What’s In a Rug

I found myself in a position, which unfortunately I’m not unfamiliar with. We received a call which was generated from a referral to go and quote on cleaning a rug. We offer a specialty rug cleaning service and on site quoting is all a part of the gig.

Now, rugs mean different things to different people. Whilst there is a huge difference in quality and actual value in a rug. There is very often always a sentimental value attached to particular rugs. We’ve had everything from the rug which was carried in a backpack from Mongolia to London, the rug which was purchased in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul 30 years ago. The rug which a soldier brought back from active duty in Afghanistan. We’ve had the rug which the baby used to play on and the baby is now 23. Then of course we’ve had the $15000.00 rug; “Please don’t bugger it up..”

Cleaning rugs is a bit different to cleaning carpets, in so much as a lot can happen which might not generally occur when cleaning a fitted carpet. It is a specialist job. Just as you wouldn’t have a panel beater service your car, or a dentist treat you for high blood pressure, generally you should consider having a specialist rug cleaner to clean your rugs as they’re supposed to be cleaned.

We have a specialist facility in Ballina where we can dust and wash your rugs, replicating the way they would be traditionally cleaned and the way they are designed to be cleaned.

But back to this rug, which we’ll call rug of the week for purposes of identification. The reason we were called in was not because the dog had done a wee in the middle of the rug. Which he had. The reason we were called in was not because the owner was a dog groomer and there was a lot of hair in the rug. Which there was.

The reason we got to see “Rug of the Week” was because despite having had it cleaned by another carpet cleaner on site, it still smelled of wee. It was still hairy and looked a bit lack lustre.

When we did our quote, we worked out that the rug had been cleaned on site by a carpet cleaner. They had not used any chemical to break down the urine crystals, nor had they attempted to extract the urine in a liquid form. They had vacuumed the rug, but they hadn’t dusted it. So much of the particulate matter in a rug will sit at the bottom and needs to be beaten out.
The process we needed to follow was to remove the rug to our facility where we could clean it properly. We had to dust the rug (beat it), we had to return the urine to a liquid form. Chem-Dry has a proprietary product designed specifically for this purpose called PURT. We had to wash the rug in a pit and really rinse it out. Previous carpet cleaning attempts had left soapy deposits in the rug, which is like leaving shampoo in your hair. The most recent attempt had tried to mask the urine smell with a sickly smelling deodoriser, which we also had to remove. For odour control, you have to remove the source of the smell rather than mask it.

We then speed dry the rug, groom it and return it to the customer and lay it back in place.

There’s a bit of work goes into cleaning a rug and there is of course a cost associated. However, when we returned the rug, we had removed the urine. We had removed the dog hair. We had removed the soap residue and the deodoriser. When we returned the rug, it was clean. At the end of the day, that is the outcome the customer wanted. Unfortunately on this occasion they’d had to pay twice.