Carpet Cleaning Machine Guide

Practically anyone who lives in a home where at least some of the floors are carpeted probably owns a vacuum cleaner. These machines are endlessly useful in keeping carpets looking presentable and relatively free of surface dirt and grime. However, there are times when you will need something more than just a vacuum cleaner to keep a carpet clean. Vacuum cleaners do not clean dirt that has set deep down into a carpet over a period of months or even years, and they certainly won’t be able to touch stains left by food spills or pet accidents. Situations such as these call for the use of professional carpet cleaning machines.

Specialist carpet cleaning machines can be purchased from most retailers, but most people prefer to rent them since they generally aren’t needed as often as vacuum cleaners or even cloth and water to clean up simple messes. Alternately, some people hire professional cleaning services that can thoroughly clean a rug or carpeted surface for a fee. No matter how you wish to make use of carpet cleaning machines, there can be no denying that these devices can come in very handy.

The most obvious and common use of a carpet cleaning machine is to clean the dirt and grime that can be accumulated deep down on a carpeted floor over a period of time. This kind of mess can be especially troublesome for large families or households that regularly have guests. The floors of such households generally see a lot of traffic, and as people come and go they track dirt and debris across virtually every surface of the house. This dirt sinks into carpets and can actually affect air quality and the health of the homeowners over time, especially for those with allergies and respiratory health problems such as asthma. It is recommended that anyone who owns or lives in a home with many carpeted surfaces use a dry carpet cleaning machine every two to three months to eliminate the deep-down dirt and grime that accumulates over time. Dry carpet cleaning machines work by introducing a dry cleaning agent to a carpet. This cleaning agent attracts dirt and dust. After it has been allowed to sit for fifteen to thirty minutes, the dry carpet cleaner acts as a vacuum to remove the agent and any dirt that it has attracted. This is the kind of cleaning machine typically used by professional cleaners to clean large surfaces in offices and high-traffic carpeted areas in public buildings.

Carpet cleaning machines also come in handy when cleaning a stain left by dropped food or a spilled drink. Substances such as red wine, chocolate, and tomato sauce are notorious for leaving behind stubborn stains when they are dropped onto rugs. Sometimes these spills can be cleaned up quickly by soap and water if you catch them before they have a chance to set in, but once they set in and stain you will need to use a carpet cleaning machine. Dry carpet cleaning machines don’t usually work as well for these spills; the most stubborn stains usually call for a steam cleaning machine. These machines work by injecting a solution of water and a cleaning agent deep into the carpet fibers. The machine scrubs them into the stain before sucking all the water, the agent, and the substance that created the stain out of the carpet. This is a deeper cleaning than what you can expect from a dry carpet cleaning machine, and it is the type of cleaner that most people think about for emergency cleaning.

Different Kinds of Carpet Cleaning Machine

Vacuums, steamers, extractors, buffers, scrubbers – these are all floor cleaning machines which vary in design, but not in solution. They all serve the purpose of cleaning a carpet or hard-surfaced floor and they all, if used properly, will do their jobs relatively easily. These machines are meant to eliminate the hassle of getting on one’s hands and knees to try to scrub away a bad wine or pet stain or to change out the carpet altogether.

A vacuum is obviously the most well-known item that is used to clean floors, from hardwood to carpet. The vacuum cleaner simply plays a part in debris removal and does very little as far as tough stains are concerned. The vacuum is best when someone simply needs to remove a floor’s dust and/or crumbs.

The steamer uses hot steam to reach deep down into the actual fabric of carpet or leather and then sucks the moisture back up as a vacuum would suck up dust. In the returning moisture comes some of the stains which the steam helped to disperse. Good steamers are known for either removing all or almost all of a stain and are popular to their “can be used on multiple fabrics” quality.

An extractor is similar to a steamer in its way of delivering the cleaning element (hot water) into the carpet and then sucking it back up. However, it is different than the steamer in that it does not use steam, just hot water. The extractor’s hot, soapy water can many times remove a stain from a carpet just fine, but the downside is a reason many steer away from the extractor these days: It can sometimes get things too wet. Mildew and mold are both things that can grow given enough moisture in fabric for long enough, and so many people actually prefer the steamer for this reason.

Buffers are machines that are particularly meant for the long, open hardwood floors. In particular, a buffer is widely used due to its way of shining a floor. By placing a little amount of wax on the given floor and then running a buffer machine on top of the wax, the wax spreads evenly on top of the floor. The buffer’s cloth bottom spins rapidly and shines the floor to the user’s desire.

Floor scrubbers are another machine that is similar to a buffer but is aimed more at getting the grime off of a surface than shining it. The floor scrubber is basically an automatic way of scrubbing any hard-surfaced floor, surpassing the need for someone to get on his or her hands and knees to manually scrub.

As one can see, these five different Floor Machines all serve multiple purposes in the carpet/hard surface-cleaning arena. The most basic way, of course, to clean a floor is to pick up debris by hand, or to try to manually scrub out a tough stain. But when those methods don’t keep the floor pristine as possible, one of these machines surely will.

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