive addition to any home, it is a true testament to its owners sensitivities.

The chosen rug should go hand in hand with your lifestyle. For example, buying an expensive and delicate main piece would be unfortunate if you have pets and little kids. It won’t hold or keep it’s qualities for a long time in such a household. Choosing a specific material that fits these circumstances, such as wool or a synthetic rug, would better suit you. The pattern of the rug would be another issue to consider, scaling between the minimalist bright rug to dense dark rug (on which stains would show less prominent).

Remember that patterned rugs can really complement your room color scheme, and that wear and tear shows less on these rugs, in comparison to cleaner, neater rugs.

Whichever rug you choose for your home, keep in mind that it is an item that – as the cliche goes – “really ties the room together”. Make sure you tie it the right way for you.