Cleaning the Filtration lines on your carpets!
Filtration lines!
Types of filtration soiling:
The particles that make up Filtration soiling are airborne. The air currents traveling through your home and spread by your Hvac system combine all three types of soiling found in a residence or commercial business.
1st there is the Basic Household Soil consisting of large particles of sand, clay, quartz, limestone, and gypsum. Also included in this type is Animal dander, and lint.
2nd and next in importance is the Micro-Occlusion Soil. This includes soil that is composed of very fine, lightweight particles of carbon and soot. These particles come from things such as your fire place, candles, exhaust emissions, cigarette smoke, and even the pigment on printed materials and clothing, This soiling being very lightweight can travel great distances before settling because of gravity, or on your carpets because of the filtering of the airflow in your home.
3rd is the Oily Vapors Soil. These are generated on the outside by automobiles, heavy industry, and even the natural decomposition of organic materials. Inside the home the primary contributors are smoking, cooking with animal and vegetable oils, and paint and other oil based products.
Filtration soiling occurs where a concentration of dirty air passes over or through your carpets. It can also develop at any place there are cracks or openings in the subfloor, underneath the carpets. This issue is not a defect of the carpet, nor a result of the quality of the carpet selected for that area.
Something that not everyone knows!
Something that not everyone knows is that warm air likes cool surfaces. This means that when warm air, heated by your furnace, and full of airborne pollutants circulates, it searches out the cooler surfaces such as an outside wall or another room. As the air moves toward the cooler areas or into another room, it cleans itself while moving through the fibers of your carpets and fabrics. What is left behind is a buildup of oily soils that is very hard to remove. These oily soils are so small that they not only form an electrical bond to the fabric, but they also fit right into the same areas, called dye sites, that the actual carpet dyes attach to. Over time this oily soil builds up and becomes almost a permanent part of your carpets.You will pay a premium to have it removed.
How we remove filtration soiling!
The major challenge of removing filtration soiling is that it is composed of very fine particles of both water soluble, and oil soluble solids. This means that in some cases different cleaning treatments or a combination of different cleaning treatments may be needed to complete removal. There are several commercial products available on the market. Make sure and get one that doesn't leave a sticky residue.
Tools Required:
Tamping Brush
Scrubbing Brush (you may also try a spatula)
Commercial Cleaning Solution
Spray Bottle
Spray guard (for wall and baseboard protection)
Equipment for Hot Water Extraction
Before and After Cleaning!
These are steps that should be followed:
- Thoroughly vacuum the area before any specific cleaning.
- Pretest the product in an inconspicuous area.
- Protect the wall and baseboards. A paint shield works great.
- Follow the manufactures direction on diluting the product.
- Spray the affected area. Then allow to dweel for the proper time. Normally 5 or 10 minutes. We normally start with a 3 foot long area along the wall and see how that goes and either increase or decrease the length depending on how the job is going. Do not saturate the chemical. It can cause delamination of your carpet.
- We suggest you just Tamp the area first. Use a tamping brush to Tamp down the cleaning agent into the carpet's fibers. If that doesn't work then you may agitate the area with a brush. Use caution here as too heavy a brushing will degrade the carpets fibers, and cause them to visually standout as being different from the rest of your carpets.
- Now extract the cleaned area using hot water extraction and a neutral rinse.
- Use a fan for faster drying!
- If the first application did not remove all of the filtration soiling you should go over it again. Just repeat these steps until the stains in your carpet stops responding. Caution not to over scrub your carpet and unlay the fibers .
- After going through these steps remember to rinse, and rinse, and rinse. It is very important to remove every chemical you put into the rug.
Products that we use and recommend!
Unfortunately homemade cleaning solutions will not be effective on this type of soiling and Commercial products are the only choice.
Prochem's Filter Out - Prochem Filter-Out removes air filtration soil lines along walls and doorways and near heating and air conditioning vents -- places where airborne particles are filtered out and deposited in carpet pile. Exclusive Prochem technology defeats the particle charge attraction and allows the soil to be extracted away.
Matrix's Soil Out - To help you remove those stubborn lines and really impress your customers, the chemists at Matrix developed Filtration Soil Remover. This product was specifically engineered to attack black filtration lines and emulsify the soil so it can be easily rinsed.
Note: Please keep in mind that filtration soil is made up of many different things and the oils are particularly hard to remove. There is not a catch all product for everyone of them.
Cleaning Filtration Lines is not for the Homeowner. Often times using cleaning sprays that contain chemicals that you don't know what they are, may do more harm than good. This is a job for Professionals only.
