Keeping Your Carpet Clean And Healthy
These are large furnishing items, taking up most of the floor space in the rooms they are installed. As such, they have a huge impact on the decor of the space, and the quality of the living conditions. You want your unit to accentuate the space, not have it all being dull and dilapidated. It should spruce up the ambience, not have you sulking about the poor state of affairs. After investing so much money in getting the carpet whose material, colourations and patterns match your particular style and bring out your personality, having it get ruined by the dirt and grime that builds up over time can be frustrating. Its very nature makes it a grime haven. For instance, its fibres filter out particles from the air. Yes, this is actually beneficial to the indoor air space, as purifying it provides a healthier environment for the building’s occupants. However, this results in the carpet getting very soiled. Indoor air pollutants accumulating in the unit just continue piling up until external action comes in to remove them through a deep carpet cleaning process. That’s just one of the things to worry about. Here are more:
- Germ habitat
That cosy carpet can clock over 200,000 bacteria on every square inch of material. These are are all sorts of microbes, from those simply breaking down the organic matter that is accumulating in your unit, to pathogens like E. coli, campylobacter and salmonella. When there is someone ill in the house, and there’s lots of coughing and sneezing involved, some of the germs expelled from the body wind up in the carpet. Strains like the Norovirus can stay on those lush fibres for more than a month, all while still being potent enough to cause infection once they get into the body system. Kids, who spend lots of time crawling around and playing on the carpet, then touching their faces and mouths, are at a high risk of getting affected. Do you have pet? Then these too have their health issues to consider. Take dogs and one of their serious infections, the Parvovirus. In case your furry friend has a case of Parvo, a thorough carpet cleaning and disinfecting is required to prevent reinfection, and to protect other pets that may be in the premises. Such highly infectious diseases can be easily spread through the carpet that the pets enjoy rolling around and napping on.
- Hordes of dust mites
Humans shed dead skin cells around the clock. Pets leave their fur and dander strewn all over the carpet. All this is fodder for the infamous dust mite. This tiny creature feeds on the material, and in the process produces faecal pellets that are a leading cause of allergic rhinitis. In fact, many cases of incessant coughing and sneezing in indoor environments can be attributed to this tiny creature. It doesn’t need to go looking for water to survive- it absorbs it right out of the air itself. So, with the carpet, the mites have a warm habitat, and the food and water they need to survive, which causes their colonies to explode in size. You can have hundreds of thousands of mites crawling around in your carpet – not a pleasant thought, is it?
The increasing concentration of dirt poses a threat to the lifespan of your carpet. Even when it looks clean at surface level, there will be soiling that is being ground deeper into the fibres of the carpet, especially after it has stayed for long since the last cleaning was carried out. These particles grind at the fibres of the material each time that there are people walking on it- which is part of the reason why those highly trafficked areas develop “footpaths”. The longer that the carpet remains neglected, the more accelerated the wearing down becomes, until you find yourself in a situation where you’re forced to plan for a new purchase. An in-depth cleaning process that actually gets to the grime that is within the unit and flushes it out- like hot water extraction, is particularly vital in order to ensure that your unit has been truly cleaned.
- When your carpet deceives you
After some months, the carpet may still look clean. If one is regularly vacuuming it, they may not even be putting much thought on the need for the deeper carpet cleaning. However, when it comes to these units, looks can indeed be deceiving. Carpets can hold in up to 4 times their own weight in dirt. Before visible signs start appearing- like the dulling sections and dirt spots whose colour clashes with the rest of the carpet, there will already be loads of grime buried with thin those lush fibres and the carpet pile. It all needs to be got rid of. Sticking to a regular carpet cleaning schedule is important, to protect your unit and the occupants in the home.
When selecting a company to hire for the carpet cleaning services, there are a couple of aspects that need to be looked into. Firstly, what cleaning methods do they use? There are different approaches taken, from dry cleaning shampooing, bonnet cleaning, encapsulation, to hot water extraction. Here, you want to know the specific methods that the personnel intend to use when working on your carpet. There are also those who are keen on aspects such as eco-friendly cleaning measures, taking into account the safety of the persons on the premises, and the environment as a whole in regards to the carpet cleaning products and processes that are employed. Also check out their online reviews, such as on the various social media platforms. Is the feedback positive? What do its previous clients have to say about the quality of service they received? Are there negative comments? Ignore the trolls though. Here, the focus should be in seeing the follow-ups that company undertook to address the unsatisfied customers whose complaints were genuine – as it further goes to show the emphasis that the company puts on ensuring that all its customers’ needs have been met.
