First things first, carpet wear is something that you cannot stop but it is something that you can slow down. We have mentioned before but it bears repeating that carpet wear is caused by soil damaging the carpet fibers. How does this happen? It may be surprising but it happens at the microscopic level and over time we finally being to notice it. Soil is very abrasive and it performs the same action that sandpaper does on wood. As the carpet is walked on it the soils cut into the carpet fibers. It is more noticeable on thicker and longer fiber carpets. You’ll notice that the carpet looks lower in one area even after a great vacuuming. The cut and damage carpet fibers usually turn into dust and are atomized into the air when we walk or they’re swept up when vacuuming. Once the damage is done there is no way to bring the carpet back, but as we said we can slow it down.
Identifying The Problems
Transition areas are one of biggest causes of premature carpet wear. A transition area is simply when the walking traffic goes from a hard surface such as tile and grout to carpet. The soil sets on the tile face and doesn’t go anywhere which means it is just waiting to be picked up and brought onto the carpet. Something to help prevent premature wear in transition areas are to place rugs in those areas. For the home, even a cheap runner rug will work well to help this and you can even buy ones that can be thrown in the washer. We recommend you wash them once every 1-3 months to help keep the soil load out of them. We do offer a warning with this – make sure that the rug has a rubber backing so that it doesn’t slide on the carpet or you can buy rolls of rubber/latex material to put under the rug so that it doesn’t slide. If the rug slides on the carpet it can cause even more damage than normal foot traffic would because of the rubbing and friction.
In a commercial setting walk-off mats are a great way to help with this. The mats can be taken and cleaned and replaced with clean ones on a regular schedule. This is especially important in factory settings and high traffic volume commercial environments.
Another Problem
Lack of maintenance is another big problem in why carpet wears out prematurely. We’ve already wrote about why you should vacuum and if you haven’t already please feel free to read it here. We find that a lot of people wait 2-3 years to have their carpet cleaned or they wait until they can see the traffic patterns developing in the carpet. Although we pride ourselves on our great cleaning abilities, we do not recommend to wait 2-3 years to have your carpet professionally cleaned. Carpet manufacturers recommend having the carpet cleaned annually and we agree with them. If you have a larger family then we recommend having the carpet cleaned twice a year. Properly maintaining your carpet can make it last 50% longer than what the normal carpet life expectancy of 5-7 years. Carpet and flooring are one of the biggest investments for your home and we want our clients to get the most out of it.
Lastly – Lies, Lies, Lies
The Internet has been a great world wide resource but unfortunately there is some bad information out there. There are companies that like to use scare tactics to sell carpet cleaning. We have built our business on honesty, integrity, and doing what’s best for the client even when it may not have benefited us. We can argue all day who the best carpet cleaning company is and who can get the carpet the cleanest. But there is one thing that cannot be argued. When we enter a home or business we promise to treat it like it was our own, and we promise to give each and every client that we serve the best experience possible. For the home please check out our residential carpet cleaning process, and for commercial settings please check out our commercial carpet cleaning process.