More Carpet Cleaning Tips

See more carpet cleaning tips from AJS Carpet Cleaning, here.

Water is sometimes called a “universal solvent” although that is a misnomer, because it will not dissolve many substances, unlike aqua regia which will dissolve even gold or platinum – not to mention your carpet fibers! Many people however, claim that all they need to clean carpet is water, just as long as it is soft enough or hot enough. Some even claim that after their carpet cleaning there will be “zero residue”. Well good luck to them.

Of course you can always test that claim by sending a small sample of your carpet fibers (after they clean it), to a reputable analytical laboratory, and ask the lab to determine the chemical composition of the residue remaining on the carpet sample. You would be VERY surprised! Why soft water then?

 Because the alternative is to use hard water which puts you at a clear disadvantage to begin with, when you are cleaning carpet or upholstery. Hard water typically contains significant amounts of calcium and magnesium carbonates, which retards the effect of the solvents and emulsifiers that good carpet cleaners use to clean your carpets. High temperatures also cause hard water to deposit carbonate scale on all surfaces freely. (Check the bottom of your kettle).

According to the USGS, Utah is one of the States with the highest concentration of hardness in the water supply – typically in excess of 10.5 grains per gallon. So by using soft water we can increase the efficiency of carpet cleaning, and significantly (not totally) eliminate residues. Soft water can be generated using by using either a cation-anion demineralizer or a sodium ion exchanger, commonly known as a water softener.

At AJS Carpet Cleaning, Inc. we always have on-board water softeners on our carpet cleaning trucks, and we can attest to their efficacy.