Steve White from Bath Carpets & Flooring offers expert advice about keeping the carpets and flooring in your family home looking clean and fresh
With the children back to school, it’s a great time to give the carpets and flooring in your family home a good clean. However, it is essential that you use the right products and techniques. Here’s a few tricks of the trade that we use and they will work for you too.
- When cleaning a vinyl floor, sheet or tile, use PH Neutral cleaning solutions diluted with water. If you’re unsure if a product is PH Neutral, follow one simple rule – wash once with the diluted solution, then the next time you wash your floor, use just warm water. This will help remove any detergent build-up and maintain the appearance of your floor.
- Vacuum regularly. Following the installation of new carpets, they should be vacuumed daily to remove loose fibres held in the pile from the manufacturing process. This will allow the pile to open fully. Once this shedding has stopped, vacuum weekly using a beater bar vacuum cleaner on cut pile carpets and a cylinder cleaner for loop pile carpets.
- Stain removal. There are lots of chemicals available on the market but these should always be tested on a small piece of carpet which is out of sight as some can discolour the carpet fibres. Any spills should be blotted with kitchen roll or a towel to draw the moisture/stain out. If the stain persists, lightly dab with warm water – treat like a graze on a child’s knee, be gentle and never scrub – as this will damage the carpet pile! Work from the outside in and blot to remove the moisture/stain, then repeat as needed.
- Avoid soaking any spillage or stain, this will wash the stain down into the carpet and make it spread. Then as the carpet dries, what started off as a small mark will reappear as a large stain!
- Check what your carpet is made of. Man-made fibres (Polypropylene) have the colour locked in so any stain is only on the surface of the pile. Woollen fibres will absorb spillages easily but natural oils help to protect the fibres. Blot, don’t Soak and be gentle!
- The simple addition of matting at entrances will help remove unwanted dirt and moisture – it’s simple but so effective!
- If in doubt, contact the team at Bath Carpets & Flooring for advice at carpetsandflooringbath.co.uk