Carpet Cleaning

Most carpets are touch dry within a few hours and dry through by the next day. It depends on the depth of the pile, how warm the room is and how much air is moving through it. We pull out as much moisture as the machine will take, then groom the pile so it dries evenly. Opening a window or leaving the heating on low speeds it up. Walk on it in clean socks rather than shoes until it has dried.

Hot water extraction, what nearly everyone calls steam cleaning, is the method that actually rinses the carpet: hot water and detergent in, dirt and water back out. That is what we use, because it takes more out of the pile than anything worked over the surface. Dry or low moisture cleaning is a different thing: a damp compound is brushed through the pile and vacuumed back out, so the floor can be walked on almost straight away, which is why it suits an office that has to reopen. Some fibres should not be soaked at all. If yours is one of them we will tell you before we start rather than after.

Often, yes, but not always, and we would rather say so before we start than after. Food, drink, mud, traffic soiling and most pet accidents lift. What will not come out is anything that has taken the colour out of the fibre or put a new one into it: bleach, hair dye, rust, and a few of the stronger dyes in food and drink. Wear is not a stain either. Where a doorway has been walked flat, cleaning revives the pile but it will not rebuild it.

Usually, yes. The reason a surface clean never fixes it is that urine soaks through the carpet into the backing, the underlay and sometimes the floor beneath, so the smell is coming from down there rather than from the top of the pile. We treat the spot itself and work on breaking the source down instead of putting fragrance over it. Where it has been going into the same place for a long time the underlay may need replacing, and we will say so if we think that is what you are dealing with.

We move what can be lifted safely by hand: dining chairs, coffee tables, side tables and smaller sofas. Beds, full wardrobes, pianos, fish tanks and anything with electronics plugged into it stay where they are, and we clean up to and around them. If you can get the small things off the floor before we arrive, bins, toys, magazine racks, plant pots, that is what makes the most difference to how much carpet we can actually reach.

Yes, and stairs are usually the part of a house that needs it most. We do them with a hand tool rather than the floor wand, working the treads, the risers and the nosings where the wear shows first, and the edges up against the spindles. It is slower going than an open room of the same size, so tell us how many flights there are when you call and we will allow for it. Stairs dry quickly, but keep off them in shoes until they have.

Yes, both, though they are different jobs. Fabric sofas and armchairs are cleaned with the upholstery tool, cushions, arms and headrests included, and we check what the fabric is and what the manufacturer's cleaning code allows, because not everything can be wetted. Leather is cleaned and then conditioned rather than soaked, which takes the grime off the arms and headrests and stops the hide drying out and cracking. Tell us what you have when you call and we will come with the right kit for it.

About once a year where there are children or pets, and more like twice a year for the hallway and the stairs, because that is where the traffic goes. A quieter adult household can leave it longer. It is not only about how the carpet looks, either. Grit walked into the pile cuts the fibre every time someone stands on it, so a carpet that gets cleaned wears out slower than one that does not. Vacuuming properly in between does more than people think.

Yes. A lot of tenancy agreements ask for the carpets to be done professionally before the keys go back, so mention it when you book the move out clean and the machine comes on the same visit instead of us making a second trip. Same on a deep clean, or on a property a landlord is turning round between lets. Either way you get photographs of the floors before and after, which is usually what settles it if an agent queries the state they were left in.