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Your carpet likely came from the factory with some form of protector applied to it this protector is better than any protector you can buy or apply to your carpet because it is baked into the carpet when it is made, unfortunately over time that protector will wear out from general foot traffic and potentially high ph cleaning solutions that may need to be used to clean the carpet if it is in a really bad state, the most know aftermarket brand of protector is definitely Scotchgard, so you might ask Kane why don’t you use Scotchgard?

Great question random citizen and there are actually multiple reasons. Scotchgard as a professional product has been banned in Australia for quite a few years because the type of flurochemicals used in it are not great for your health. Unlike Scotchgard, Maxim S.O.S. Carpet Protector coats the whole fiber with an ionic bond that resists wear from foot traffic and vacuuming. It also fills in microscopic holes created as a side effect of the nylon extrusion process. Maxim S.O.S. Carpet Protector fills in these holes so that spilled liquids won’t be able to. How does it do this?

Maxim S.O.S. Carpet Protector contains a highly concentrated, anti-staining polymer that coats the carpet fiber blocking and creating a barrier around the carpet fiber that protects it from staining.What’s great about Maxim S.O.S. Is it has no flurochemicals, solvents or resoling silicons whatsoever it was specifically designed for the Australian market and it is a deodorizer as well as a protector so when you clean a wool carpet and apply Maxim S.O.S. it will greatly reduce that wet dog smell anyone with a wool carpet has smelt after having their carpet cleaned.The biggest benefit’s of carpet protector are that it helps your carpets last longer and clean up better. While also giving you the peace of mind if you do happen to spill something crazy like red cordial a lot of the time you can just sop it up with a towel and you wont have an issue, it gives you a lot longer window of time to do this also. If you are interested in seeing it work let me know I’m more than happy to show you a live demo.

Hi, this is Kane Russell from Kane’s Steam Clean. Today i’m here to answer the question How do I chooses a carpet cleaning service that I will be happy with? But before I do that I’m going to explain a few things about the cleaning methods and process. most times when people call a carpet cleaning service they will ask how much do you charge? This question unfortunately tells them very little about what they are actually buying as unfortunately the industry isn’t regulated and you can get wildly varying job quality between operators, due to them skipping steps, using inferior equipment and chemicals, or even the completely wrong cleaning methods for the job at hand, this is compounded even more by 3 of the biggest franchises in Australia exclusively using encapsulation dry cleaning in the residential setting. Now I’m not saying there isn’t a place for dry cleaning in the industry. But for anything above light soil situations in a residential setting I would struggle to recommend that method. Especially for longer pile carpets, the average homeowner probably has there carpets cleaned once or twice a year maybe  less. I don’t know about you but for my cleaning dollar I would much rather a method of cleaning that thoroughly flushes and removes dirt, grease, body oil and allergens and sucks them outside of my house. Than a method that essentially crystallizes and drives the dirt down and hopes your vacuum cleaner can do a good job of removing it. There is a reason many cleaners refer to encapsulation as hiding dirt.

When it comes to commercial appearance maintenance cleaning on a monthly or bi monthly schedule though quality dry cleaning with a Cimex machine is tough to beat specially on glue down carpets that are prone to wick back. The other problems with these franchise companies is they don’t even use the best dry cleaning machines in the industry like for example the aforementioned Cimex cyclone is a beast of a dry cleaning machine that will do an awesome job on commercial glue down carpets yet they are happy to run a 175rpm floor buffer on your carpet with a bonnet pad and call that quality carpet cleaning.

Unfortunately steam cleaning in the hands of an unskilled operator is not much better and can in some cases be worse. How many times have you heard something from a friend or family member  like “I had my carpets cleaned last week and they were wet for 3 days and the spots came back and they even started to smell” this is an unfortunate situation cased by operator error. If the carpets are soaking wet when you get home you need to call whoever has cleaned the carpets and have them come and fix it. The carpets should never get saturated during steam cleaning and the carpet cleaner should be cleaning with overlapping strokes and then be doing drying strokes after the wet strokes, the carpets should be damp to the touch and dry in hours not days.

So that’s all well and good Kane but how do i know who to choose? In general if the price is to good to be true it usually is $100-$150 for a whole house will either result in high pressure up sales of things like pre spray that should be included in the initial price or on the other end of the spectrum the complete lack of a pre spray and pre vacuuming and no neutralizing rinsing agent in the cleaning solution. some guys just run a slurry (alkaline cleaning solution) in their rinse water and that’s all they do. This will leave a ton of residue in your carpet and cause rapid resoiling. You also lose out on the benefit of chemical dwell time you get with pre spray.  All of these things will most likely give you mediocre cleaning results and at worst saturated carpet. They will be in and out in under an hour. and you wont be happy.

