Do we use Pre-spray or spotter?
We get asked often do we treat the spots before we clean. This question is because most carpet cleaners don’t treat spots; they rely on the soap in their water to break down the dirt in the carpet. Many companies actually charge extra to use soap to clean the carpet, or they charge an extra dirty charge. They may even go so far as to charge you for each area that they use soap on. So customers are asking us because they have had times where the carpet cleaner didn’t prespray anything before cleaning the carpets. We do love for you to show us where all the trouble areas are. Yes we are the experts for cleaning carpets, but you are the expert of where in your home the dirt is. You know where the dog had an accident that you have already cleaned up. You know where someone spilled milk that you soaked up. You know where you covered up the spot with a rug or chair that is not currently visible. And most of all you know what the spots are from. We could play Sherlock Holmes and try our best to guess what happened to make a certain spot in your home, but it’s easier if you just tell us.
So what spots do we prespray? The simple answer is all of them! Yes we actually do a full prespray before every single job that we do. Our motto is if it doesn’t get pre sprayed it doesn’t get cleaned. Think of it like this, you could take a plate with dried spaghetti sauce on it and try to dry scrub it off. That would be a lot of elbow grease and work to break it off. On the other hand if you just let it soak with water and some dawn dish soap it will just slide right off in a few minutes. We do the same with your carpets. We prespray all the carpets so that it will soften up and break down all the dirt in the carpet. This also makes it so that we don’t have to use soap in our cleaning water. That gives the added benefit of leaving nothing in the carpet when we are done cleaning.
Now you are thinking how do we know that the prespray will be enough to get all the spots in the carpets. Well you are correct we don’t know that for sure. We have done tens of thousands of homes and found a mixture that gets the vast majority of stuff out of carpets without over doing the carpets or being impossibly expensive. So we address the spots that need a specific boost of soap by using a spotter. We clean the carpet and when we run into a spot that needs just a bit more soap we use a spotter on that spot to get it out. There are times that we miss the mark, but we are trained for that also and are ready to redo the prespray with something stronger when needed. For example if we do a restaurant then we use a different mix then when we clean a home’s carpet. Or if there are alot of pets in a home we will use a slightly different mix then also. \
Here is how you should try to remove spots in your carpet. First dry vacuum what you can get out of the carpet. Next use light water to rinse out the rest. Now that you have removed all you can it’s time to use some soap to break up what is left. And finally you need to remove the remaining soap with a final clean water rinse. If the spot is still there then use soap and rinse it again. Wash, rinse and repeat if necessary.