What Is Carpet Steam Cleaning?
There is a number of methods to clean carpeting, today we are going to focus on carpet steam cleaning, the most common process for commercial office buildings. Often building managers and homeowners will ask “do you actually use steam?”.
Generally, no, most contractors do not use water hot enough to actually create steam but what happens is people can see the tiny water droplets and think its steam, by the time most water reaches the floor it has cooled enough even if it started hotter.
The rinse and extraction of the hot water extraction system happen almost at the same time. The extraction machine introduces the rinsing agent, which is then extracted along with collected soils.
A wand is used going forward and backward, moving the wand to the side while overlapping an inch or two.
Hot Water Extraction
Hot water extraction uses water solution pressurized, temperatures between 180-220 degrees for sanitizing effect, and powerful vacuum recovery to reduce drying times and achieve a much higher level of recovery of soils and waste water.
The two most common units are portable and van-based units. Portable units come in various sizes with a wand, vacuum hose attached to a main body filled with clean water tank and waste recovery tank. This is what most people see in residential settings.
For commercial buildings a “walk behind” unit is more popular, this unit has everything self-contained into one machine, it often looks like a Zamboni. These are used in office buildings more because of the higher production rates needed for large spaces.
Van based or Truck mounted carpet cleaning machines operate exactly how it sounds. The unit is permanently placed into a work van. Most will have a large recovery tank for waste water, clean water tank, heater to heat the water and some might have some system to add cleaning solutions to the water delivery.
Both of these units complete the same task, the main difference is a van-based steam cleaning system can have a much larger heater to create really hot water and maintain it for long periods of time. Also, a truck-mounted system will generally have much larger water tanks to continue jobs uninterrupted.
Method Clean Solutions
Buffalo NY
716-303-4049