The things I would look for start with your initial phone call. When you ring me I will generally ask you your name and if it is ok for me to ask you a few questions so that I can better help you. I will then ask if you know what the carpet is made of? This is important because I can determine what kind of cleaning agents will have to be used and what can be done about spots and stains if that is an issue that will lead into my next question is there any spots or stains you are concerned about? this will include things like animal stains, rust, food and drink spills that may not come out with the regular cleaning processes. the next question I like to ask is how long has it been since the carpets were last cleaned? This is a good question because it will give me an idea of the cleaning methods that will be required to get the best results. For example if you have a Polyester carpet that hasn’t been cleaned in 3-4 years there is an extremely high chance you are going to need a stronger prespray and rotary extraction to really restore the appearance of that carpet. lastly i will ask about the size of rooms in relation to each other and stairs hallways and walk in closets. Because people always forgets to mention these things and the last thing I want to do is get to your house and have to change the price because there is more to clean than you told me about on the phone.

At the end of the day you should choose Kane’s Steam Clean because I don’t compromise. I clean every job to the best of my ability, I don’t cut corners, I charge what it’s worth to do it properly. I stand behind my work with an iron clad guarantee if you are not satisfied I will re clean it. if you are still not satisfied I will refund your money 100%.

Now just pick up your phone and call me at: 04 370 456 45

If you mention this post until 31/8/2018 I will give you a free room of carpet cleaning on any job over 3 rooms.

Do not use supermarket “Oxy action” (hydrogen Peroxide of unspecified %) or Chlorox/Chlorine bleach based Chemicals on wool carpet, no matter how white you think the wool is. Doing so will always take what little die was applied to the fiber and leave you with something like this..

The Problem here is you had a spot like red wine for example that could have been removed. Now instead you have an area of the carpet that has had the dye either ruined or removed and the only option in this situation now is to dye the spot (can be successful and almost always better than the bleach mark, but may not be perfect)  or cut it out and patch it.

Also try not to scrub wool carpets specially with stiff bristle brushes you are better off blotting the stain then preferably dilute with water and extract with a wet/dry vac and put something like baking powder on it so if the spot wicks back as it drys it does so into the baking powder and you can just vacuum it off the next day.

To much scrubbing will damage the fibers and make them fray this is more a problem on wool Berber but it’s not particularly great on cut pile either. at the end of the day the quicker you can react to a spill and sop it up the less chance there will be that there will be permanent damage. having your carpets scotch guarded at least every 2 years is a great idea also. As it gives you a larger window to clean up spills before damage occurs, it also has the added benefit of keeping your carpets cleaner for longer and increasing their life by reducing wear to the fibers from everyday foot traffic.

At Kane’s Steam Clean you can rest assured  that we use wool safe cleaning agents and a gentle but very effective process to professionally clean your natural fiber carpets and area rugs.

As a carpet cleaning professional I get asked this question quite often, to which i usually reply “As long as it has a power head and you enjoy using it that is probably the best vacuum cleaner for you.”

That said I do have a personal soft spot for the Kirby vacuum cleaner because I like to buy things that last and that do the best job, are there down sides to the Kirby? yes, you have to buy bags and is is very heavy if you are lifting it around, (but due to the direct drive system it is not heavy to push when you are actually vacuuming.) to buy one new is very expensive and requires you to engage in pushy door to door sales which is never the best way to buy anything. They can however be found on the second hand market for a steal and I highly recommend going that way if a Kirby interests you. Also because there is parts easily available should something go wrong with it they are easily repairable.

The thing you have to take into consideration with vacuum cleaners such as a shark or Dyson which are completely fine and do a good job. Is they are disposable if something goes wrong with them you are more than likely looking at buying a new vacuum cleaner. as no vacuum cleaner repair shops will work on them.

But they do have plenty of positive things going for them as well like not having to buy vacuum bags, you also don’t have to replace the drive belt for the brush role like you do on the Kirby (around every 20 uses) though you do have to make sure you keep the filter clean on your Shark or Dyson i would be doing this at least every month under normal household use. if i were to choose between shark or Dyson i would choose shark as they are generally less expensive and they suck just as hard.

A 4th option would be a Lux (formerly Electrolux) vacuum i would have rated these up with the Kirby vacuum cleaner but unfortunately Lux has stopped producing vacuums and it is getting harder to find parts these days they do a great job but for this reason i find them hard to recommend unless you are picking them up cheap and fully working.